Editor’s note: Joey Goldberg is marketing manager of Tobii Pro, the research solution division within Tobii, Falls Church, Va. This is an edited version of a post that originally appeared here under the title, “How consumer research took La Croix on a ride to the top.”
Few beverage brands have experienced a meteoric rise to ubiquity as quickly and extensively as La Croix sparkling water. A deliciously refreshing, zero calorie beverage that comes in a plethora of flavors, it provides welcome respite from a crowded beverage market full of sugary drinks and diet sodas that are quickly losing appeal with health-conscious youth. While La Croix is undeniably delicious and guilt-free (I personally drink two-to-three per day), there are many brands in the space that offer a similar beverage experience. So what is it about La Croix that helped it rise above the rest?
According to Meridianai Associates, a consulting firm that helped with La Croix’s relaunch in the early 1990’s, La Croix’s packaging was essential in creating an approachable and accessible brand to contrast it with Perrier’s fancier image. It turns out that through their research with consumers the eccentric label design liked least by executives was liked most by consumers and therefore selected. A great deal of La Croix’s success is attributed to its ability to stand out on the shelf from other brands, resulting in a huge win for La Croix and for consumer research (yay!).
Consumer research teams ran quick, quantitative eye-tracking studies to evaluate new and existing package designs within a larger rebrand effort. Eye-tracking provides valuable insight into shopper behavior and how to successfully position and design products in order to capture consumers' attention. If they don't see it, they can't buy it. After reading about La Croix’s success, we asked ourselves, “Would the results of a one hour eye-tracking study support the findings that came out of La Croix’s in-depth consumer research?” To find out, we decided to run our own study.
Using a randomized shelf tool, we created a study comparing La Croix to 11 beverage competitors. One hundred general population, opt-in participants were sent the study on their computers and their eye-tracking sessions were recorded via their Webcams. Each participant was exposed to the randomized shelf of 12 sparkling water and soda brands for 10 seconds, once with no direction and once directed to find La Croix. After fielding for an hour, the results were in and we were pleasantly surprised with what we found!
Eighty-four percent of participants saw the La Croix cans on the shelf, more than any other brand on the shelf. It took participants only 2.4 seconds to find La Croix, faster than every other brand except for Topo Chico (2.3 seconds). In the survey portion, 17 percent of the total participants found La Croix to be the most visually appealing packaging, the highest of all the brands on the shelf. La Croix had the fourth highest brand recall at 37 percent only behind three of the most recognizable soda brands: Coke, Pepsi and Sprite.
Using the quantitative eye-tracking data, we were able to conclude that our study not only reinforces La Croix’s initial qualitative findings but bolsters them: La Croix is by far the most visually engaging package among its competitors. No wonder they’re crushing it, way to go La Croix!