Coffee Mate

Coffee Mate has couple of key benefits that make people buy it. First of all, its the easiest alternative to milk. People who cannot

drink their coffee without milk, dont need to carry around or look for milk since just some coffee mate will do the same job. On the other hand, coffee mate comes with a flavour which could interest some of the people and which makes you use less sugar for sure. Apart from these, coffee mate is easy to buy and store and has a much longer life than milk which makes it a good substiture for milk.

On the other hand, coffee mate sales are limited due to the fact that it is not a natural product and consists many chemicals in order to imitate the function of milk and extend the shelf life. Consumers who are aware of these may choose not to use coffee mate or simply think its unhealthy. The flavours might be advantageous for some but the rest may not like a different flavor in its coffee other than milk. So its artificial nature might be unappealing to some consumers.

According to the Coffee Mate website (www.verybestcoffee.com), there are currently 4 different types of Coffee Mates with around 17 different flavors. Coffee Mate is not only found in powder form but also comes in liquid and concentrated liquid forms all designed for different purposes and segments. There is even Coffee Mate Soy for soy milk consumers. This differentiation clearly shows that Nestle is reaching out to different consumer segments. I think too that Coffee Mate products should be aimed at multiple segments since there are many different coffee/tea drinkers out there in the market. People who like skim milk, regular milk, with flavor, without flavor etc.

According to TGI, the instant/ground coffee and powdered milk/coffee creamer markets yield five potential customer groups for Coffee Mate which are:

Experimentalists: Interestingly, as TGI suggests at the end, one would expect the experimentatlists to rely heavily on Coffee-Mate due to their life styles. I think this group should be targeted since they have a big potential as coffee drinkers. Coffee Mate should work on winning this group of customers. One way would be to make Coffee-Mate a trend among this group. People seeing others using Coffee-Mate will most likely use Coffee-Mate as well. Their high levels of coffee consumption is an advantage for Coffee Mate. Since they are widely open to new things, coming up with “new things” for them will definitely attract them and make them buy the product.

Cost Contstrained, older,conservative: This group members will most likely not use Coffee Mate in their future lives like they have not used it before too. Since they are organic food shoppers who think that fast food and seriously price aware, Coffee Mate would not be a good choice for them. Being conservative may also cause them to drink their coffees the traditional way, by using regular milk. I think Coffee Mate should not concentrate on this group a lot since they do not have the potential to be Coffee Mate customers.

Affluent, young foodies: This