Flavour launch for South India

Research summary

Our analyst model flagged early that stated preference in central AC focus rooms was a poor proxy for post-chill taste and dilution habits. The study shifted emphasis to in-home consumption episodes and second-week automatic reach — the behaviours that actually predict sachet and PET repeat in summer.

Challenge

Paper Boat planned a masala-mango extension to defend modern-trade chiller space against global cola promos. Marketing favoured a 750ml “family” PET; sales wanted parity with a rival’s gramaje.

National concept tests had already consumed months and crores; the client’s fear was repeating that cycle in the South with another focus-group tour. The real risk was not picking the wrong flavour — it was launching a winner in Mumbai that chilled wrong in Chennai households. We reframed the brief from ‘which concept scores highest’ to ‘which concept survives second-week automatic reach in local fridge context’.

Marketing owned the national narrative; regional sales owned the launch P&L. Our job was to produce evidence both teams could sign — scores plus behavioural repeat, not scores alone. That implied in-home placement cost and timeline the client initially resisted as ‘too slow’ until we mapped the cost of a failed South launch against three weeks of field.

Brand context

South India fruit beverages compete on chiller facings and masala profiles tuned to local mango varieties. The client’s legacy 200ml glass line still skews rural; PET was the growth bet for Bengaluru, Hyderabad, and Chennai chains.

Approach

Bundl combined adaptive phone interviews with 96 in-home placements across three metros — respondents kept blind-labelled bottles in their own fridges for five days.

Placement protocol standardised fridge temperature band, dilution behaviour, and who in the household poured — variables focus groups erase. Follow-up calls at day 3 and day 12 separated trial politeness from repeat. Adaptive scripts probed heat tolerance and fruit authenticity language without using the client’s internal flavour codes, which respondents never use spontaneously.

We kept a national concept in the design as a holdout arm so HQ could see divergence numerically, not as a regional opinion fight. Conjoint on pack size ran after consumption episodes so price tasks referenced real fridge-door behaviour, not hypothetical pantry intent.

Field design

Shelf conjoint in 12 modern-trade stores tested chiller facing with realistic ₹45–₹65 MRP fences. Placement diaries captured daily pour volume and household sharing.

Household selection skewed toward dual-income families with school-age children in urban TN and AP — the core summer repeat cohort for the category. Karnataka cells included more mixed-language households to stress-test label comprehension. Field paused twice for cyclone-related logistics; quotas were frozen rather than backfilled with convenience samples that would have washed out regional nuance.

Ethnography clips of dilution and sharing became the empathy layer in the readout, but the decision metric remained second-week repurchase intent backed by observed depletion. The analyst team refused to let a single hero video substitute for the conjoint trade-off table — both shipped in the appendix.

Methods & pedagogy

The study is a template for when to distrust central-location taste tests in beverage: anytime consumption context changes the sensory experience materially. We documented that rule in the client’s insight repository so innovation teams inherit the logic, not just the flavour winner.

Launch sequencing recommendation — South first, national later — carried medium confidence because modern-trade distribution still differed by state. We flagged that explicitly rather than collapsing into a single ‘go’ narrative that would have buried execution caveats.

Sentiment analysis

Synthesis

450ml masala-mango balanced masala liking with finishability. Occasion clusters received distinct chiller rules rather than a single national facings template.

Result

450ml masala-mango launched with a “finish fresh” claim — 750ml pilot cancelled. Six-week repeat tracked 19% above forecast in priority chains.

“The hall test lied politely. The fridge told the truth.”