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Milk Star Consumers Heard!
Reasons why They Prefer Goats Milk over other types of milk
August 25, 2010
For the months of July and August, Alaminos Goat Farm (AGF) marketing team headed by Agnes Almeda, conducted a short marketing research on our Milk Star (MS) consumers. The main goal of the research was to find out the reason why our consumers choose to drink goats milk.
The marketing team interviewed Milk Star direct sellers and different consumers who visited trade shows we joined, as well as regular consumers every Sunday of the Milk Star booth in the Lung Center in Quezon City. Today we share with you our findings wherein we’ve grouped our consumers into different clusters.
The most common trend we’ve seen among our MS consumers is their choice of a healthy lifestyle albeit their choice to drink goats milk. This group of our consumers is more conscious of both their choices in food and drink. One thing they prefer about Milk Star is that it is fresh, unlike the milk widely available in supermarkets which although claim to be fresh, have actually been already processed and fortified with additives.
Some consumers of people in this group have family members who have been diagnosed with cancer and was advised to take fresh milk while some are being careful about getting sick and therefore prefer to take the necessary precautions which means switching to organic, healthy unprocessed food and drink. Some of the consumers in this group have put a creative spin to drinking goats milk – using it to make healthy shakes, adding it to their food while cooking and the like.
Second trend we observed is consumers who drink MS because they suffer from slow digestion and constipation. In this cluster, we found a wide array of individuals from middle aged people to those who belong in the older generations. They say that drinking goats milk regularized and has actually improved their bowel movement.
Third trend we found is the group we classified under the lactose intolerant. Here we found mothers switching the type of milk for their children who suffer from lactose intolerance after drinking cow’s milk but are more receptive when they drank goats milk. Some of them switched because of their doctor’s recommendations while others have done their own research and became aware of this particular benefit in drinking goats milk.
Fourth, we made a separate cluster for our Chinese market (which we’ve found in Binondo area, San Juan among others). The Filipino Chinese was easy to penetrate as we found that they are the most open to drinking goats milk. The elder Chinese who originally came from China before residing here in the country know the health benefits of drinking fresh goat’s milk (as this is widely available in provinces back in Mainland China).
They say that fresh goat’s milk is a good natural food complete with the essential vitamins and minerals that the human body needs to stay healthy. We also found that a common reason why this group drinks goats milk in is that they like the taste of goats milk and prefer it over other types of milk.
We also have a classification of MS consumers who have various other reasons for buying goats milk. Some use the milk for culinary purposes. They use milk as an ingredient to make cheese and yogurt. Some have expressed their interest in making products for personal care such as goats milk soap, lotion and body wash. Also, we have consumers who feed goats milk to their pet dogs – something which we’ve done in Alaminos Goat Farm to nurse our puppies.
Finally, we also came up with a group which we’ve significantly classified as the CURIOUS group. We personally come across this type of consumers weekly through the Sunday Market and also when we join trade shows. They are those who try the milk because they’ve heard about it vaguely or because they’ve seen other people try it.
From this group, we often receive a variety of feedbacks which we take into consideration to analyze how to further penetrate the market. Often, this group asks us the advantages of drinking goats milk over other types of milk such as carabao’s, soy and cow’s milk.
From the findings of our research, we realize that we are still left with the big sphere of those in the market who are not informed about the benefits not only of GOATS milk but also of buying natural, fresh products.
Ever since Milk Star entered the market in 2007, we have always searched for the health benefits of goats milk, reading materials from the internet as references and also reading studies, journal articles on the matter. The data and information that we’ve gathered through researching will only get us so far because most of these claims are still presently being debated upon.
The value of the marketing research we conducted this past few months is that we are able to collate data of actual Milk Star consumers and drinkers who have personal experiences of drinking goats milk. We find that these testimonials are priceless as we can share with other consumers what Milk Star Patrons like about goats milk.
Furthermore, in our personal encounters with people who have bought our milk along with the variety of their feedback and comments, we realized that even the not to positive comments like "Lasang kambing" shouldn't bring us down.
We sell goats milk. It is not unusual to find traces of this taste the first time after trying it. Maybe it's because of one's preconcieved notions or one is looking for goaty taste. But from a personal point of view and coming from someone who was initially hesitant to drink goats milk and who is always dubbed as picky eater/drinker, goat's milk has become like water for me. It tastes neither goaty nor like any animal. To me, it's just milk - a very delicious and yummy kind I drink everyday.
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