Clever Packaging Lesson

[pretty cheap jewelry]

Try this on your school age kids (or your class or your girl scout troop or...)

1. Take two equivalent grocery items, one highly packaged and one with very simple packaging. For example:

* Pepperidge Farm cookies (that come in a tray inside a plastic wrap inside of a lined bag) and an equivalent house brand cookie

-or-

*Honey Nut Cheerios (that come in a bag inside a box) and the equivalent 'O' ring cereal that comes only in the bag

-or-

*String Cheese with the Corporate Character (Incredibles lately) and the house brand string cheese

2. Unwrap the equivalent items and place side by side for a blind taste test.

3. Be sure to secretly note which item came from which package.

4. Challenge your testers to try each. Is one is better than the other?

5. Take off the blindfold (if you used one) and prove that more packaging, or Brand Name (Disney character or whomever) packaging does NOT mean the product is better.


SAVE money buying the house brand for ever more.

[JanH]

That would be a fun experiment. Even for us adults.

[Hez]

That's a good idea! I hate it when people think that brand names are superior yet refuse to try cheaper or no-name brands.

The only bad part about this experiment is that you'd have to buy the brand name for it!

[mbhunter]

Very interesting!

But it's not the packaging that makes one product taste better than the other. It's the ingredients and processing that go into the product. It is conclusive only if the products are identical, except for the packaging.

I would expect that the name-brand product would taste better in some cases. Then, the results would go against what you're trying to prove!

A friend of mine got a comment from his daughter about why all of the cans of Chef Boyardee were dented. (He bought them at a discount grocery store for about half the price of what the supermarket charged.) His response, "Well, sweetheart, this is the only way you're getting them, because I'm not paying full price for them!"

Unless the kids want to pay the grocery bill for the cartoon characters, shouldn't you have the final say anyway?

[pjmama]

I think it's pretty ridiculous how effective companies are at marketing to children... they seem to know exactly what to put on those silly boxes to make the parents' wallets suffer... sheesh. That would be a fun experiment to do for sure.

[pretty cheap jewelry]

I suggest this as a lesson especially at the impressionable ages (1st-9th grade).

It might get a little lightbulb to go on in a young person's brain, that will stay lit for many future years.

I do agree that the items should be as equivalent as possible. Sometimes the Pepperidge Farm cookies ARE better, but this is but one example.

I originally proposed this to my son's 1st grade class as an Earth Day experiment so as to reduce wasteful packaging. We'll do it in 1st and 3rd grades this year.

Have fun!

[disneysteve]

Originally Posted by mbhunter

But it's not the packaging that makes one product taste better than the other. It's the ingredients and processing that go into the product.

I think the point was that the fancy packaging, licensed characters, etc., are part of what make the brand name cost more. And just because it has a fancy box, doesn't make it a better or tastier product.

We buy plenty of store brand items, some of which we actually prefer to the brand name version.

[Ima saver]

I did not like the way Kraft mac anc cheese was tasting, so we tried a much cheaper brand. We think it tastes better and it is much less than Kraft.