As you might know, Belgium is famous for their wonderful Chocolate. So moving here I made it a habit to try new kind of chocolate; dark, milk, white, expensive, cheap, pralines and other kinds. Though it was not until recently I found out that I had preconceptions about chocolate and their wrappings.

As a Christmas gift I got this amazing chocolate box filled with delicious pralines from Neuhaus. I do not know if that is the case here, but in Sweden we have a tradition of giving each other boxes with chocolate pralines around Christmas.

Photo: Neuhaus

Anyway, I many other situations I save the best for last, but with chocolate I do the reverse. So the last pieces in the box, those that I really do not care for become emergency chocolate for when I really crave it. In my box those that are left are usually wrapped in a red foil wrapper, to me meaning that it is a praline filled with cherry liqueur, (or some other type of liqueur) and I really don’t like them.

So when I got my Neuhaus chocolate box, I followed the habit and saved the praline in the red tinfoil wrapper for last. Only to find out that it did not contain any liqueur but some very tasty soft nougat mix. What a great surprise! After this experience I realized that I never even thought about the fact that this wrapper could mean one thing in Belgium and one thing in Sweden. So I even asked a few Swedes if they had the same preconception, and indeed they had.

Now thinking about this, I realized that launching a product as international as Chocolate in a new country could mean a lot more investigations about preconceptions and habits than one would think.

So you have any similar experiences? Have you ever launched a product in a new country and faced this kind of challenge? Share your experiences.