Shopper marketing blog

At CheckoutSmart, we are passionate about consumer product reviews. We not only provide up-to-date reviews for brands nationwide, but we also take the time to analyse and learn from them. Reviews offer valuable insights from shoppers, giving us a glimpse into the latest trends and category-specific information. With over half a million reviews from the top 6 supermarkets in the UK alone at our disposal, we have a wealth of information to explore.

Whether it is the latest trends, such as we bring alive in our Moaning March post or category specific insights from the Haircare category, there is always plenty to hear and learn. As we have all the up to date reviews for the Top 6 supermarkets in the UK in our database (over half a million) we have plenty to delve into.

We also use the review data to run our Always On SmartReputation solution, delivering reviews with precision where they are needed by SKU and retailer. This ensures that our clients can have complete confidence in the freshness and impact of the reviews on their brands, alleviating any concerns they may have. This frees up resource to get on with more added value activity as well as reducing the anxiety of surprises when someone in the team spots a series of poor reviews on one of your key packs.

In this blog post, we will be delving into the fascinating world of coffee reviews in Morrisons. Morrisons stands out as an intriguing space for reviews, as they do not participate in syndication like some other retailers. This means that not all products have a significant number of reviews for analysis, potentially causing them to be overlooked. However, in the coffee category alone, we have gathered over 100 reviews for each brand we are examining from the past 2 years. This wealth of reviews provides us with a solid foundation for uncovering valuable insights.

It is worth noting that if you have gaps in your Morrisons reviews, we are able to provide new reviews directly onto the Morrisons site as we can with all major supermarkets including Ocado plus numerous others including Boots, Superdrug and Iceland.

What data are we looking at?

Morrisons website has 2,151 reviews of coffee brands as of June out of a total of nearly 100k, the lowest of the Top 6. For this analysis, we've collected the reviews, removed any that are simply poor quality that add no value to the analysis (think "It as nice") and tidied the data where necessary by removing any unnecessary characters or non category comments such as "It was delivered late".

We use specially designed software with AI based Natural Language Processing (NLP) software to compare the reviews across brands, focussing on areas of difference ie what is said about brand A but not about the other brands. We do this without using or requiring any prior knowledge of the category, as it is up to the Morrisons consumers to choose what they say. This is the best unprompted feedback on products and categories in their own language, perfect for insights into brand and category for marketing communication, positioning development, competitor analysis and website SEO and taxonomy research.

Looking at which brands had the most mentions, this is of course correlated with the number of reviews and SKUs they have. Kenco leading the way:

NB These are brand mentions within reviews, therefore Costa can be related to Costa flavours under Tassimo

What were the category themes?

When we looked across the whole coffee category and compared the language with other categories in Morrisons, we found the following topics related to coffee: (in priority order)

• Strong
• Rich
• Bitter
• Smooth
• Ground
• Aroma

Looking at the top coffee brands, we have pulled out the relevant mentions of these Top 6 category themes to see where each brand stands. 

Kenco - is reported to be the richest and smoothest of the coffees but is much lower than Taylors on aroma

Nescafe - struggles to cut through on the category dimensions, but is better than Morrisons for being smooth

Taylors - is well known for being strong, ground coffee with aroma but not as smooth as Tassimo or Kenco.

Tassimo - is smooth and quite strong and rich but with limited aroma.

Morrisons - is bitter ground coffee that is quite strong, probably not a great set of reviews.

What is each coffee brand known for?

After looking at the category dimensions we go on to look at what each brand stands for in shoppers minds. We do this be comparing the review content for each brand to the rest of the category and seeing what stands out.

The Top 3 brand themes are:

To bring alive each of the brand Top 3 themes we can take a look at the content of the reviews themselves. Here are a selection of the reviews for the Top theme for each brand to illustrate shoppers comments:

Kenco - "Cold"

Nescafe - "Latte"

Tassimo - "Costa"

Taylors - "Strong"

Morrisons - "Bad / Weak / Horrible"

coffee by any other name?

We know from talking to clients, that knowing the unprompted language that shoppers use to describe products is really helpful. We can source this from product reviews by looking at the whole category, and finding the top descriptions used related specifically to coffee.

This is the language consumers use when talking and therefore searching for coffee online. If you are looking to improve your search rankings via improved product descriptions or thinking about taxonomy this is a useful list to have.

The Top 25 shopper descriptions of coffee in Morrisons:

Please contact CheckoutSmart for information about report options and pricing of this report for your categories.

Please bear in mind for this analysis, we have focussed on Morrisons alone, who generally carry the fewest number of reviews of any of the Top 6 retailers (Tesco, ASDA, Morrisons, Sainsburys, Ocado and Waitrose), all of whom we can do reports on or for all of them together.

Using consumer reviews to help your brand's sales

Consumers clearly see some different dimensions of taste within the coffee category. Strength is clearly important to drinkers and no doubt there is segmentation between mild / normal and strong consumers. Likewise Rich, Aroma and Bitter are taste notes that vary by product, the first two are generally seen as positive with the latter less so. Taylors clearly has a strong position in the minds of Morrisons drinkers but importantly also in the mind of non drinkers.

If you go onto the Morrisons website looking for a new coffee option (as is quite normal within those interested in coffee) then this is what you are reading and being influenced by. Taylors, Kenco and Tassimo have distinct and generally positive positions. Nescafe and Morrisons own label less so. We know this will be affecting consumer choice and as a result rate of sale and market share. 

The above tables and charts illustrate the kind of useful, actionable insights that are available as a result of analysing consumer reviews. We already work to deliver helpful category, retailer, brand and range specific insights to them on regular or ad hoc basis. 

Product Reviews in Morrisons and all retailers can be increased or analysed by working with CheckoutSmart, simply contact us for more information about how to get started right away. 

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