Executive Summary

Problem Presented: 40% of yogurt consumers don’t eat Chobani. Why?

We studied topics like healthy snacking, mealtime, and natural foods.

Through qualitative research, we uncovered 5 insights about the brand, the users, and the category.

We have confirmed ALL FIVE insights through quantitative research, a total of 400 participants.

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Background

• 5 years of category expansion, driven by Greek

• 130 new Greek yogurt products in the US in the first half of 2012.

• Chobani’s success has encouraged Dannon and Yoplait to introduce Greek yogurts of their own.

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Yogurt Market3

Chobani is the best-selling Greek yogurt.

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Yogurt Market

• 75% of the yogurt consumers are women

• 69% in a professional occupation• 67.1% earns around $70,000• 63.6% from the Northeast• 64.4% from the West• 63.6% come from a big city

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40% of yogurt consumers don’t buy Chobani. Is this an awareness problem, a problem with the product, or are consumers brand-loyal to competitors?

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Research Objectives• Discover why yogurt consumers do not eat Chobani• Understand the social undercurrents and trends that are relevant

to healthy snacking and mealtime

Why the project is worth conducting

• AdAge, June 29, 2012: the Greek Yogurt category was a craze, a fad, or an unsustainable category.

• Whether or not this is true will impact Chobani’s future as a business.

• According to the CMO of Chobani, they would like to better understand the segment of yogurt consumers who do not purchase Chobani.

• We hope to find a durable idea in the category that Chobani can leverage on for years to come.

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Cultural Insight Research Questions

• What are the most popular views Americans have on healthy snacking?

• What are society’s views on how technology has affected the food we consume?

• What are society’s views on foreign cuisine and diet?• What are society’s views surrounding mealtime?• How is yogurt viewed in America?

Methodology• Secondary research• Simmons• MRI+• Mintel

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Cultural Insight

BACK TO BASICS

• Greek culture is known for being the basic foundation of athleticism, religion, politics, and civilization. Greek yogurt is yogurt distilled to its essence.

• As people strive for simplicity, we also try to uncomplicate our lives. Yogurt is simple and pure.

• It’s available everywhere, it’s cheap, it’s healthy, it’s easy to consume, and it fits in with busy schedules.

• People have always been conscious of diets, but dieting methods have always been complicated.

• Over the past 30 years, we have watched a transition from the Atkin’s diet to low-calorie diets like Weight Watchers, to organic foods, to local farm-fresh buying, and finally, back to where we started 2,000 years ago in Greece.

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Back to Basics

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Qualitative Methodology

• Twelve focus group sessions with 48 participants.• Participants engaged in various activities including creating collages,

picture sorts, word associations, and open-ended discussions utilizing techniques like laddering.

• Our moderators were instructed to utilize non-directive questions to carry out an informal open-ended discussion with participants on a first-name basis and encourage divergent thought and discussion and debate on the topics presented.

• The focus group was conducted in the Newhouse focus group room, eliminating a majority of physical environment stimulation.

• The room featured a one-way mirror as well as audio and recording equipment.

• Focus group sessions were recorded via a camcorder and later transcribed.

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Themes Identified in Qualitative Research

#1: Consumers are becoming more and more conscious of healthy eating habits.

#2: Moms mold children’s food choices and these are carried through adulthood.

#3: Consumers form a distinct imagery on each yogurt brand.

#4: Consumers attempt to eat healthy and manage weight by eating yogurt.

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Consumer Insight

YOGURT AS PENANCE (For Dietary Sins)

There is a clear difference between the perception of being healthy and the food choices people make.

Food consumption decisions vary significantly even for individuals with whom healthy eating is top of mind. In many cases, otherwise healthy eaters give in to “cheat days,” “cheat meals” or even “cheat weeks.” The guilt of making unhealthy eating decisions forces these consumers to exaggerate their healthy eating habits by dieting, engaging in calorie restriction, consuming natural or organic foods, or foregoing snacks. It is, however, impossible for an individual who regularly eats unhealthy foods to immediately switch to a healthy diet, so snacks become “healthy snacks” and meals become “meal replacements,” like yogurt.

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Yogurt as Penance

“I usually eat yogurt if I’ve been eating  a lot of crap lately and my diets been bad so I should start eating it instead of a lot of snacks. I don’t replace meals with it, because there’s not really enough I’ll replace it with snacks like chips and stuff.”

“Where I live on campus we have a chef, he usually gets big Cheetos, nutri-grain bars, if I’m in a rush and not thinking about my diet, I’ll just grab that but if I reflect back and think that I’ve been eating the  like a bag of Cheetos for the past couple days I think I need to start eating more yogurt in my diet to replace those.”

Insert data on diet and healthy eating

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Product Insight

PRICE CONSCIOUS CONSUMPTIONIndividuals who consume yogurt more often are not willing to pay a high price for it.

Meanwhile, individuals who rarely consume yogurt are willing to pay more.

Specifically, individuals who consume yogurt less than once a week are willing to pay up to $0.00 per single-serve yogurt.

Individuals who consume yogurt more than once a week are willing to pay up to $0.00 per single-serve yogurt.

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Price Conscious Consumption

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Price Conscious Consumption

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Competition Insight

THE CHOBANI SQUEEZE

By squeezing out other brands from their respective positionings, Chobani capitalizes on the work done to associate the yogurt category with those positionings.

Over the past thirty years, Yoplait and Dannon have spent millions to develop their brand associations: Yoplait is strongly associated with diets, Dannon with yogurt for children, and Fage with Greek yogurt. These associations are strongly supported by our focus group discussions. Chobani entered the market with a better diet product, evidenced by the low fat and high protein composition of the product, the Chobani Champions line, a product that eliminated funky colors and artificial flavorings, and a more popular Greek yogurt. Rational consumers then make buying decisions by comparing within the category they are concerned about: diet-conscious consumers compare Yoplait with Chobani. Mom buying yogurt for children compare Dannon with Chobani. Greek consumers compare Fage with Chobani. In most cases, when our participants gave rational explanations for the yogurt they chose, they selected Chobani over its competitor.

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The Chobani Squeeze

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Media Insight

CHOBANI IS THE DESIGNER YOGURTTo illustrate the high status associated with eating Chobani, we intend to tie in with New York Fashion Week and deliver messaging associated with health, esteem, and weight management issues. We can encourage local restaurants to promote yogurt-based meals, utilize SoHo artists in residence to promote the designer aspect, and encourage visits to the Chobani SoHo location. The key yogurt-eating demographic that we are targeting is highly correlated with the fashion world, young diet-conscious females.

“[Chobani is] modern and classy.”

“[Chobani is] the premium yogurt.”

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Summary of InsightsThroughout the course of intensive quantitative and qualitative research, encompassing more than 400 participants and over 750 cumulative hours of analysis, ‘Cuse Planners has identified several key insights:

Cultural Insight: Back to Basics, the cultural trend toward a more sustainable way of life.

Consumer Insight: Yogurt as a penance for one’s dietary sins, absolving oneself of the guilt of consuming unhealthy foods.

Product/Competition Insight: The ingenious ability for Chobani to compete with other brands’ in positions where those brands have previously dominated and actually outperform those brands in the areas in which they have spent countless dollars to market themselves. In addition, we demonstrate a link between consumption frequency and price awareness illustrating that less frequent consumers are willing to pay more for yogurt.

Our insights confer immediate benefits to Chobani and provide actionable wisdom.

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Creative BriefObjective:To persuade coming of age women that Greek is the healthiest cuisine and that Chobani is the most Greek yogurt. Thus, Chobani is the healthiest yogurt.

Target Audience:JessicaShe is free-spirited recent graduate and a job seeker. She’s an accounting major living San Francisco fresh out of Berkeley Haas Business School. She keeps herself busy by preparing to take the CPA’s for an accounting firm which she has signed with. In her spare time she likes to practice photography, meet with her friends and go biking and hiking. With her busy lifestyle she doesn’t have the extra time to prepare the healthiest of foods. Some of her meals have to consist of granola bars and a cup of yogurt.

What does the target currently believe:She knows very little about Chobani because she’s been eating Yoplait all her life. She believes that yogurt will keep her fit.

What do we want them to believe:Chobani is a better, healthier option.

Single minded proposition:Chobani is the only yogurt you can eat that makes you feel better about all the other bad things you have eaten.

Reason to Believe:Yogurt is part of a healthy balanced diet, Greek yogurt is the healthiest yogurt available, and Chobani is the authentic Greek yogurt. Therefore, Chobani is the healthiest yogurt.