When we were considering our different product ideas, one of our main concerns was whether or not the product we would create would be useful to large numbers of people. To figure out if we would have a purpose (not to mention a market), we had each of our team members survey their friends and family members as to what type of coffee they drank and whether or not they thought it gave them coffee breath. The results as to the types of coffee our participants drank were very inconsistent- the answers were everything from hazelnut to caramel to just “Dunkin Donuts.” However, the replies for whether or not they were given coffee breath from their drinks were very telling.
Sixty-three coffee drinkers of various ages and backgrounds responded to our questions. Out of these people, twenty-nine said that their coffee definitely gives them bad breath, thirty believed that they did not have problems with coffee breath, and four were unsure. This means that almost half of the people in our testing pool alone claimed that their coffee was giving them bad breath.
But what about the other half? Although they do not think they had coffee breath, it is very likely that they still did. The one flaw in our experiment was that we were relying on people’s ability to self-rate their breath. It is extremely probable that the people who claimed that they did not have breath problems after drinking coffee were just the people who did not have as accurate an ability to smell their own breath.