Facebook and Twitter guide flavour firm’s consumer research

By Jess Halliday,

Food firms wanting to capture the views and tastes of consumers need to tap social media, says Symrise, which is now dedicating resources to using emerging online tools.

Websites like Twitter, Facebook and MySpace have heralded a new era for the internet, and are used by consumers as tools to communicate with friends and express their views on all manner of subjects.

For food ingredients suppliers, they have immense potential for identifying trends and capturing feedback that can be used to develop new concepts or tweak existing ones, according to Dag Piper, global director of sensory and consumer science at Symrise.

The company is now incorporating social media into its research methodologies, and currently has one team member dedicated solely to this.

“You can’t study today’s consumers using yesterday’s methods,” said Piper. By yesterday’s methods, he means classic focus groups whereby the company asks the questions, and consumer participants answer.

Studies so far

The research team at Symrise has already tried out the new techniques in two studies, on citrus and healthy eating, and gleaning meaningful information from this.

Piper explained to FoodNavigator.com that the technique, dubbed ‘netnography’ (ethnography on the internet) involves reading blogs for comments, following discussion groups, and taking out the consumer insights.

Because there are hundreds of millions of blogs and groups online, the company uses special software designed by an agency partner to sift out those that are most relevant. It then identifies the comments that are made most often and establishes whether the comment-makers can be trusted – for instance, whether they post frequently or one a year, and how many ‘friends’ they have.

“From my perception, there is much more of this to come,” said Piper. The benefit is that the consumer is communicating in a private, independent setting. When they are head-to-head with an interviewer the findings are “automatically biased”, he said.

The company does still plan to use the traditional methods, but it will do so for addressing specific issues and fine-tuning concepts.

Chat back

Piper is also planning the next phase beyond listening in on consumer chatter – business-to-consumer communication. This will involve actually getting involved in discussions.

“Consumers want to exchange information and they are willing. They know the information is important.”

But he warned against companies posing as consumers. If a marketing executive is getting involved in the chat they should identify themselves, as the other contributors will be able to see from their data and other group comments that they are using a fake persona.

Some companies have been burnt this way, he said.

Giving up control

Beyond listening and communicating through social media, Piper said companies should also be prepared to give up control of product development to consumers.

Whereas 10 years ago consumer views started to be taken into account alongside those of the company specialists, the next step is to let them lead the way.

Although this may sound radical, and some companies will have a problem with it, Piper said: “I am 100 per cent convinced the companies that do this will succeed. The consumer is the one that knows best, not the product developer.