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Food manufacturers would be the first to tell you that product placement in a grocery store is a crucial component of their marketing strategy.\u00a0 Shoppers tend to buy what \u201chits \u2018em in the eye.\u201d\u00a0 Eye-level placement, therefore, is the most desirable spot on the shelves in any supermarket aisle.\u00a0 A wide expanse of a particular product is almost equally important.\u00a0 Not so important, at least to manufacturers, is the fine print on packages.\u00a0 Quite often, in an effort to earn increased profits on a product, a manufacturer employs the old trick of keeping the price the same on an item but reducing the amount of product in the package, while maintaining the same expanse of space on the shelf.\u00a0 To achieve this, packagers of ice cream, for example, shave off a bit from the depth of each waxy cardboard carton but maintain the height and width of the older, larger cartons.\u00a0 Oh sure, the fine print on the package might reveal to consumers the fact that they are no longer buying a half-gallon tub of ice cream, but rather a carton containing several ounces less than a half-gallon.\u00a0 The manufacturer counts on the statistical probability that faithful consumers who have been buying that brand of ice cream for years, even decades, will not bother to read the fine print.\u00a0 They are correct.\u00a0\u00a0 Most shoppers will not even realize the difference.\u00a0 But when\u00a0this<\/i>\u00a0consumer realizes it, she seethes just enough to motivate her to find the manufacturer\u2019s website and dash off a complaint to the company\u2019s customer relations department.\u00a0 A week or so later, upon receiving about 20 manufacturer\u2019s coupons, each one good for one free carton of ice cream, she does a little victory-is-mine dance at the mailbox.<\/p>\n
Another tactic manufacturer\u2019s use to their advantage at the grocery-store level is to reach out to the little ones who so often accompany a parent on food shopping expeditions.\u00a0 Every parent knows that children want the cold cereal with the highest sugar content, the jelly or jam with the least amount of actual fruit in each jar, the peanut butter with the longest list of polysyllabic preservatives, and the bagged snack foods with the highest air-to-snack ratio within each bag.\u00a0 Did you know that parents are not the only adults who recognize this uncanny ability, this innate talent possessed by children worldwide?\u00a0 Product packagers know it, too, and they spare no effort or expense to capitalize on that knowledge.\u00a0 No child psychologist knows your children as well as those brand-name food marketing gurus know them.\u00a0 Their research and four-color packaging, both aimed at boosting their products\u2019 appeal to the rug-rat set, are reflected in the price of the product. \u00a0I should tell you that I was certainly no ogre of a young mother.\u00a0 I did occasionally \u2013 say, when Halley\u2019s Comet was scheduled to make an appearance \u2013 indulge my four tykes by caving in to a sweetly worded request for Marshmallow Monster Fruity Bits or a giant bag of Frank Lee Tol\u2019able Tater Puffs.\u00a0 There was, however, a method to my madness; I bought each long-coveted item\u2026once<\/i>.\u00a0 When the box or bag was empty \u2013 specifically (or at least in\u00a0my<\/i>\u00a0kiddie-filled house), 23.4 minutes after I unloaded the groceries \u2013 I simply refilled that box or bag with the product\u2019s store-brand equivalent, purchased in bulk.\u00a0 My wallet thanked me.\u00a0 Yours will, too, once you try this for yourself. As for your kids, well, someday maybe even\u00a0they<\/i>\u00a0will thank you!<\/p>\n
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