Consumer Preference Has Changed With the Shift in the Taste of Coffee in the Last 10 Years. CLICK NOW
Introduction
The taste of coffee has emerged as an interesting topic of discussion for people who have a keen interest in the psychological wants and preferences of people and want to know about changes in trends. Today, Coffee has become a lifestyle. Also, it has caught the notice of today’s generation – youth. They were not the typical coffee-drinking people that were the target customers. But now they are a big part of the target base for coffeehouses. And, interestingly, it is fashionable to be seen at the Coffee Pubs. It has now become a lifestyle statement that’s not good for tea – still the favorite brew for a majority of Indians, which has been losing out to coffee flavors in recent years.
India is one of the world’s largest exporters of tea and also one of its biggest consumers. But, it is coffee drinking that is increasingly becoming a statement of young and upwardly mobile Indian coffee bars, an unheard of concept till a couple of years ago, are suddenly big business.
Corner bars like these offer more than just a single coffee flavor and snacks to their customers. For many people, a visit to these bars is also a part of the Western lifestyle that they have seen online. The taste of coffee has improved. The market growth is expected to be 20% to 30% annually in the next couple of years with changes in the taste of coffee.
Understanding Consumer Preferences
One thing that we have in common is that we are all consumers. Everybody in this world is a consumer. Every day of our life, we buy and consume an incredible variety of goods and services. However, we all have different taste of coffee, likes, and dislikes, and adopt different behavior patterns while making purchase decisions. Our preferences for coffee flavors may also vary.
The term consumer behavior refers to the behavior that consumers display in searching for purchasing using evaluation and disposing of products and services that they exact will satisfy how individuals make decisions to spend their given resources (time, money, and effort) on consumption-related items. It includes the study of ‘What they buy´, ´Why they buy´, ‘When they buy it´, ‘Where they buy it´, ‘How often they buy it´, and ‘How often they use’. Thus,
Consumer preference refers to the set of assumptions that focus on consumer preferences that result in different alternatives such as happiness, satisfaction, or utility. The entire consumer preference process results in an optimal choice for the taste of coffee. Coffee preferences allow a consumer to rearrange different bundles of goods according to a limit of its utility, or the total pleasure of consuming a good or service related to coffee.
Change in Taste of Coffee
Coffee is a beverage enjoyed by millions of people globally. It is consumed for its flavor, aroma, and caffeine content. However, the taste of coffee is found to be different from what it was a few years ago, and coffee enthusiasts have taken notice of it. The major factor that affects the taste of coffee is consumer preferences. As coffee has grown in popularity, Preferences and tastes of coffee have changed, and suppliers have responded by building and formulating new blends and flavors to meet these changing preferences.
For example, in recent years, there has been a growth of interest of individuals in specialty coffee, which is a taste of coffee that is sourced from specific regions and has unique flavor profiles. Specialty coffee is often more expensive than regular coffee, but it has become increasingly popular due to its unique flavor and aroma. Another factor contributing to the change in the taste of coffee is the drift of climatic conditions on the planet over the years.
Growth of the Coffee Retail Industry in India
Hot beverages have always been a part of the tradition of India, especially in South India. Coffee was first found to be famous in South Delhi when the traditional Brahmin classes brought down the beverage from the ruling British around the 1930s. During the early years, the drink was confined only to traditional rich Brahmin families who served filter coffee in a ‘Navara- tumbler’.
Specialty coffee is no longer confined to the rich Brahmin class now, though the tradition of serving filter coffee in the ‘Navara tumbler’ continues to this day. To spread the drink, the taste of coffee was improved and filter coffee houses emerged at various places in the country, which also served as the opposite places for lawyers and the educated class to hold discussions ranging. Also, It was believed that many scripts and ideas for films evolved here.
One of the oldest coffee houses in South India is the Raayars mess, Chennai, which is said to be serving first-class filter coffee even today. The mess was established in the 1940s and continues the tradition of coffee but supplements it with tiffin also. Several hotels started opening coffee- shops that catered to high-end customers. The taste of coffee they chose to serve varied though. This showed the popularization of coffee cafes, to all divisions of society.
The drink has become more of a concept than merely a drink itself. The last decade has witnessed the growth of numerous coffee pubs in the country. Several coffee shop owners tried to westernize the taste of coffee in contrast to the filter coffee. Now, large retail chains like Qwikys, Blue Tokai, and Starbucks have opened up around the country. The concept of a cafe today is not just about selling coffee, but about forming a national brand. Retail coffee pubs now form a multi-crore business industry in the country and have a huge probability for growth locally, and internationally.
Major Players in the Path of Satisfying Coffee Preferences
BLUE TOKAI and STARBUCKS are the only two major players in the Indian coffee cafe industry in India and the customers look at them as interchangeable brands. Following is a brief comparative profile of Blue Tokai and Starbucks.
These companies may sell similar product but their target audience are very different from each other. These players not only sell the taste of coffee and tea but also food and other merchandise items. Despite serving a different audience, these players compete with themselves. Each player fights for their share of the market. They try to differentiate themselves by the way of product or price. However, they are also facing competition from foreign players like Georgia, Bru, Sleepy Owl, etc. Each brand has its unique taste of coffee which is its USP. It would be interesting to see how the company would follow their positioning and maintain their share in the market.`
Study based research
The following is a study by Varun T.C (2008) on the change in taste of coffee consumption.
The present study on the consumption behavior of coffee and tea was carried out during 2007-08 in selected four districts of Karnataka, by following multi-stage sampling. In total, 240 sample households were randomly selected accounting for 932 respondents. Information was obtained by personal interview method.
The important findings of the study are the education of the respondents in the urban areas, and family size and price per unit of coffee in the rural area were highly significant concerning demand for coffee. In the case of demand for tea, the total family income in the urban areas and the family size in the rural areas were found to be highly significant. With low-income groups, the taste of coffee didn’t matter much.
The majority of the respondents in the urban and rural areas of Northern Karnataka consumed tea, while coffee was consumed by 81.70 percent of the urban and 63.80 of the rural respondents in 23 the south. Bru and Nescafe were the two most chosen commercial brands for coffee and Red Label was the most chosen tea brand among the sample respondents.
The quality, aroma, taste, and flavor of coffee and tea obtained high index scores in Karnataka’s urban and rural regions. Results of the Principal Component Analysis showed that celebrity endorsement and influence by retailers had little influence on the purchase of coffee/ tea. Results of the conjoint analysis revealed that the price of coffee and tea powder attained the highest relative importance.
Conclusion
Change is an undeniable constant within the broader hospitality sector. The operational dynamics of service industries evolve in tandem with shifts in people’s lifestyles, preferences, and convenience. Nowhere is this more conspicuous than in the realm of coffee taste. Worldwide coffee production has increased 49%* over the last 20 years, but our per capita coffee drinking with heavy changes in coffee preferences.
But the reasoning, tastes, and general expectations for the “cup of Joe” are radically different than they were before. Back then, the choice for home brewing was pretty much between percolators and plungers. Nowadays, you can have your pick between all kinds of cost-effective manual brewing systems like americano, latte, cappuccino, espresso, etc. This has a great effect on the taste of coffee. Many people who are in the know will claim that brewing with an AeroPress, Chemex, or Hario V60 has singlehandedly elevated the quality of coffee, at least in the sense of extraction and brewing accuracy.
Indeed, the current generation of younger baristas has learned a lot from lighter coffee roasts; primarily about balance, complexity, and acidity.
We would venture to suggest that young baristas can count themselves fortunate; they have never had to contend with the requirement of managing over-roasted, bitter, and astringent coffee, which was the epitome of the mainstream consumer market two decades ago.
Today, consumers enjoy a plethora of options, enabling them to explore various coffee blends and distinctive single-origin coffees across different independent coffee cafes until they discover the exact flavor that resonates with them. Consequently, coffee shops are incentivized to enhance their offerings.
The type of coffee one prefers is inconsequential; what matters is the extensive array of choices available to satisfy individual preferences.
This variety represents the most significant transformation in the consumer market regarding coffee taste.