Consumers & Products: Who failed whom?

As consumers, we use so many products through our lifetime. There are some which just remain etched in our memory since childhood. For instance, I don’t think anyone has forgotten the Parle G Glucose biscuits with that cute chubby kid on the wrapper and she’s still very much around. Another brand which had a similar cute kid on its packaging was Amul’s Nutramul chocolate milk powder. Now they have a cartoon of a kid trying a karate kick, on it!

I decided to make a list of products and services that have failed to sustain the advantages they had enjoyed with consumers. Some of them have actually gone and ruined what was a winner in the name of making improvements and no amount of customer feedback forms that I’ve filled out, seems to wake up their woolly-headed back-office staff! So, these I have definitely rated as products having failed me. I’m wondering if this is some really bizarre strategy of getting people to notice them anyway?

It does give stores some talk-time. I came across this video where two citizen journalists (I think) in the US, called Gary and Crystal, talked about how they had gone to some mall in Chicago to be in time for a free coupon that was being given out to the first 400 shoppers who walked in. They walked in at 9.00 am and found the store empty and the store employees pretending they didn’t know some such offer was on! One guy told them, the coupons were all sold out. Another lady told them, the store had only seen about 80 people or so. Both Gary and Crystal then go on to talk about how badly the store is managed and how even the clothes are not displayed well. Crystal finds a top-end designer dress marked down but hidden – if you didn’t look hard enough, you would never find it. She actually says that, may be someone in the store was hoping that she didn’t find it! So, you see, ultimately the store does get talked about. (Hear them here:Shopping Escapades)

Meanwhile, there are some products/services which were good and have still disappeared from circulation. I’m wondering if I should have hoarded some of them since I can’t seem to find them anymore and maybe the big bosses who run these companies, will finally get the message? Have I failed these products in some way?

The fact is that sometimes, some products are only released to test market reactions and then withdrawn. But how many positive responses do these firms need for a product to get a green signal and then a more mass scale launch? Go to the ITC website and you’ll see a range called Superia which is not launched on a big scale – either the shampoos or the soaps. I think this range is meant for tier 2 cities and towns but why not the bigger cities? They do have a very good shampoo made of hibiscus extracts and when I tried it, it felt good on my hair. Ironically, it’s available in sachets at kiranas (mom-n-pop grocery stores) across Mumbai but not in the bigger shops. Lately, I’ve not even seen this hibiscus one even at those small stores.  

Another initiative that was started recently and fizzled out just as quickly was sugar-free cakes. Not many people were even aware that Monginis – a chain of cake shops in Mumbai – did introduce a range of sugar-free cakes and that people had not taken to them. Again, I wonder which people didn’t like them because even I heard of this at the cake shop itself, when a diabetic person asked the store owner about sugar-free cakes and he in turn mentioned that such a range had been introduced but no one had liked it. So, were diabetics the ones to shun sugar-free cakes? Obviously not. The sugar-free concept has mushroomed to keep diabetics happy, so they can continue to have their sugar fix without endangering themselves. In this case, who were the customers polled or gave feedback about these cakes?

There are many such products launched by brands and then just taken off the shelves. If there is some mysterious and small segment of trial consumers, who are asked to give their opinions, then I know for a fact that they can get it badly wrong.

A few years ago, I read this report about how a pilot audience had absolutely panned a sitcom. They had been invited into a studio to watch a few episodes of this show and they had all universally disliked it. They had not liked most of the characters (except one) portrayed and almost all of them said that the characters didn’t resonate with them. Only one character, somehow, got everyone’s attention and everyone identified with.

You won’t believe it, if I told you that this sitcom which almost got canned – and would have seriously left me bereft, if that had happened – was ‘Friends’! The only character everyone liked was Monica Gellar. How could they not like the others?

That’s what audience/consumer judgement is like – subjective and not always rational. They saw the finicky, perfectionist Courtney Cox character as the only one that fit a mould that they found ‘true-to-life’. They criticized the other 5 characters in Friends, for one reason or the other, and made that the grounds on which to reject the sitcom entirely. Really, what are these people watching on television nowadays there anyway? Nothing remotely real about most of the stuff that gets aired there and nowhere as good as ‘Friends’. I’ve watched reruns of this show and never tire of the great scripts, superb dialogues, effortless acting by everyone (including Jennifer Aniston) all put together with some nifty bit of tight editing. No wonder this show ran houseful for 10 years. So, imagine if some smart studio executive had not greenlighted this show, what would have happened? A waste of wonderful talent would have been the least consequence of this audience/consumer feedback.

I know that yet another good show may have been canned (it’s not airing in India at least) for precisely the same reason. I watched 13 episodes of this new show called Kevin Hill on STAR Plus two years ago, which used to air on Tuesday at 8 pm. It was a show about this good-looking, smart, sassy black man called Kevin Hill, who is a lawyer in a prestigious firm and all the cases he has to fight in court were almost about problems faced by black people in America. He helps his community in his spare time as well, doing pro bono work. Again, the issues were dramatized well without breast-beating about racism and it showed black people in a wonderful light. All of them pursuing the American Dream with spirit and optimism in the face of personal and professional setbacks. There was no sign of that show after the initial 13 pilot episodes. How many of you have watched it?

The above examples show how audiences/consumers can fail to distinguish between good and bad so completely, that atleast in one case, had their opinions been listened to, all of us would have been much worse off. I think people’s opinions should be asked for but not always taken as the Gospel word because if asked to give an opinion, almost everyone will express their two-bits worth of advice on ‘how you can improve’ something! The product might be just great as it is but all this opinion-taking can backfire badly, and a perfectly good product will disappear from the market. As an example of this is the black Lux soap – launched recently – but taken off just as quickly.

Anyway, while researching this story, I found out that in the US, there are websites which have done stories on failed products ranging from Apple gizmos which didn’t cut ice with consumers to McDonald’s products which people were not willing to bite into. How about getting an India list going? By the very nature of this article, my list is personal. It might be something I’ve actually tried or something that I know someone else might have liked – like the sugar-free cakes. Send me your list (if you like to, then state your reasons) to manali@seconddealnsteal.com. Your list can contain services as well, that you have enjoyed in the past and are missing now. This could be like a consumer feedback tidal wave…and let’s see who sinks and who swims. 

Products failing Consumers 

1. The chocolate Lux soap. Smells nothing like the chocolates I love so much.
2. Lemon flavoured Maggi noodles. The flavouring is so indistinct, it felt completely bland.
3. Moshe’s Mud Pie. The last time I tried it, it did indeed taste like mud. They do the best sandwiches and confectionery in Mumbai – don’t let the mud pie influence you too much.
4. Birdys sandwiches. They have ruined the quality of the bread by introducing something that is a mixture of white and brown bread with the consistency of rubber. Is someone at Birdys testing consumers reactions or consumers patience?

Consumers failed these products 

1. The black Lux soap.
2. The ‘German cake’ and bubblegum ice cream flavours from Baskin Robbins.
3. Café Coffee Day’s drink called Chococino. It had one scoop of chocolate ice cream and an Espresso shot. It acted like such a mood upper!
4. Sweet & Sour flavoured Maggi noodles. Loved the dual taste explosion.
5. Akai and Onida. Where has the ‘Owner’s pride and Neighbour’s Envy’ disappeared? Low cost provider of electronics – Akai – could have still blazed a trail, if quality and service were not the reasons that it shut shop.
6. Sugar-free cakes
7. Noga jams. Weren’t these good? 

About the Author

I own a website for second hand things/used stuff called www.seconddealnsteal.com. It's an e-listing service based in India, where you can look for bargain deals and buy and sell stuff without an intermediary - ie. a payment gateway.

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