Dr. S. Radhakrishnan and Dr. D.R. Babu Reddy
In promoting -a product it is important that consumers' attitude towards the product is fully evaluated. Attitude is an individuals enduring perceptual, knowledge based, evaluative and action oriented process with respect to an object or phenomenon. The three components of attitudes are a) belief component (cognitive) or a person's awareness or knowledge about a product b) feeling component (affective) or a respondent's liking and preference for a product and c) behavior component is the readiness to respond behaviorally or what one has done or doing. In the marketing context, the knowledge component provides information for decisions regarding the consumers' awareness or knowledge about product features, ad campaigns, pricing, product availability etc. while the belief component provides information for decisions regarding determining buyers' positive or negative feelings, preferences of organizations marketing programme as well as those of competitors. The behaviour component is the respondents' intention to buy and actual purchase behavior.
The aim of this paper is to present some of the key findings of attitude of Indian consumers towards coffee drinking. In order to understand the consumer perceptions and attitudes towards coffee and in the context of other beverages and also to understand the attitude towards coffee with respect to quality, variety, price and additives especially chicory; positive and negative associations related to consumption as well as drivers and barriers to coffee consumption etc, a consumer attitude survey was commissioned during 2006. The study was conducted in urban locations across the country and in rural areas in the southern part
of the country. The results were analyzed by zones (South, North, East and West India), type of consumer (regular drinker who drinks 1-2 times or more of coffee everyday including yesterday), occasional drinker who drinks coffee once in the last 6 months, but not yesterday) and non-drinker who had not drunk coffee at all in the last 12 months), Socio-Economic Classification (SEC) (SEC A, B, C, D with SEC A representing the highest economic strata and SEC D being the lowest strata) as well as different age groups. The salient results of the attitude survey is presented below.
Spontaneous recall
Spontaneous recall measures whether a respondent recalls a beverage spontaneously without any aid. Both coffee and tea enjoy high spontaneous recall rate of 81 % and 95% respectively - both in urban and rural areas. These are followed by plain milk and carbonated soft drinks. It may be emphasized here that even in the non traditional markets of non-south, coffee has fairly higher recall of over 70%.
Top of mind category recall
Top of Mind (ToM) beverage is a subset of the beverages, which are spontaneously recalled first without any aid. Tea has the highest ToM recall across both urban and rural markets. While 66% of the respondents recall tea, only 22% named coffee as the first beverage. ToM recall of coffee is higher in traditional coffee strong holds such as Tamil Nadu and Karnataka. Across the country ToM recall for coffee is higher among SEC A, B & C than SEC D.
Consumption
In Karnataka and Tamil Nadu, the percentage of those who drink coffee more than 2 times a day is higher than in other regions. Rural Karnataka has comparatively higher percentage of persons drinking coffee more than 2 times everyday than to urban areas (Chart 1). There is 33% of this group in rural areas while there is only 28% who drink coffee as frequently in urban areas. For
the rest of the places, the rural figures are similar to urban areas (Chart 2).
Top beverages consumed by coffee drinkers
Even among regular coffee drinkers, tea is entrenched as a regularly consumed beverage. In rural Tamil N adu, tea is far more a regular beverage even among regular coffee drinkers than in urban Tamil N adu (Chart 3). These findings indicate the opportunities that exist to increase the depth of coffee consumption among regular coffee drinkers by recognizing competitive strengths of tea.
Consideration set of beverages
To determine the choice set, respondents were asked to name the first choice beverage, the second choice beverage, beverages that will be considered for drinking and beverages that will never be considered for drinking.
Among regular coffee drinkers, though coffee is the first choice among 67% of overall respondents, about 31 % of regular coffee drinkers mention tea as their first choice. This is especially true in coffee markets of Kerala, AP and the non-south regions . Among occasional drinkers, coffee is a first choice beverage only among a small majority (Chart 4). This indicates the scope to increase coffee drinking even among regular coffee drinkers in most markets.
The observations of the urban market hold good even for the rural markets. Especially in rural AP and Kerala, tea is a first choice beverage among a larger proportion of regular coffee drinkers. In rural Tamil Nadu, tea is far more entrenched as a regularly consumed beverage among regular coffee drinkers. Among the occasional drinkers of rural market, not only consideration to drink coffee but also trial of coffee is found to be quite high. However, future consideration of coffee is low among non-drinkers of coffee especially in Tamil Nadu, Karnataka and AP. This suggests that there are strong barriers against coffee drinking among non-drinkers in these traditional coffee strongholds. As such nondrinkers either urban or rural, may be the most difficult to convert.
Attitudes towards beverages
To understand attitude drivers to beverages, the statement "Overall Best Beverage" was treated as the independent variable and a battery of 23 statements were treated as dependent variables (Table 1). The respondents were asked to rate each of the statements using a 5-point scale in which 1 is Strongly Disagree and 5 is Strongly Agree. The various statements were grouped thematically into three groups - family beverage, health and status connotations. Overall, the best beverage description is explained by dimensions of whether it can be consumed at home by most family members, whether it is healthy and if it is modern (keeping up with times).
The results of regression analysis brought out that in Tamil Nadu, coffee has moderate association on 'Family beverage'. However, it is strongly associated with special occasions and hence has high status connotation. In Karnataka, coffee has very strong association with 'Family beverage'. It also has special/high status perceptions. In AP, perception of tea is very close to coffee on key dimensions. Tea comes across mainly as an evening cup. In Kerala, tea has higher positive associations on key dimensions of family, health and status. In the North, East and West, coffee is largely a social or out-of-home drink. coffee is associated with high status, modernity, ideal for cold weather suggesting it is a special and occasional drink.
Perceived occasions :In- Home and Out-of-Home
Among the regular coffee drinkers of North and West, coffee is an evening drink more than a morning drink. Where tea is the 'first cup' choice among regular coffee drinkers in urban Kerala, presence of tea is high in rural Karnataka among regular coffee drinkers. Tea constitutes the evening cup among regular coffee drinkers in urban AP, Kerala and West (Table 2).
Coffee has the highest association in the out-of- home environment especially, at a restaurant/hotel and at special events/functions (Table 3).
Beverage evaluation criteria
Respondents were asked to rate the beverages on evaluation criteria using a 5-point agreement scale. The largest difference in rating between coffee and tea is in Karnataka and rural AP. In rural Karnataka, product scores for coffee are lower than in urban Karnataka. There is more usage of instant coffee in rural Karnataka than in urban Karnataka. In rural Kerala, coffee scores higher on aroma than tea, possibly due to higher penetration of local filter ('katang') coffee (Table 4)
Barriers and drivers of coffee consumption
Among the regular drinkers (especially those who drink one cup a day), health is found to be a major barrier to more frequent consumption. Among occasional coffee drinkers and non-drinkers, the key barriers are: L Habit 2. Non-consumption by other family members, and 3. Price. Taste is an additional barrier among non-drinkers in North, East and West and Tamil Nadu (Table 5).
Coffee, like any other drink is 'habit' forming. Family drinking is a key for early adoption. Most regular and occasional drinkers started drinking coffee while they were less than IO years old. They first drank at home and were introduced to the beverage by a family member. The exception is the North, where most started outof-home and were introduced to coffee by a friend (Table 6). This is an important driver for future consumption growth and addressing the youth in the promotion programmes will help in formation early coffee drinking habits.
Place of consumption of coffee: In-Home vs Out-of-Home
Coffee drinking at home is prevalent even among occasional drinkers indicating no entry barrier. In the West, rural Tamil Nadu, Karnataka and AP, there are occasional drinkers who drink exclusively outside the home. Data suggests that price is a barrier to regular consumption with family. In the North, proportion of people who drink coffee outside the home exclusively is the highest (Table 7) .
The consumption occasions outside home coupled with the highest frequency of consumption in those places tell us where coffee is consumed most outside home. There appears to be low penetration but high consumption of coffee in
Offices and colleges - this finding represents a possible opportunity area to promote the category in these locations (Chart 5).
Usage and attitudes towards R&G (filter) and Instant coffee
Although half the population is aware of R&G (filter) coffee, usage of instant coffee is higher, except in Karnataka. It is possible that since the sample was drawn from Southern Karnataka, higher usage of Filter coffee has emerged than would have been the case had the sample been spread across the state. In other zones, instant is more predominant. In South zone, Tamil Nadu highest at 34%, Karntaka at 30%, AP 20% and Kerala at 16%.
On attitudes towards Filter and Instant coffee, Karnataka and to some extent rural Kerala are the only places to favor Filter coffee on taste, availability and affordability. In all other areas, there are more favourable attitudes towards Instant coffee.
The reported difficulties reported by the consumers to go in for filter coffee are: (1) filter coffee preparation
is time consuming; (2) coffee cannot be prepared in a hurry; (3) Cleaning the filter takes time and effort and
(4) Storage of coffee powder is difficult.
Awareness and usage of Chicory
Awareness of chicory is limited to the South. In AP, consumption of coffee with high percentage of chicory, but knowledge of chicory is low (Chart 6). Education may be needed on pure coffee V s coffee-chicory mix thereby providing opportunity to promote
Allfi;um in % use of pure coffee/ less chicory mix coffee in this market.
Coffee - additional flavors:
Those who drink Instant coffee favor additive options such as cardamom, ginger and cinnamon.
Conclusion
The study on attitudes has brought out many interesting findings, though all of them are not reported in this article, about the consumers' knowledge of coffee, their positive and negative dispositions as well as some of the actual consumption characteristics. Increase in domestic coffee consumption could be achieved through a. increasing depth of consumption among regular coffee drinkers by cornering a larger share of the throat and b. widening the consumer base through conversion of occasional and non-consumers into the category. Only well structured and sustained generic promotional campaign could bring the desired results. All of these rest on how the category is positioned in consumers' mind and the need for repositioning it to support the strategies. To this end, periodical surveys on attitudes of consumers provide critical inputs to domestic promotion programmes and campaigns.
Dr. S. Radhakrishnan, Dy. Director (Market Research) and Dr. D.R. Babu Reddy, Agricultural Economist
Coffee Board, No.1, Dr. Ambedkar Veedhi, Bangalore.
