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October 22, 2003
Homework tomorrow...
We just watched The Italian Job (2003) on dvd. Breean and I both liked it a lot. It's a great story, now I want to see the original as well.
Posted by sam at 11:30 PM | Comments (0)
The key to Meagan's heart is...
Meagan's been asking why her personal ad has not attracted enough responses. The reason, apparently, is that the entry was closed for comments. So single guys, please check her out and leave a comment here or for that entry.
... her pet Oz.
Posted by sam at 05:16 PM | Comments (0)
Pringles
The first case we discussed on the first day (today) of my introductory marketing class was Pringles. Development on Pringles started in the 50's when P&G saw an opportunity for a national brand to "beat-up smaller and less sophisticated competitors". At the time the potato chip market was dominated by local producers because of the product's limited shelf life and frailty in transit. P&G hoped to solve those problems with the round aluminum can and a product designed to have a shelf life of one year.
When Pringles was finally released in 1968 it quickly rose to 25% market share due to heavy trials but soon dropped to 7% because of few repeat purchases. Our professor's justification for the lack of repeat buyers was that customers 'inferred' an artificial taste from the strange packaging and year-long shelf life. My hand was raised but the professor never called on me, so I'll make my point here.
How could you assume that customers thought the taste was artificial because of the packaging and shelf life? Could it be that they actually looked at the ingredients and saw for themselves just how engineered the product was? Is this how marketing thinks - that there is no 'truth', only perception?
Pringles was discontinued in 1978, but as we all know became extremely successful in the 1980's and is now a $1b business. You could argue that I'm wrong, that consumers are now accustomed to strange packaging and potato chips with a half-life of one year. I think tastes have changed. In the potato chip aisle at Ralph's today, Pringles just might be the least artificial product available.
Posted by sam at 03:45 PM | Comments (0)