It's good beer, but why do people outside of Thailand drink it?

One of my QFD colleagues, Glenn Mazur QFD Red Belt(r), recently co-authored an interesting paper on the reasons people drink beer. Specifically, the paper discusses the reasons people drink Singha beer.

“We sell our beer in the U.S., U.K. and Australia, but we don’t know why they drink it.” – Singha

“Becoming aware of their unawareness, the top management of Singha decided to embark on research of their foreign customers to better understand their interests, motivations, self-image, and other characteristics they might share, in order to assure their continuous business success. The uniqueness of this project was purely to hear the inner voices of their non-Thai customers and how Singha Beer fits into their love of life. It was not to change the beer formulation, the logo or packaging, or any of the usual tangibles we see in common QFD and Kansei Engineering studies. “

http://www.qfdi.org/who_is_qfdi/newsletter_archive/recent_qfd_newsletter.html

I take particular interest in this topic because I was very slightly involved at the beginning of the project. You see, I was having dinner with Glenn and his beautiful wife Mayumi in a Thai restaurant in Orlando, and I ordered a Singha beer. It was at that moment that Glenn told me about the project he was embarking on.

He asked me if I’d had Singha beer before, and I told him “no.”

He asked me why I ordered it, and I said something like, “Well, we’re in a Thai restuarant, I like to try new things, and it has a cool label.”

A normal person would politely shake his head, but Glenn hears comments like those and translates them into “true customer needs” which is the basis of QFD. The true customer needs he came up with were something like:

• I want to have a drink that goes with the dining experience
• My drink makes me appear stylish
• I want a unique experience

Later on, Glenn refines all the observations and has customers clarify and prioritize the needs. All of this detail is in the paper. The grand idea is that you can take a rudimentary activity like drinking beer, define the key customer needs, and brainstorm solutions based on those needs to grow your business. Great stuff, and it’s about beer.