Power of choice
We live in a world of brands and consumer products, what we buy and how we do it sends out a message about ourselves. We project youth, rebellion, freshness, health and appeal when we elect one brand over the other. We exert choice. We like things which are new, exciting, trendy and make us feel better about ourselves.
Brand specialists, new product designers and manufacturers know it for a long time. They keep the sense of freshness and appeal by innovating their offers and periodically releasing into the market new products, new packages and new concepts of old well tested formulas. The word “NEW” sells. It sets a product apart in a line of current offers. It appeals to the consumer sense of choice.
This long lasting dance of seduction between manufacturers and consumers takes place in the ballroom of the retail environment. It can be a cozy room of an old fashioned Mom’n’Pop store or it can be in the gigantic fields of Shopping Malls across the nation, in themed lines, isles and corridors.
Every time a consumer chooses one product over another in a packed shelf, the dynamics of choice have played a part in the economic cycle.
Until recently manufacturers and retailers used six main tools to influence how shoppers choose:
- Branding
- Advertising
- Packaging and the “New”-formula
- Shelf Placement
- Point of Purchase [print] media
- Price campaigns
These tools were designed to communicate with the consumer at different levels in order to make him/her choose a certain product over the overall offer. Most of these tools have a real economic value and have created multimillion dollar industries attached to them. Advertising, packaging design, brand development and promotional print media are proven to be valuable resources to communicate with the consumer. Each one of them has become a Media channel between manufacturer and consumer, designed to influence choice.
The dynamics between manufacturers, retailers, consumers and above mentioned industries can be defined as The Economics of Choice. And the Holy Grail in the Castle for this game of communication is point of purchase communication.
