Case Study: Exploring Tea Taste Perception & Health Benefit Claims

This case study examines the relationship between health claims and taste perception, using the Zealong tea brand as an example. The assignment explores how emphasizing health benefits can negatively influence consumers' perception of taste. The study highlights that consumers often associate healthy products with unpleasant tastes, drawing on past experiences with health-related products, such as medicine. The analysis suggests that even when the tea is made from natural ingredients, the mere mention of health benefits can lead consumers to anticipate a bitter or otherwise unappealing taste. This phenomenon is further explained by the fact that the tea is perceived as a medicine, and the taste of the tea is not good. The case study references relevant literature, including research by Raghunathan, Naylor, & Hoyer (2006) and Zhang (2012) to support its findings. The study concludes that marketing strategies need to carefully consider how health claims are presented to avoid negatively affecting the perceived taste of the product.

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Case Study Solution
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CASE STUDY SOLUTION 1
Case study: Why do you think stressing health benefits as product attributes has negative
effects for the tea's taste perceptions?
Answer
The reasons due to which people select a particular tea, depends heavily on their perception
about the ingredients of the product (Raghunathan, Naylor, & Hoyer, 2006). The perceptions of
people means the way by which a person forms a meaningful and coherent picture of the world
from the external stimuli that he receives, selects and interprets. Perception plays a major role in
the decisions of the people. If people perceive something as negative, they either don’t try the
thing or even if they try it, they accept in the back of their mind that the thing is not good. For
example, in the given case, the brand of the tea Zealong has superior quality and it is pure too.
But, when the test was conducted on the people before and after telling them that the product is
healthy, then the results were different.
It is generally perceived by the people that the tea brand Zealong that is healthy is bad in taste,
just like the graham bread or the coarse food grain or the healthy tea. Likewise, the taste of the
tea is generally perceived by the people from its smell. If the smell is not good, people think that
the taste of the tea will not be good. The people were told about the attributes of the product and
they were told that the tea Zealong is a health tea, so they thought that it will naturally taste bad.
The main reason of this is that people treated Zealong like a medicine and the medicine tastes
bad. So, they perceive the product that stresses the health benefits i.e. Zealong to be bad in taste.
The tea that has health benefits is generally bitter in taste naturally (Zhang, 2012). This is
perceived by the people because in past they may have had a bad experience with any health
drink in regard of its taste. The ingredients from which the Zealong was made were pure and

CASE STUDY SOLUTION 2
natural so, there was no artificial flavor that was added. Therefore, the taste of the tea was natural
and it cannot be perceived as a bad taste.
Reference:
Zhang, B. (2012). The Characteristics of New Zealand Oolong Tea.
Raghunathan, R., Naylor, R. W., & Hoyer, W. D. (2006). The unhealthy (tasty) intuition and its
effects on taste inferences, enjoyment, and choice of food products. Journal of Marketing, 70(4),
170-184.