Sealed With a Kiss…

Some people shop at the grocery store and they automatically grab the name brand of a product. They do this thinking that the store brand is an inferior product. However, the name brand of a product is not always better (IMHO).  Of course this is subjective because it is mostly about “taste” and personal preference.  Other people automatically grab the store brand because they think that they will save money, and that it does not taste different.  I would disagree with both thoughts.  The truth is that you don’t always save money with the store brand.  Also, taste is again “subjective”, so the idea that there is no taste difference is absurd. However, packaging can affect the product as well. Let’s take honey mustard for example, since I use it on some of my sandwiches.  I have bought both the name brand and store brand, in the past.  Let me state that the taste of store-brand vs. Name brand, of anything, can vary drastically.  As for the honey mustard, the slightly better taste goes to the name brand, but just slightly.  The aperture on the bottle, that you squeeze the mustard through, of the store brand is larger. This larger aperture forces you to use more of the mustard, as more comes out in each squeeze.  This “larger flow” of mustard, forces you to replace the mustard more often, and THAT doesn’t sound “money-saving” to me. The aperture on the name brand is narrower, and this makes it easier to control the amount that you want.  On the other hand, plain yellow mustard does not have a significant taste difference, again in my opinion. Also the size of both apertures, are very similar. In the case of yellow mustard: store brand wins. Now, let’s consider pre-wrapped, pre sliced cheese.  The store brand has plastic edges that are “crimped” together tightly and are hard to open, without tearing the package and or the cheese.   Also, there is typically cheese crushed in the seams, and does not make it to your sandwich. This not only makes a mess when you finally get them separated, but the cheese crumbles that are in the seams spills out.  Also, many times some corners of the cheese rip off because of said packaging.  This again does not sound money-saving (not to mention, it sounds “mess making” lol).  Lastly, there are restaurant “to-go” containers to think about.   I have seen everything from very simple Styrofoam containers to those that are very nice and reusable.  Keep in mind that, I am not talking about top restaurants.  Some of these “to-go” containers, you cannot tell which end is up.  Yet, some are microwave and dishwasher safe, for the thrifty, who like to reuse them.  As you can see there are more issues other than simply “cheap” vs “expensive”.   Maybe you never thought about packaging, but as I always say “it’s not an issue, until it becomes an issue”.  Packaging is an industry of well over $900 billion.  It is said that for every $11 item, at least a dollar is spent on packaging.   It is estimated that by 2020, the packaging industry will be an industry of over 1 trillion dollars.  Packaging is something that we all tend to take for granted.  We do this even though, packaging truly can control us.  Their goal is, to make us choose their brand over their competitor.  They have done studies telling them the colors that sell the best.  These studies show the size and shape of the packaging that encourages the consumer to choose their product over that of their adversary.  I find it interesting that now the packaging, for products focused on millennials, is much nicer than it used to be.  Maybe now you might give packaging a second look, and think “why am I choosing this product?” and “how will the packaging affect my interaction with this product?”