spaghetti sauce story
TRANSCRIPT
Howard Moskowitz
• American Market Researcher
• Graduated Harvard University in 1969
• Ph.D. in experimental psychology
• 1970’s to 1980’s - Consulting with food companies to increase sales.
• He was hired by Pepsi
Aspartame is approximately 200 times sweeter than sucrose(table sugar). Due to this property, even though aspartame produces four kilocalories of energy per gram when metabolized, the quantity of aspartame needed to produce a sweet taste is so small that its caloric contribution is negligible. So aspartame was getting increasingly popular in 1970
o Pepsi wanted to use it in their latest offering – Diet Pepsi.
o Howard has to figure out how much aspartame should each can of Pepsi contain in order to qualify as the perfect drink
o Work in a band of 8 to 12% sweetness.o Below 8% sweetness wasn’t sweet enougho Above 12% sweetness was too sweet
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8.1 8.2 8.3 .. 11.9 12 28
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8.1 8.2 8.3 .. 11.9 12
Common Researcher Thinking• They asked the wrong people, • at the wrong time, • or may be made some errors on the way.
Common Man Thinking• Take a calculated guess and pointed at 10% aspartame in this situation
Howard was neither Common Man nor Common Researcher
In the 1980’s Campbell’s called on Howard to save Prego spaghetti sauce Prego is a much better sauce its blends best with Pasta compared to Ragu Instead how existing sauce could be improved
Howard decided to look for the perfect Prego spaghetti sauces instead
45 different varieties of Spaghetti sauce
Varied them in every way that you could possibly think of –
o sourness,
o level of garlic,
o Tartness, etc
Took these sauces to New York, Chicago, etc. with varieties of sauce and asked them to rate on a scale of 0 to 100
After months of this activity, he had a mountain load of data about
how the American people feel about spaghetti sauce.
Now would he look for the perfect pasta sauce?
He grouped this data into clusters to see if a pattern emerges
Extra chunky sauce was nowhere to be found in
America
Revelation was that there are one-third of Americans who crave for “extra chunky” sauce, yet no one is servicing their needs!
Prego made 600$ million over the coming years
• It has changed the way the food industry things about making us ‘happy’.
Myths Broken • Best way to know what people want is to
ask them( No longer best) The mind knows not what the tongue wants
• Certain dish could be cooked best only in one way is what changed after this research
• Change from ‘search for universals’ to ‘understanding variability’