Diet Cherry Pepsi, Mint Mojito Gum, and Don Imus
By Choma Z. Ghee-rr-8
What’s up everyone? Since I am not getting the same feedback that I used, I will assume it’s because my writing went soft. I guess I am going to have to bring back the old Choma. Out of human decency, I kept him caged. But I will allow him to feed off your ignorance and comments.
Anyway, I am taking this marketing class, and it fascinated me. I never knew how much businesses know about all of us. Not just what we consumers have bought, but what we will buy, why we will buy it, and how to make us buy it. Think about how powerful that is: imagine if the lonely Abesha ladies out there with 5-year engagements/8 year-long boyfriends could alter “consumption behavior” like that? I know what you are thinking: what would they blame cheating on then? . . . . Aye-zowe . . . . The resourcefulness of the guilty in projecting blame is a discussion for another day.
In marketing, there is a phenomenon called market segmentation in which sellers define the audience that they are targeting—the consumers but also if there is an intermediate that is involved in making decisions such as doctors with patients then they too are targeted. These parties are studied according to attitude and behavior. Attitude is a largely inflexible individual characteristic often shaped by culture whereas behavior is a learned but more flexible outlook that can be modified. An example of attitude is the general perception of womens’ roles in Saudi culture, whereas behavior is exemplified by personal hygiene like wearing condoms during sex—perhaps not your baseline activity but it can be modified. So these marketers try to define these paths even before they launch their products, and they define the potential markets in advance. When the product gets introduced—BANG! It catches on really quickly. Success with sales is no accident. If it is such a science, you may ask, then why do so many products fail: well, the market may be hard to divide, the characterizations of consumers may be incorrect, flawed segmentation, or the product could really suck!
I mention this because I have encountered two reverse failures: Diet Cherry Pepsi and Mint Mojito Gum by Orbitz. Both of these products are among my favorites. I like them so much I thought about investing in their stocks—both of which have traded near 52week highs since the release of these products. The soda tastes better than any cherry soda I have ever had. The gum—that badboy tastes like the drink for real. When I was broke, I would do three shots of gum before clubbing. During tsome, I chewed that gum while others imbibed. The problem: these two fantastic products are never in enough supply. I find everything else, but these two fly off the shelves. If I were a businessman, and consumers showed a clear interest in some products over another, I would either raise prices or shift production towards the favored items. The word of mouth is enough for these two to sell without much hype. Imagine if they put in a little work (try them if you get a chance). In Japan , the 7-11 actually takes weekly inventory in making decisions about which goods to stock. Literally, what is on the shelf is determined by purchases. What did you say . . . go move to Japan ? You better hope so . . . in 20 years you’ll be hitting on my ½ Japanese kids.
So, then the question is do consumers have feedback effects upon social consumption? One recent event suggests yes/perhaps: the firing of Don Imus. If anyone has ever heard this man, he is old, cranky, witty, and sometimes really funny. He has a long history of uttering some very ignorant comments even aside from his ‘nappy headed hos’ slip. And he wasn’t sorry for the pain it caused them. He was sorry it caused such a big deal. But that’s beside the point. He was earning $10million a year from the radio alone. Corporate sponsors had supported him and, implicitly, his views. I used to think people like him operated in isolation. But Imus is not alone. Even during a recent trip to DC, I had the misfortune of listening to a mean-spirited Abesha cow talking poorly about Black-Americans. From work ethic to demeanor, she just spewed a river of ignorance from her ugly mouth. I always knew that such bias existed among us, but I had forgotten. Should I blame her being raised in Addis? I dunno. Someone I used to date who also came to the states after high school and now has an African-American boyfriend, and they seem happy (of course, we all know I was better . . . . except for the 7 inch difference in height between him and me in stature and his superior musculature...damn these black people. Where is my mom when I need her? . . . ’Aye-zowe’).
But what is to be said about public consumption. Are such biases, unchanged during her 7 years in America , ever going to change? Are they an attitude or a behavioral perception? My parents used to have similar perceptions and they changed, but are they the exception. All I know is that Imus got away with unfettered bigotry for 30 years, and if he hadn’t picked on an exemplary group of women (accomplished student athletes), he probably would still be espousing his views. There was corporate pressures that subsequently got him fired not Al Sharpton and Jesse Jackson limping around in circles with cameras in their faces. But don’t get it wrong—the basketball team was getting hate mail!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! What the hell did they do????
My question is what role do we have in product offerings—passive victims, suckers, prisoners of consumption, or financially empowered market arbiters?
Random trivia: did you know Choma is a person, place, and a thing. My tag is the ULTIMATE NOUN! Sweat me. You know you want to:
