[Case Study] The product that gives Ice Cream Lovers the “bliss” --Insights from analysis based on Jobs Theory

• Case Study
• Data mining

The growing "ice cream" market

The ice cream market (ice cream and ice confectionery) will reach 515.1 billion yen in FY2019, with an increase of 34% in 10 years from 383.2 billion yen in FY2009, and continuing to grow. Who are buying ice creams, and for what needs? In this article, we will introduce the results of an analysis using Nikkei Research's data and its proprietary data mining tool KeyExplorer, focused particularly on female loyal customers.
Nikkei Research conducted a survey on ice cream in November 2019. How frequent female consumers eat ice cream is shown in Figure 1. We divided the respondents by this frequency into three segments: Loyal (3-4 times a week or more), General (1-2 times a week to 2-3 times a month), and Light (about once a month). Differences were analyzed including the text data from open-ended questions.

Figure 1. Frequency of daily ice cream consumption, Female (n=5452)

Loyal Customers have ice cream after dinner, at their relaxing time

Table 1 summarizes the unique characteristic of the Loyal segment, including open-ended questions (items with "[OE] "). From the original open-ends, the common scenes of having ice cream were "dessert after dinner", "relax time after cleaning up (the dishes) and before going to bed", and "while watching TV after dinner", indicating that people tend to eat ice cream during the time between after dinner and before bed. From the Jobs Theory point of view, it can be considered as female Loyal segment "hired" ice cream to "make the relaxing time (after dinner to before bed) better". "PARM", a product of Morinaga Milk Industry, is mentioned as to fulfill this job.

Table 1. Characteristics of Female Ice Cream Loyal Segment

As a dessert with the family. Enjoy it alone when you want a break

For further understanding the scenes on how they consume ice cream, we plotted the features by the average age and the percentage of those who ate ice cream alone, shown as in Figure 2. We can see that "after dinner" and "for dessert" were the most frequent scenes for having ice cream with families and other people, while on the other hand, the common occasions for having ice cream alone were “relax time before bed”, “taking a break after cleaning up (the dishes)”, and “after taking a bath”.

Figure 2. Characteristic by Average age vs Percentage of people who ate ice cream alone

Ice cream is for getting that blissful and luxurious moment.
By the cold and smooth melt-in-your-mouth experience.

So, what are the jobs that ice cream can solve? To answer that question, we dived deeper into the characteristics of the especially attached group in the Loyal segment, who had high frequency of daily consumption and responded that they would be “extremely troubled if ice cream disappeared from the world”. Table 2 shows the results. The scenes in which they ate ice cream were “before bed”, “after dinner”, and when they “felt stressed out”. The superiorities of ice cream were "melt-in-your-mouth" and "cold". The emotions induced when they had ice cream were "bliss" and "luxury”. It seems that ice cream is chosen as a way to relieve stress and bring a luxurious and blissful moment at the end of the day.

Table 2. Characteristics of the Female “Highly Attached” Ice Cream group

Table 3 summarizes the differences in characteristics and “jobs” with other segments. In contrast to the Loyal segment, who wanted ice cream for "something to make the time more luxurious", the General segment wanted for "refreshment / as a snack" and the Light segment wanted for "something to cool down the body when it's hot”.

Table 3. Characteristics and “jobs” by frequency of daily ice cream consumption