Robusta Coffee Bean Cultural Development, Robusta Coffee Bean Characteristics

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Business is closely related to real life. As long as you take the time to get in touch, your empathy can be inspired. Empathy can provide decision makers with the necessary situational resources to help them see the hidden dangers behind decisions; to make abstract data realistic and direct; and to provide you with practical experience in testing the accuracy of "maps".

People always think that tasting delicious coffee is a recent new phenomenon in the United States, but it is far from the case. In the 1950s, you could taste a good cup of coffee for only 5 cents. The United States is a nation addicted to coffee. However, at a time when the demand for coffee is booming, there is a big problem with its supply. At the end of June 1953, a frost swept through, destroying the entire coffee growing area in Brazil and driving up the price of coffee as a whole. After the well-known "fourth of July frost", the price of a cup of coffee soared to 10 cents, while some of the big US coffee roasters, such as Maxwell House, Folgers and Hills Bros Brothers, were even more expensive. For a while, coffee was in short supply.

It is impossible for coffee enthusiasts to break the habit of drinking coffee every day. The rise in the price of coffee angered Americans. Consumers are constantly protesting in cafes and writing letters angrily to the heads of coffee companies. The government and the media accused the Latin American government of artificially restricting coffee exports in an attempt to destroy the US market. The coffee supply problem faced by American coffee companies has turned into a public relations crisis. Coffee companies realize that prices must be slashed, or they may face the fact that coffee is out of favor in the United States. In despair, they made an incredible decision to bring in Robusta.

There are many varieties of coffee beans, the most representative of which are two kinds of Arabica and Robusta. Arabica has a slightly bitter taste and a smooth taste. Order a cup to taste slowly, full of nut aroma changeable and rich, people are infatuated. But American coffee companies have found that Arabica coffee trees are expensive to grow and vulnerable to climate and insect pests. One year it was a bumper harvest, but the next year you may lose all your money. Since the frost in 1953, coffee companies have mostly realized that Arabica is too fragile to be the first choice in the long run. They need to find a more reliable coffee bean. Robusta coffee beans are cheap, less affected by climate and many other factors, and the yield is high, but the taste of the coffee made with it is unflattering. For decades, some large coffee manufacturers in the United States have refused to use Robusta beans as raw materials to make coffee. Now that Arabica is in dwindling supply, Maxwell executives are starting to rethink corporate strategy. They figured it might be possible to mix some robusta into the ingredients without damaging the taste of Maxwell coffee. If successful, this mixed coffee will be much cheaper than pure Arabica coffee.

It is important to keep the amount of robusta in mixed coffee as low as possible so that people do not notice this unpopular additive. To ensure that this cost-cutting approach does not drive away customers, Maxwell conducted a sensory experiment. Participants were asked to taste traditional Maxwell coffee and blended coffee together and then make a comparison. As a result, few people can tell the difference between the two. The company decided to adopt this new hybrid system. By adding Robusta to its coffee, Maxwell was able to lower its sales price when competitors had to raise prices. The company's Robusta adventure experiment was soon a great success. Most consumers did not notice the change in the taste of coffee, while the addition of Robusta also reduced the price of coffee. Soon after, other coffee companies followed suit. No one complains about it.

Although Maxwell kept the short-term interests of the company, it did not solve the long-term problems that plagued the coffee industry. The demand for coffee will continue to increase, while the supply of Arabica coffee beans will still be insufficient. The following year, the pressure on the profit margin forced Maxwell executives to reconsider changing the mix of products. In Maxwell's first trial, consumers were unaware of the addition of Robusta to the blended coffee. If the content of this ingredient is slightly increased, will the customer find it? There is only one way to know the answer. The company conducted a second sensory test. Thankfully, the results of this experiment are still satisfactory. After slightly increasing the content of Robusta, the subjects still did not taste any difference in the taste of the coffee.

Maxwell has been using this scheme for years, but the demand for coffee is growing, and so is the pressure on the company to make a profit. Year after year, Maxwell, Forrest and the Hills brothers are increasing the amount of robusta in their coffee without consumers noticing it. These coffee manufacturers do experiments with consumers every year to ensure that the "upgraded formula" meets the tastes of the masses. In fact, they did. In the short term, this fact-based approach does guarantee the company's profits, and consumers do not immediately notice the change. It is right for these companies to test their products before launching their products, ensuring performance and profits. But there is a crisis behind the experimental data.

In 1964, coffee sales declined for the first time in American history. At first, companies didn't know what was going on. The test results show that people who drink coffee for a long time are satisfied with their products. However, this does not tell the whole story. The coffee drinkers are not getting younger. All healthy companies need to attract younger consumers to replace the older generation. However, in the coffee industry, this kind of upgrading has not occurred. Robusta, which increases slightly every year in blended coffee, accounts for a large proportion of this ingredient in the latest generation of products. If you don't drink coffee for many years, you will find it difficult to swallow this product with high Robusta content. If you've never had coffee before, such a cup of coffee can make you feel miserable and affect your mood throughout the day. Young people especially can't understand why their parents are so infatuated with this bad coffee. With the continuous encroachment of Coca-Cola and Pepsi on the beverage market, coffee sales are declining. The coffee industry has gradually become a low-growth, low-income industry. Since key consumers have always relied on their products, coffee company executives speculate that young people are only attracted by the fancy packaging and advertising of beverage companies. In view of this, the big coffee companies began to expand aggressively into these emerging markets, but their efforts did not work.

It is important to point out here that coffee companies rely on good "maps" to make decisions. Marketers keep a close eye on the latest consumer trends, but multiple surveys show that people are increasingly reluctant to spend money on coffee. At the same time, multiple trials have shown that coffee drinkers cannot distinguish existing blended coffee from coffee with more robusta. These tests ignore the obvious fact that coffee tastes bad after each change in composition. Nor does it mean that consumers will be more willing to pay more for better coffee if coffee companies allow it. This further shows that the map is not a territory.

For decades, coffee companies focused on reducing costs and increasing Robusta content until the presence of one person changed the rules of the game. It turns out that the demand for high-quality Arabica coffee has never declined. In the small cafes that are widely distributed in downtown and university towns, people still crave a good cup of coffee. The coffee industry remained in the same state until a man named Howard? Young entrepreneurs from Howard Schultz visited Italy in the early 1980s and discovered the business model of coffee bars there before seeing the dawn of the coffee industry. If merchants clearly classify the quality of coffee, people are willing to spend more money on good coffee. When he returned to the United States, Schultz affirmed one thing: the "map" was wrong. At Starbucks, his new coffee chain, Schultz focused on selling freshly made high-quality coffee. He brought a whole new experience to his customers. Gradually, his success promoted the coffee industry in the United States and made it a great leap forward. Since the 1990s, most coffee companies have resumed selling pure Arabica coffee. A new generation of coffee enthusiasts have emerged, who love coffee as much as their parents did.

The experience of American coffee companies highlights the challenges that every large company faces when dealing with simplified information. The entire coffee industry is betting its future on abstract data from a consumer test. Because the test results are satisfactory, the method of adding Robusta to high-quality blended coffee is unquestionable. Companies have always focused on existing coffee enthusiasts, unwittingly leading themselves into a desperate situation. Every person in charge of the company involved knew that their product tasted terrible, but because the test results showed that the public was not aware of the change, they became unscrupulous, and the taste of the coffee became worse and worse. Due to the lack of real empathy, the executives of the coffee industry lost touch with their customers and fell into the trap of an "attractive map".

Policy makers in a variety of industries often find that they are using simplified information and are seriously out of touch with reality. They always handle affairs according to some abstract concepts and have no first-hand experience at all. In many cases, the lack of contact with customers forces them to believe in worthless authority. Using intuition to connect with others can help you overcome these challenges. Establishing empathy with customers can make abstract information more informed and real-time, because it is already connected to the real people you are familiar with. Empathy enables you to jump out of the map and get more practical and specific information. Over time, this connection with others will give you a first-hand experience of the real situation, which is a necessary condition for enterprises to find new development opportunities. Sometimes empathy can even help a company avoid bankruptcy crisis.