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| Really? For how long? Image Source: 123rf.com |
The Marketing
Mix composes of 4 Ps – Product, Price, Place and Promotion. Out of the four Ps,
in my last post, I discussed about how companies rely on cheap promotion like
the senseless use of sex appeal to promote their product. In this post, I want
to focus on the first P, i.e. the Product and let me limit my discussion to
food companies.
When I was a child, there was a Nepali brand of biscuits that used to be very fresh, delicious and crispy. Now I prefer Indian biscuits because that Nepali brand has lost its
original taste as well as quality. Their taste is either slightly musty or each
piece of biscuit in the packet have dark edges making the biscuits taste
bitter. I’ve experienced the same problem with a certain chocolate brand. When
it was launched at first it was as good as Kit-Kat. You could purchase the
taste of a Rs. 10 chocolate-covered wafer for Rs. 5. When I tasted the same chocolate-covered
wafer a few years later, I was disappointed. This reminds me of the
ever-increasing brand of noodles. The old noodle brands have diversified their
product in terms of the offering in taste. Sadly, the product seems to have lost
its original taste. The same holds true for bakery products. When the company
is new then everything is so fresh and yummy. A year or two later, the product
loses its quality. You begin to find pieces of egg-shells in fruit cakes and
the cookies start to grow darker and bitter.
I haven’t been
in those production factories or bakery kitchens to identify the exact reason
for these kinds of changes in taste and quality over the years (or months, in some cases). However, based
on conjecture there must be four reasons why these problems occur. First, the
raw material that is being used for making the product may have deteriorated in
terms of quality. Second, the quality standards might not be
set. If they are set, then they are either not being followed or the quality
testing methods and equipments are not available. And, if the quality monitoring
methods and equipments are available and the standards are being followed then
the standards set may not be very precise. For example, what colour should the
biscuits manufactured be? Is it okay if every biscuit produced is burned to
black at the edges? Third, the production machine might not have been repaired
and maintained on a regular basis. It is obvious that if the input and
processing device is out of order then the output cannot be what is expected.
Fourth and the most important – these food production companies may have been
too focused on pricing, promotion and distribution that the core product
received no attention. No one really remembered to preserve the originality in
taste and quality of these products.
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| Is it? Image Source: 123rf.com |
As a consumer, I’ll
try a new kind of food product if someone has told me it’s good. Otherwise, I
may rely on the packaging to make that first decision. After the first taste, I’ll
go back to the supermarket and buy the same food item again only if I like the
taste. If at any point of time the product disappoints me then I’ll stop
purchasing that product as long as there are other options available in the
market. (I recently did that with one brand of cake that turned from being soft
and sweet to hard and extra-sweet.) No one has a commitment towards any
product. As soon as the companies decide to switch away from their originality
and degrade their quality then there will be a group of conscious customers who
will decide to switch away from the company’s offerings. At the end, it is the
one who serves the best product on a consistent basis that earns loyal
customers in the long-run.
