How Nestlé Got Japan Hooked on Instant Coffee
The psychological merits of playing the 50-year long game
Nestlé Was Confused
In the 1970s, they were trying to sell instant coffee into Japan with limited success. I’d be confused too — and I assure you, my enthusiasm for caffeine (which is Latin for addiction) isn’t clouding my judgement all.
French marketing consultant Clotaire Rapaille (he’s not a fictional character, even though he sounds like it) conducted three-hour sessions with ordinary Japanese people to try and understand their cultural relationship with coffee.
They didn’t have one.
Japanese culture is steeped in tea (pun fully intended), and it has a strong emotional imprint; meanwhile, coffee had a superficial/non-existent imprint on the Japanese people.
“Under these circumstances, Nestlé’s strategy of getting these consumers to switch from tea to coffee could only fail.” — C. Rapaille, The Culture Code.
It’s like I asked you to switch from McDonald’s to Gurwinder’s Shawarma Palace — it’s not that you wouldn’t like GSP if you tried it, but the McDonald’s PlayPlace has a special place in your heart.
Children Are the Future
You’re telling me the market has no cultural imprint of your product? No problem.
Just build one.
Nestlé shifted gears. Instead of convincing Japan to join the dark (roast) side, they started making (caffeine-free) coffee-flavoured desserts for kids.
Most children love candy and dessert, and Japanese kids were no different — no culture issue there. Fifty years later, Japan spends $22 billion on instant coffee, more than any other country.
And guess who leads in terms of market share?
We’re All Just Big Baby Geese
In the 1930s, Konrad Lorenz investigated imprinting, the quick and instinctive learning that happens during specific critical periods of life.
