What This Blog Is All About
First off, let’s understand what this blog is all about.
When we refer to AI for product innovation in the food and beverage (F&B) industry, we are talking about collecting information about consumers within any given market. F&B brands use market research to develop products they hope will be bestsellers by achieving a deep understanding of their consumers with the help of AI-based market research.
Brands face many challenges when launching products, even with good market research. They need to focus on consumer trends that drive successful product launches, what their competition is doing, and how their products will stand out among the many others already on the shelves.
AI To The Rescue
AI, or artificial intelligence, can help brands overcome these challenges by offering insights in real-time, compared to traditional market research, which usually takes months. Brands can use AI for product innovation in three ways:
- To conceptualize product ideas
- To develop and refine the product
- To find new opportunities
Let’s look at each individually.
Conceptualize Product Ideas
Not all product ideas come by sheer luck. Most of them require meticulous planning during their product development lifecycle. What brands can rely on to launch successful products, however, is data.
For example, let’s look at an average consumer in the supermarket called Laura. As Laura moves through the aisles, she comes towards the fruit section and looks at the assortment. What catches her eye is a fruit from East Asia called yuzu. She knows this fruit pairs well with her morning tea. So she takes it home, makes a cup of tea, takes a picture, and posts it on Instagram.
The post gets a lot of attention from her followers and fellow tea enthusiasts, who share the recipe across the platform, and the recipe is trending. Recipe blogs have started picking up this trend, YouTubers are making videos, and people search for it on Google. Yuzu tea has become so popular that cafes have begun to add it to their menus. The data generated by these activities become the basis for the AI-powered tool’s predictive analytics.
The AI platform will use advanced techniques such as natural language processing (NLP) to accurately identify what consumers are talking about, searching for and buying from restaurants and online food delivery platforms. AI-powered tools can predict how well this trend will perform in the coming days and months based on the amount of engagement and the number of people engaging online about yuzu tea.
Now a particular F&B brand, let’s call it ‘TeaWin’, is looking to launch a new tea-based product and is in the research phase. They can use this data, analyses and insights to test the viability of a yuzu tea product that they could launch quickly into the market.
Develop and Refine the Product
Let’s take the concept of yuzu tea forward. When TeaWin decided to launch the yuzu tea product, they needed to see which attributes of the product consumers appreciate the most, so they could use it in their labels and marketing campaigns.
The social posts by Laura, her friends and millions of other consumers have claimed that yuzu tea can help relieve the symptoms of the common cold and is great for winter mornings. AI technology identifies this product attribute as trending. F&B brands can use these insights to create packaging highlighting yuzu tea’s taste and immunity-boosting attributes. Not just packaging, marketers can use these insights to refine their messaging to customers, and the brand’s consumer insights team can use it to come up with new concepts such as green yuzu tea or a cold yuzu tea beverage. This strategy could significantly enhance the success of the product.
Find New Opportunities
The massive amount of data available for the AI tool also allows it to identify new opportunities for F&B brands quickly. AI tools can predict which products pair well with yuzu tea and how much supply and demand for categories such as health foods and beverages where yuzu tea would fit. The AI tool can also provide a highly-detailed visual representation of the kind of opportunities that brands can take advantage of, both in terms of ingredients and themes related to yuzu tea.
The Takeaway
With access to deep insights about their consumers, brands like the fictional TeaWin can launch best-selling products quickly compared to traditional market research. AI can even help brands identify food trends before they become consumer food trends.
Do you want such deep insights about your customers? Want to know what your customers will eat and drink in the next few weeks, months or years? Do you want to launch bestselling F&B products in months rather than years?
These are just tiny examples of the services Ai palette provides. Our proprietary trendspotting tool has helped many F&B brands, including Kellog’s, Hershey’s and Diageo, achieve a deep understanding of their customers and launch successful products. Request a demo today to get the Ai Palette advantage.
