Moses Richu

After reading Sonal Haria’s blog, which details the great lengths companies (in her example, Lays) will go to prove to consumers that they care for them. She linked a video showing (presumably) Lays workers hand crafting a wooden billboard over a period of 10 days. The objective is to illustrate to customers the how much care goes into the preparation of their crisps.

I would estimate that the average packet of chips retails at $2.50, and hence doesn’t constitute a large proportion of a consumers budget (hence consumers are less inclined to think too hard before making their purchase). Additionally, being a convenience good, consumers expect to be able to easily find the chips. Furthermore, consumers are unlikely to be deluded into thinking that every Lays chip that they eat was carefully sliced from a potato before having the various flavours massaged into it by highly trained ‘chip maker’. They are cognizant that chip manufacturing is an automated process, and hence that the chip that they are eating was a potato that rolled through a series of machines before finally being bagged and shipped to them. And for as long as the chip is of a certain quality, they are perfectly okay with it!

With that in mind, the only logical reason for a chip advert would be to remind consumers that the product exists, and subtly imply that the chips are good quality. This enables consumers to easily recognise the chips the next time that they are in the ‘Snacks’ aisle of their grocery store. One would therefore be inclined to think that a simple advert would suffice.

However, firms go far beyond this, into all sorts of (more expensive) advertising. But does all this work affect the behaviour of consumers, or was all they needed a simple reminder? Are companies wasting billions of dollars on elaborate advertising, instead of focussing on other methods of promotion? Or do consumers actually care?