In regards to the additional exploratory step - projective technique:

What sampling method do you think IMI used to conduct the Projective Technique research? Please comment about the sampling method seemingly used.

Note: for clarity, different respondents were chosen to answer either the Word Association or the Sentence Completion questions (ie not both).

Fruitzone India Limited (B): Designing the Research Questionnaire FIL is contemplating the launch of a new type of packaged juice - natural sugarcane juice - and had entrusted IMI with the market research study. IMI did extensive secondary research, held focus group discussions and in-depth interviews. They had adequate information for designing the questionnaire for conclusive research. However, they felt that the focus group discussions and in depth interviews had not captured the top of mind (TOM) responses of the customers. According to them, TOM responses reflect customer behaviour more accurately and hence might be important in questionnaire design. In order to capture the TOM responses of customers they decided to use some projective interviewing techniques. PROJECTIVE TECHNIQUES Projective market research techniques use a disguised approach and involve asking questions which prompt respondents to project underlying motivations, attitudes and feelings. They tap into the subconscious mind to uncover deep-seated beliefs and associations for packaged juice products, which could throw in new parameters to judge and position the product, and thus identify a better targeting strategy. Two techniques, namely, word based association and sentence completion were employed. In word association, a set of seven words, called test words, was chosen and was presented to the respondent one by one and he was asked to say the first thing which came to his mind on hearing the word. The test words and the objective behind including them in the set are provided in Exhibit 1. In sentence completion, a guided stimulus was used to help gain information about the perception of and preference for juices in general and the scope for sugarcane juice in particular. The consultants gave incomplete sentences to the respondents and asked them to complete them with the words or phrases that came to their mind first. See Exhibit 2 for incomplete sentences used in the test. The responses for both word association and sentence completion are shown in Exhibits 3A and 3B respectively. All the respondents for these tests were obtained by mall intercept and either a word association or sentence completion was conducted with them at random without revealing the research motives, to avoid any inherent bias. INSIGHTS FROM THE PROJECTIVE TECHNIQUES STUDY - A majority of the participants associated fruit juice with health. - Juice form is preferred over fruits for convenience. Prepared by Professor Sanjeev Tripathi, Indian Institute of Management, Ahmedabad. The author acknowledges the help and contribution of Kumaravel C (IIMA PGP 2015) and Vishwas Raichur (Academic Associate, IIM Ahmedabad). Cases of the Indian Institute of Management, Ahmedabad, are prepared as a basis for classroom discussion. They are not designed to present illustrations of either correct or incorrect handling of administrative problems. 2 of 13 A00055 - 60% of the respondents associated packed fruit juice with preservatives. - Juice consumption predominantly happens in both retail outlets and juice shops. - Freshness is associated with fruits and juice, but taste is not a TOM attribute of juices. - The word sugarcane is mainly associated with juice, revealing that juice is the predominant consumption form for sugarcane. Customers also associate 'tasty' and 'energising' to be TOM attributes for sugarcane. - Tropiviva ranks only second amongst the participants, which suggests that despite its highest market share, Tropiviva is possibly losing brand awareness/recall to its nearest competitor. The consultants also prepared a justification for each research question and came up with a document that clearly stated the reason for each research question. 1. What is the willingness to buy the product as compared to other fruit juices and soft drinks in the market? Reason: This will help us to gauge the potential among non-buyers of loose sugarcane juice due to other concerns like hygiene, less availability etc. 2. What is the target segment for sugarcane juice? Reason: For example, sugarcane juice has some health benefits like it fights cancer, stabilises sugar level etc. so older people will be inclined towards the product. But sugarcane juice also tastes very good so children and teenagers may also be inclined to try it. So, we have to find which segment is more inclined towards the product and thus position the product in that segment. 3. What is the price that customers are ready to pay for sugarcane juice? Reason: Currently sugarcane juice is mainly available in unorganised small outlets at low prices, so for such a product, what will be the price consumers would be willing to pay if it is made available by an FMCG company like PepsiCo? 4. What are expectations from the packed sugarcane juice - health/energy/coolant/taste? Reason: This question helps us to capture the perceived benefits of sugarcane juice in the minds of consumers. 5. What is the level of satisfaction with the Tropiviva brand? Reason: If customers already prefer the Tropiviva brand in fruit juices then we can aggressively pursue our goal of introducing the product in the market as they will be ready to purchase the product at least once. 6. What are the taste variants that customers prefer in sugarcane juice? Reason: Currently sugarcane juice is available with some additions like masala, lime juice etc. which customers prefer. So this question will help in finding out the best flavour additions that need to be included in the product. 7. Which form would consumers prefer - can, tetra pack or bottle? Reason: The price of the different forms will be different so this question will help us in pricing. It will also help in determining packaging costs. 3 of 13 A00055 After completing the projective studies and justifying the research questions, the consultants feit that the customer segments for fruit juices could be better classified based on consumer buying behaviour rather than on demographics or socio economic classification. They decided to incorporate questions for classifying customers by behaviour and use that as their basis for analysis of the data from conclusive research. Based on secondary research, the consultants decided to classify the customers into five categories, Information Conscious (IC), Health Conscious (HC), Price Conscious (PC), Convenience Conscious (CC) and Novelty Tryers (NT). See Exhibit 4 for the classification questions. The questionnaire for conclusive research was structured to have three sections. Section 1: Survey respondent contact details and declaration by the survey collector Section 2: Screening and basic details of respondents It included questions that would screen non-consumers of packed fruit juice and people associated with the media or beverages industry. Basic demographic details of the participants and socio economic factors were also recorded in this section. Section 3: This was the main section of the questionnaire and was subdivided as follows Questions 1-3: Customer's current brand awareness, brand and purchase location preferences Question 4: Classification of customer buying behaviour into one of the five categories Question 5-12: Customer preferences for brand, fruit juice flavours, package type, size, prices, relative importance of juice attributes for packed fruit juices in general Questions 13-23: Customer preferences for package type, size, prices, relative importance of juice attributes, purchase locations and turnoffs for sugar cane juice. This section also included a few pictorial questions that showed the potential product positioning for the customers. QUESTIONNAIRE PRETESTING Each of the questions in the conclusive research questionnaire was mapped to one of the research questions. Some repetition in questions was done to check for consistency of the responses. For example, brand and flavour preferences were tested both during oral screening and also duuring the administration of the main section of the questionnaire. The questionnaire was also translated into Hindi to give survey respondents the choice of their language. IMI wanted to assess whether the intended question was getting across to the respondents in an unambiguous manner, so a pretesting of the questionnaire was done. The procedure involved administering the survey to three respondents and asking the respondent to think aloud as to what he understood from the survey questions, and how exactly he had arrived at the response for the particular question. The other point of focus was the set of alternatives provided for each question and their mutual exclusiveness and collective exhaustiveness. For example, one of the questions asked about the point of purchase and had options Airports, Railways etc. The respondent pointed out that options like railways and airports thernselves had retail outlets/stores within them, which resulted in their being no different from the retail stores. They also said that once in a while visits to these places might not represent their day-today buying behaviour. These options were done away with and the rest were consolidated. Preeti asked IMI to include questions that would assess the reasons for potential concerns among regular packaged juice consumers for sugarcane juice in a similar packaged form. She felt that understanding the underlying concerns of consumers for packaged sugarcane juice was critical in evaluating the feasibility of the product and also in developing marketing strategies that addressed these concerns. This led to the incorporation of question number 15 which asked the survey participants to rate the reasons for their non-preference for sugarcane juice on a 7point Likert scale. Incorporating suggestions from Preeti and also making the changes based on the pretesting results, the conclusive research questionnaire was ready. Ideally, IMI would have liked to test the revised survey questionnaire, but due to lack of time and the nature of changes which were minimal, the consultants believed that the questionnaire was good for field administration. Preeti informed the consultants that she would like them to conduct the market research study with a strong focus on Ahmedabad, the city where they were likely to do the test marketing and only then take it for a pan India launch. WHAT NEXT? The consultants have to come up with a data analysis plan to derive meaningful recommendations on whether to launch sugarcane juice and if yes, what should be the market positioning of such a product. Preeti had asked the consultants to provide their recommendations in a couple of days. The R\&D division would start working on the sugarcane juice project as soon as the consuliants gave their recommendations