Prev | Next | Contents

17.0 DON'T JUDGE A CEREAL BOX BY ITS COVER; CONSUMER CULTURE ARTICLES, FROM SAVVY-DISCOUNTS.com

Since the last issue, I have seen several reports on store brands.

On an Oprah Winfrey show, the same apple juice was poured into two different bottles: a glass bottle with a picture of a kindly, elderly woman on the label, and a plastic bottle with a plain generic label. Shoppers were then asked to taste the apple juice and state which they liked. Almost everyone preferred the juice with the nice packaging.

On "Steals & Deals" (CNBC), a reporter tested off-brand cereals on a number of people at restaurant. Virtually no one could tell the difference between the brand-name cereal and the store brand. They estimated that consumers could save between 15%-60% by buying the store brand.

Here's a quote from a book about supermarket shopping entitled, Can You Trust A Tomato In January, (Vince Staten, Touchstone Press, $10). "My mother thought they [store brands] were the hind end of a company's production line, the stuff that wasn't good enough to carry the Nabisco label or the Kraft label and was sold off to packers who turned them into store brands. Store brands are always cheaper than national brands and that has given them the reputation as the brands of poor people. But that isn't so... They are now frequently as good as name brands."

So you may be paying a small fortune over the years for brand-name products with no real benefit.

Prev | Next | Contents