Yoplait Learns to Manufacture Authenticity to Go With Its Yogurt
But as the Greek phenomena gained steam — today, it accounts for more than a third of all yogurt sales in the United States — Yoplait’s studies found
an interesting hiccup: Even though people said they disliked Greek yogurt, they kept on trying it, again and again, until they learned to like it.
“Data regresses to the mean,” said James Gilmore, a professor at the University of Virginia and an author of “Authenticity: What Consumers Really Want.” “Something that’s really original, really authentic, it’s probably not going to score
that well because people have a knee-jerk reaction against new things.”
Eventually, however, after six long years of releasing Yoplait Greek products
that tests indicated should be big successes but almost never were, General Mills finally admitted there was one option left: Executives needed to study the science of manufacturing genuineness.