The three final questions are summarizing questions in their style. The tenth and the eleventh questions examine the respondent’s overall opinion concerning RIPS rye snacks. The twelfth final question is an open question where the respondent is able to express in his or her own words the changes wanted, and also any other comments about RIPS rye snacks.
5.5.1 Question 10. Would you recommend RIPS rye snacks to the people you know?
To this question, the answer “Yes” can be seen as positive and “No” as negative. The third option “Don’t know” is neutral, but with this question it mostly indicates uncertainty. The tenth question is revealing and helps to clarify the respondent’s true opinion concerning RIPS rye snacks.
The results for the tenth question can be interpreted as very positive. In total, 81, 9 percent of the respondents chose the option “Yes”, stating that they would recommend RIPS rye
snacks to other people. As this was a large majority of the respondents, it indicates that the overall opinion towards RIPS rye snacks is positive. It can be assumed that a person has to genuinely like something in order to recommend it to others. Correspondingly, a person will most likely not recommend a product or a service to others if the person did not genuinely like it, or at least perceive it as good. Only 2, 9 percent of the respondents answered “No”
which can also be seen as a positive result. “Don’t know” was chosen by 15, 2 percent of the respondents, which indicates that they were uncertain about recommending RIPS rye snacks to others. See Appendix 7: “Recommendation and School Grade” for the table.
5.5.2 Question 11. I would give RIPS rye snacks a school grade of (4-10)
In the eleventh question the respondent is asked to give a traditional school grade for RIPS rye snacks, ranging from 4 to 10, where 4 expresses the lowest grade and 10 the highest grade. Again, the results can be interpreted as very positive, as a large majority of the re-spondents gave RIPS a school grade of 8 or higher, totalling 81, 6 percent of the responses.
When considering the grading, generally the grade 8 can be seen as good, and grades 9 and 10 can be seen as excellent. In 14, 6 percent of the responses RIPS rye snacks was given a grade of 7, which can be seen as a satisfactory grade. Very few respondents gave RIPS a low grade.
In only 3, 8 percent of the responses, RIPS was given a grade of 5 or 6, which were the lowest grades given for RIPS. See Appendix 7: “Recommendation and School Grade” for the table.
5.5.3 Question 12. What would you like to change in RIPS rye snacks?
Although each of the responses is individually expressed, many of the responses are similar in their subject, and thus can be categorised into certain groups. As the research was conducted in Finnish, the original responses to this open question were also expressed in Finnish.
Altogether 46 respondents answered the twelfth question by expressing a comment. Of those 46 respondents, 35 wanted to change something in RIPS rye snacks. Five of the respondents answered ”I do not know” to the question, and other five of the respondents answered ”Noth-ing”, to which one of the respondents had added: “Because the product feels good as it is”. It can be concluded that these ten respondents who answered either “Nothing” or ”I do not know”, did not want to change anything in RIPS rye snacks. In addition, one of the respon-dents had commented simply “Surprisingly good” from which it can also be concluded that the respondent did not want to change anything in RIPS rye snacks.
Altogether nine of the responses were related to the flavour selection of RIPS rye snacks. Of these, seven of the respondents had answered ”More flavours”, meaning that they wanted to increase the flavour selection of RIPS rye snacks. In addition, one of these seven respondents
had also commented “bigger packages”, and another of these seven respondents had still commented “hardness level”, meaning that the composition of the snack should be softened.
The other responses related to the flavour selection were suggestions for new flavours:
“Could there be for instance a dill flavour?” and “e.g. flavour bacon”. In addition to these, a few of the respondents wanted to change the price to a lower level, as three of the respon-dents answered “a lower price”.
Some of the respondents also wanted to change the taste of the current flavours. The re-sponses included the following comments: “More of taste”, “Taste”, “Tasted like a dried rye bread”, “The aftertaste of a convenience food” and “Garlic doesn’t have taste at all!”. In one of the responses, a comment “Salt? Less? Taste?” was expressed, which can be interpreted that the respondent wanted to decrease the amount of salt in the snacks. Also another re-sponse included a comment related to the saltiness: “The taste of the Salami is maybe too salty”. The reason for these comments is probably that in some of the RIPS rye snack pack-ages the flavour is not always evenly divided between the snacks. This might cause some of the snacks in the package to be tasteless whereas some of the snacks might have a too strong taste. It would be favourable for CFL to enhance this taste issue of the snacks. Besides these comments related to the taste of the snack, in one of the responses, the composition of the snack wanted to be changed. The respondent answered simply “soften”, referring to the composition of the snack.
In seven of the responses, the respondents wanted to change either the size or the shape of the snack. Five of these respondents answered “Bigger size”. In addition, one of them had commented also that “they are now too small”. The comments related to the shape of the snack included: “Appearance of the snack, to more elongated” and “could be slightly thin-ner”. Some of the respondents wanted to change also the size of the package, as three of the responses included a comment “Bigger package”. During the promotional events when the research was conducted, only the smaller 50 gram packages were available. Those particular retailers had only the smaller 50 gram packages of RIPS rye snacks in their selection. CFL can meet this need of consumers for a bigger package, as RIPS rye snacks are available also in 150 gram packages. However, CFL should convince more retailers to purchase the bigger 150 gram packages of RIPS rye snacks in their selection.
In summary it can be said that the changes most wanted to RIPS rye snacks were to: increase the flavour selection, enhance the quality of the current taste of the flavours, soften the composition of the snack, provide bigger packages, enlarge the size of the actual snack, and lower the price. The other responses were different individual comments which could not be grouped. These responses included the following comments: “A dip sauce should be added to the selection”, “The package should be more environmentally friendly”, “Cheese flavour
should be lactose-free!”, and “The snacks should be more generally and better available!” In addition, one of the respondents wanted to change the name of the snack to “Raksu”.