New Ricola Cough Drops Surpass Competition Using Affinnova Platform

WALTHAM, Mass.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Facing increased competition in the U.S., Swiss-based Ricola sought to capitalize on consumer demand for premium, herbal cough drops by creating a new product. The Ricola USA team turned to Affinnova, Inc., the global leader in innovation software and services, to optimize and test a concept for a dual-action cough drop. U.S. sales have been so successful that a global rollout is now planned.

“Companies need to expose as many of their ideas as possible to consumers in order to identify products with the greatest potential for success”

“When we came to Affinnova, we had a general idea – we believed that there was a need for an herbal, dual-action cough and sore throat drop,” said Melissa Robinson, Director of Innovation for Ricola USA. “What we didn’t know was the best product form, packaging and claims. We also knew that certain product forms would require new manufacturing capabilities, and if such investment were necessary, the product had to succeed.”

On the front end, the Ricola marketing team used Concept Studio, Affinnova’s cloud-based concept collaboration and development application, to create over 2,500 possible dual-action cough drop concepts. Then using Affinnova’s evolutionary optimization and active benchmarking capabilities, target consumers were engaged to identify the best dual-action product and determine the product’s performance versus the competition and incrementality to the Ricola line. The winning product incorporated a liquid center that would require additional R&D and manufacturing investment.

In just six months since its launch, new Ricola Dual Action has achieved US$5 million in sales – four times more sales than its nearest competitor’s new product. The launch has been so successful that Ricola now plans to rollout the dual-action product globally starting in Europe.

“Making the new dual-action product successful was of paramount importance to Ricola USA,” said John Nathenson, Affinnova’s Senior Vice President of Client Services Select. “By leveraging their knowhow and creativity with our innovation platform, they were able to develop a dual-action product that exceeded all expectations.”

“Companies need to expose as many of their ideas as possible to consumers in order to identify products with the greatest potential for success,” said Waleed Al-Atraqchi, President and CEO of Affinnova. “Ricola has been a valued customer for years, and we are proud to be an integrated partner helping to systemically improve their innovation and marketing outcomes.”

About Affinnova

Affinnova is a high-growth software and services firm that enables innovative companies to drive better ideas to market faster. Unlike conventional market research, our patented survival-of-the-fittest approach has the capacity to explore extremely large idea spaces by applying evolutionary search algorithms to product and marketing innovation. Global Fortune 500 companies, including Procter & Gamble, Unilever, Nestlé, PepsiCo, Pfizer, Johnson & Johnson, Walmart and Citibank, depend on Affinnova to deliver higher success rates and accelerated launch timing. Website: www.affinnova.com.