Personal Observation: The Consumer Marketing Strategy of Lay’s Potato Chips Brand®™ From a Customer’s Perspective

I chose a bag of Lay’s Cheddar Sour Cream Potato Chips and Lay’s Hickory Smoke Barbecue Chips and first noticed the bright, crisp, detailed pop-up images of the chip’s crunchy texture and shape that caught my eyes’ attention.

 

The aluminum plastic packaging itself did not get my attention but the neat, clear and bright (i.e. “good-looking”) display of the potato ships bag product caught my attention. I then proceeded to open the bag of potato chips encountering a “top-off” of air filled in the top of the bat that was there as a strategy to sell less of the potato chips about a little over half the bag instead of filling up close to the end of the bag with more potato chips to avoid  selling more product that would be included for the sales price.

The crisp, fresh and savory aroma of fried potato chips oozing from the aluminum bag followed in sync together with the look of the crisp, crunchy texture of the potato chips felt sliding on my fingers and hands made my mouth water and mentally “hungry to eat” even if I did not really feel like eating at the moment and was full from earlier.

The addictive fried, oily, salty, somewhat savory flavorful taste of each flavor of Lay’s Potato Chips was “catchy” to my taste buds and the feelings of my mouth as I crunched and felt the savory taste in the texture of the potato chips before swallowing them in instant self-gratification of the “pleasurable taste and filling” of eating the potato chips…

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Let’s review.

What consumer marketing strategy tactics were most effective in persuading this consumer to eat Lays Potato Chip Brand®™?

1. Sight – the eye-catching bright “blowed-up, professional-looking” image design on the bags showcasing the bright, colorful texture of the potato chips caught this consumer’s mouth-watering hungry interest and attention.
2. Aroma – the pleasant savory aroma smell of the potato chips’ flavor caught his nose’s attention. (Endnote: Now eyes and nose are paying attention in agreement to the self-satisfying delicious product.)
3. Selectivity – this consumer had options to choose from various kinds of Lay’s Potato Chip products; from texture (e.g. “regular, wavy or ‘ruffle-shaped’”), flavor taste, smell and color of the potato chips (e.g. “Cheddar Cheese & Sour Cream yellow potato chips and reddish, light brown Hickory Smoke Barbecue potato chips”).
4. Familiarity – Lay’s Potato Chips is a classic, famous and familiar American household name brand used in a lot of daily living situations: from family barbecues, everyday lunches with sandwiches, TV commercials and American artwork and symbols (i.e. “graffiti”). This consumer knew from popular and past experience that Lay’s Potato Chip’s Brand is a proven, trusted and satisfying product for the purpose intended.
5. Convenience – This consumer could buy Lay’s Potato Chip’s at almost any store or place in America; be it Walmart, Fred Meyer, Walgreens, Albertson’s, Costco; virtually any convenience store at a gas station; public snacking vending machines, social occasions be it parties, lunch breaks at work, community events, family barbecues, potlucks…
6. Taste – The crisp, oily and fried taste of potatoes as “chips” is an appealing irresistible, unique, delicious savory taste complimentary to a variety of different food products ranging from hotdogs, hamburgers, fried chicken and sandwiches.

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Lesson: know and understand the “background” strategies at work of marketers to produce and sell your own products and/or services; though in a godly, “Christ-honoring” honest way.

You might ask: “Why the detailed analysis about potato chips?”

I say because you get to understand the variables used by greedy marketers to exploit materialistic, instant self-gratifying behavior of wicked selfish generations into making them (the marketers) “fat in bucks” and Americans and Westerners “fat in debt” over junk food and personal obesity epidemic.

Food addiction is a real major obstacle and challenge in many people’s lives today. Look around wherever you are in public and you see.

Nevertheless, when YOU the consumer learn through experience the ways marketers do their best to influence your purchasing decisions you can subconsciously make “better buys” that may actually BENEFIT YOU in the future instead of someone else’s greedy schemes.