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Product Proliferation

Cosmic Mist

Cosmic Mist

Bluelighter
Joined
Dec 24, 2002
Messages
1,510
Ok, i'm sure you have all recently noticed the flood of new lollies, chocolates,chips, and drinks to the already bountiful snack food market in the more recent past.

WHat i want to know why have these corporations suddenly chosen to overwhelm us with such combinations of food product??

I mean honestly - you now have chips that taste like meat pies; Chocolate with three flavours in it at once; Wafer-chocolate with 4 formats, with and with out caramel. You can buy cherry ripes in block, bar, or ball format, and you can now buy 9 different varieties of Coka Cola.

I understand the idea of trying to expend mature markets, and recapturing lost consumers. I realise that market penetration for these companies is now largely impossible without such proliferation - i have done a bit of marketing in my time.

What i want to know is why it has all suddenly started in the last year or so? And How it is that different corporation such as Smith's Chips, Cadbury's and Coke all decided to do it at almost the same time??

Finally, what do you think of it? Love it? Hate it? Why?
 
I like the idea of having new products coming at me all the time. Vanilla coke is great, and wow, love the white m&ms. I like trying out new things, but if you don't like it don't buy it! simple as that IMO :\
 
Product diversity sucks. We should all be eating the same thing, doled out in portions based on individual needs and not wants. Eh comrades?
 
Maybe its because of the media been trying to encourage people to start leading healthy lifestyle, eating healthy fruits and veggies, blah blah, and suddenly a lot of people have been joining up gyms and changed their eating habts, and maybe their (the junk food/sweets companies) product sales dropped, and they decided to start making new products to get the "consumers" who have changed their eating habits and lifestyle, so they start marketing new products to get them sucked into the commericalised consumerism world of new products simply out of curiousity, and even if everyone tired a couple of times of their new products, in short period of time, they could suddenly make nice neat profit for the shareholders in short period of time, and it's often a "experiement" for a lot of companies because a lot of these companies providong new products often had their "new" products overseas for years and they suddenly realised there's a plenty of room left to experiement with the Australian market.

So simply, the companies have noticed that there's a lot of potheads in Australia, and potheads always get creative and get curious with new products and "experiement" the new products while stoned off their nuts on some nice potent homegrown weed. Because I know a lot of stoners will still eat the products even they werent that impressed or pleased with the new products because they will just eat it just for the sake of munchies.

Also...... the companies have realised that more and more Australians are starting to become less active outdoors, and spend a lot of time indoors surfing the net, and TV and other types of media, so the consumers are exposed to millions of adversitements a day, I mean its hard to get a day thru without seeing a single adversitement, unless you lived in the remote outback in the bush and lead nomadic hippy lifestyle or like a Bush Tuckerman. So the companies must have been doing a lot of researching on Australian consumers/market, simply way to increase the sales, or to keep their consumers happy with varies of products on sale to keep the customers returning for more as they will know there's more options on the shelves, which often makes hard for hardcore potheads to decide which product to buy, because sometimes I have often standed like a dickhead in 24 hour servos or supermarkets for ages and staring at products because they simply too many stuff to pick.....
 
I think there is also an element of mindshare associated with this trend. As Urbanhog said with more people spending time on the net or at the gym etc. maybe they're not watching as much T.V. (I wish). New products are a reason to advertised and take up more shelf space in the shops. This results in what is refered to as more "mind share".

Take for example cola flavoured soft drink. How many people think "Coca Cola" or "Pepsi" when thinking about cola. It's that sort of association of brand with product that the companies want.

The most worring thing I've found is the number of instant type products filling up the shops. From instant teriyaki in a box to, get this, instant scones. It seems no one has the ability to prepare a meal without a sauce in a packet. It wierds me out a little.

Cuddles:)
 
And also supermarkets are opening longer hours and everyday.....and there's more time for the consumers to check out the stuff on the shelves and often a trip to the supermarket without a shopping list on your hand can be crazy! you come home with more products than you orgainally planned to get... thats what the comapnies what you to do! as if the products are giving you messages like BUY ME! BUY ME! BUY ME! BUY ME!
 
It's all just one giant conspiracy (perpetrated by an unknown organisation) to desensitise me to new products for the nefarious purpose of creating a super-race of sugar resistant kill-bots trained to kill while still in the womb.

While that first statement is false, so is this one.

I have become much more apathetic towards bright shiny new food products lately. They're advertised everywhere and it just makes me want to go home and cook some real food.

Sugar and salt are flavourings but not food in their own right!
 
when i moved out of home and had to start buying *all* my own groceries, it was the scariest thing at first - you shoulda seen me, walking down the aisles wide-eyed, having absolutely no idea what to get or what anything did or was.

.. for a while at first i had cupboards full of strangely named snack foods and weird ingredients i still have yet to use. once i rang my mum from coles to ask what the fuck i should actually buy.

i'm a bit better now (you'd hope so, after 2 years) but i still get stuck for about 10 minutes deciding which brand of cheese or frozen vegetables should be better. craziness! :D :D


still not sure what i'm doing with ground rice though
 
eloise said:
still not sure what i'm doing with ground rice though
Click to expand...

Gluten-free Ground Rice Pudding

Ingredients: to serve four
550 ml milk
75g ground rice
25g sugar
25g butter
2 eggs
1 drop vanilla essence

Instructions:
Bring the milk to the boil and sprinkle in the ground rice, stirring all the time.
Simmer gently for 20 minutes.
Allow to cool.
Beat the sugar, butter and egg together and then mix in the rice and milk and the vanilla essence.

Place in an ovenproof bowl, then put in Preheated oven on gas mark 4/ 350°F/180°C

Bake for 1 hour.

Hope I have helped you to work out what to do with ground rice. =D

Sorry Mods, I know I am off topic here..... 8(
 
^^ ah, what a boy scout! :D

Yeah, I've noticed this trend lately too... I just find it bemusing. It's like "they've got WHAT now?" (laugh). It really is a crack up. There's even brands branching into different genres, not just line extensions - take Milo Cereal for example. If I'm interested, I'll buy it, if not, I won't.

What have people tried and liked/disliked?

I've had the new Strawberry Ripe - wrong, just wrong.

Vanilla Coke - or more specifically, Diet Vanilla Coke... sensational.

Oh and the new Twisties in a ring shape.... they're CHEEZELS ! A blatant rip off, not a scrap of difference in either taste or shape.

Any others? Anyone tried the Hazelnut Snickers or the Sweet Chilli Doritos?
 
that's so cool! if anyone with coeliac diesease wants to come over, i've got the catering covered :D

and damn right about the cheezel twisties >:|

the crunchie biscuits were always pretty high up with me!
i think "finding nemo 'muffin snacks'" are taking things a bit too far though :(
 
Pleonastic said:
Product diversity sucks. We should all be eating the same thing, doled out in portions based on individual needs and not wants. Eh comrades?
Click to expand...

You shop at Aldi then?

...you Nazi...
 
I'm such a gimmick whore. When something new comes out I have to try it purely so that I can say that I have and know if its any good. This desire has increased substantially since I started working in a supermarket. Every week I see something new being promoted and it drives me crazy until I purchase it and try it. Take the Sprite Ice for example, The Coke rep guy stacked the drinks fridge full of the bloody stuff one Monday morning and I spent the next 3 days staring at this bright blue liquid, until I caved and bought some. After that I didnt really care much about it, I just had to know what it was like.

Right now its the Milo and the Simpsons cereals that are out. They may be expensive... but I really MUST try them. :)

stace.
 
Urbanhog said:
Because I know a lot of stoners will still eat the products even they werent that impressed or pleased with the new products because they will just eat it just for the sake of munchies.
Click to expand...

i bought a packet of biscuits and they actually said on them "for when you get the munchies" or something like that. I thought it was hilarious, its not half obvious who that is targetting 8)
 
But seriously, gimmicks are one thing and I can get caught up in them to, but INSTANT SCONES!! Just add milk!

The instructions state to mix in a cup of milk and knead out to cut scones out. So this packet was being sold for $1.60. For a cup of S.R. flour, vegetable oil and salt. That's one hell of a mark up. It's not like you save any time because you still have to knead it. Also in this catagory are pancake shakes. Flour, egg and milk. Is it really so hard to mix three ingredients together and blend them?

Rant over

Stace: It must suck having all that product placement in your face all the time. That's the sort of mind share advertising kills for.

Cuddles :)
 
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