Paul your Barista
ADVERTISING: ALMOND DRINK AND SPORT SOCKS.
Welcome to Willow’s weekly coffee and tea garden. My name is Paul and I’m happy to be here once again in the garden tending to your needs for a cuppa, and sweets. I must say, it’s great to see you all here in this relaxing atmosphere surrounded by flowers and butterflies. Have a seat where you choose, at a table in the sun or shade, and I’ll be happy to bring a pot of whatever beverage you prefer – we have a wide range of teas and coffees to satisfy our world-wide readership. We can relax while we discuss the affairs of the week both personal and/or worldwide. How has your week been?
My week has been a bit up and down. I haven’t been feeling the best for a number of reasons and you know how grumbly we all get when we’re down. The weather here has turned quite cool – down to about 10 Celsius (50 F) at night with rain during the day – and although that is good for sleeping, I miss the sun and warmth.
I was out for a walk to the grocery store on Thursday and there was a tent set up on the plaza in front of the store. It was a display for a product called Almond Breeze – a milk substitute product that has been advertised here recently. The product is fairly expensive and I wasn’t about to buy it just to find out that I didn’t like it, but here they were offering samples. This intrigued me, as a lot of their advertising has been about how good it tastes and how nutritional it was.
There were a number of small paper cups of samples, so I took one and tasted it while the attendant was busy with another customer. The flavor was complex but enjoyable and it had small chips of ice in it. The attendant became free and I asked about the product. She said it was the original Almond Breeze with banana, honey and ice chips in it – and they were preparing the drink in a blender. That was nice, but I don’t have bananas, honey, chipped ice or a blender at home, so I asked to try a sample of the product without the additions. This apparently was a no-no as the attendant refused. When I asked why, she just replied: “We are only allowed to use the recipes we are given.” So I told her that I certainly wasn’t going to buy a product that the manufacturer wouldn’t let me taste – and I left.
On the way out, I noticed that although the tent had large “Almond Breeze” emblems on it, there were also many Dole brand and Billy Bee Honey products advertized – bananas, pineapples, honey, etc. When I got home, I Googled Almond Breeze and found that it is a supplier owned co-operative in California that is the largest distributor of almonds and almond products in the world. So, it turns out that Dole and Billy Bee are using Almond Breeze as a sales vehicle for their products. With the great current interest in smoothies (which often use yogurt as a base) and other fruit based drinks for their nutritional and popular value, apparently Dole and Billy Bee want to open up a new marketing channel using Almond Breeze as the base for fruit flavored drinks. Although I can’t blame them, it annoys me that I am being sold an Almond product, which is very high in vitamins and nutrients, as a means to get me to buy other products. It seems to have become a regular advertising gimmick to use the positive qualities of one product to sell others. What do you think of these tactics? Have you seen this done? Does it make you feel as if you are being used? Are there any other advertizing tactics that annoy you?
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Have another cuppa and a scone, or a piece of Lemon Drizzle cake or Carrot cake. Lots of goodies, and remember, here in Willow’s garden they are all calorie free, so eat up.It’s not just manufacturers who use manipulative advertising but also big retailers. I used to work for a major discount retailer in their IT department. We shared some suppliers with Wal-Mart, so when I was tasked with investigating an IT system to deal with our increasing invoice processing problem, I covertly inquired of our suppliers how Wal-Mart was handling the issue. It turns out they were employing a system that was not feasible for us (not enough volume yet to justify the front-loaded cost) but during the conversations I came upon some information that rather made me stop and think. These wholesalers, if they were large enough, had access to some of Wal-Mart’s computer systems for inventory and re-order purposes.
Wal-Mart employs a concept they call a “basket” analysis. Every time you purchase goods at a Wal-Mart, the purchases are recorded not only as individual items, but as a part of your “basket”. They run analytics to determine if any of the purchases are common, that is to say if you buy product #1 are you more likely to buy product#2. It turns out this produces some interesting results. For instance (and this is a real example), if there are women’s hygiene products in the basket, it is more likely that there will also be women’s white sports socks in the same basket (the supplier I spoke to was a sock manufacturer). So, they leverage this information to design sales tactics and advertising campaigns. For instance they may put displays of sports socks next to hygiene products and offer a coupon that gives 20% off one if you buy the other. Or they may run an ad in their flyer that groups associated products in order to increase sales of one or the other or both.
This leaves me with a negative feeling – as if I am being manipulated into buy things that I perhaps do not need. There are those, however, who like this as they get deals on products they would buy anyway and it makes their shopping easier when the products they want are displayed next to each other in these huge stores. What do you think about this? Do you feel manipulated or do you think it is to your advantage? I would be interested in hearing your opinion. Please share if you have any other thoughts, perhaps on privacy of information or anything else that has occurred to you this week.
Would you like another cuppa? Willow and I are honored that you dropped by the garden today to visit. I hope you’ve enjoyed yourself and the conversation and please feel free to look around at Willow’s other posts while you’re here. We look forward to seeing you in the garden again next week.
IF WE WERE HAVING COFFEE: I would tell you how very welcome you are and how much I look forward to our weekly get together, and that I do hope they continue for a while to come. So for now be well and be happy. 😀
If we were having coffee I’d ask you : would you like another cuppa, or a biscuit . I’d tell you I have really come to enjoy these chats and I’d love to hear what you would tell me , If we were having Coffee Original idea from http://parttimemonster.wordpress.com/
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