The Magic Bullet
Pre-packaged Mini-Meals such as Oscar Mayer’s Lunchables work for millions of kids and adults while triggering disgusted Yuck’s from an even greater number of rejecters. The users have a simple rationale the products work and they’re easy to use The rejecters say they are overpriced, over-packaged, hard to open, and have too many preservatives, fat grams, and calories and way too much sodium. Observers of kids in school say that they are much too hard for many school kids to open without help. Some of the opposed feel strongly enough about all that’s wrong with these products to suggest that there should be laws against allowing them to be marketed for children. But the bottom line is that they work and they are easy Even if they aren’t easy for kids to open, even if they are hard for to fit into small lunch boxes, they work for the parents and little kids are willing to struggle with whatever works for the bigger kids. The bottom line the products work and the category grows and grows.
Internet shopping is soaring because it works and because it’s easy when you know how. Consumers who successfully did some of their holiday shopping on the Internet reported pride in their accomplishment as well as time and hassle saving. Many were better able to zero on the needs of their giftees on the Internet than they would have been able to do in traditional stores. The feelings of accomplishment were reminiscent of the excitement generated by double coupons in heyday of double coupons when shoppers counted their hits and their savings. Our qualitative input suggests that Internet holiday sales would have been double $7 billion if more of the triers had been able to become buyers.