Do you know who bakes your chips and chops your salsa?

Do you know who bakes your chips and chops your salsa?

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To help us shoppers stock up for summer barbeques, supermarkets will prepare displays grouping together holiday favorites. Think: Marshmallows, chocolate and graham crackers for S’more ingredients in seconds or chips and beer.

In addition to convenience, those combinations will have a subliminal effect, according to new research, that causes you to think products were perfectly paired together in the same way a sommelier selects a meal’s wine or engineers code computer software. Also, the research says we shoppers believe that our everyday brands design and test products – such as chips and salsa or toothpaste and toothbrushes – so they work best with the complimentary product of the same brand.

Whether that’s true – brand spokespeople swear it’s fact while consumer experts laugh heartily – it’s a bias that can in many cases cost us money this summer when throwing that big barbeque and stocking both the fridge and the bar.

“The more complimentary products a brand has the more you get hijacked by that brand to pay their prices,” says Ryan Rahinel, a researcher at the University of Minnesota who decided to study this effect after finding himself crossing the border to Canada so his over-the-counter skin therapy products were manufactured by the same company. “This notion that things are tested together is over-generalized. We know it’s true in some categories – such as with printers and ink. But the margarita mix probably isn’t made anywhere near the tequila of the same brand.”

Rahinel and his team performed a series of experiments, first dividing subjects into four groups and serving each one a combination of chips and salsa

from make-believe brands, Festivities and Party Time. While two groups ate one brand of chips dipped into another’s salsa, the two groups that sampled both chips and salsa from the same brand reported much having higher levels of enjoyment. Even though all four groups were actually just served the exact same Tostidos chips and Tostidos salsa.

“We were able to create out of thin air,” says Rahinel, “that there is this idea that brand combination creates enjoyment.”

Sounds unfounded, but beliefs are actually critical components to our enjoyment, says Joseph Redden, an assistant professor of marketing at University of Minnesota who coauthored the study.

“There’s a top down process,” says Redden. “You may like orange juice but if I gave you a glass, you’d enjoy it much less if I told you I spit in it first – even if that wasn’t true. With the chips and the salsa, it’s not a trick because if you consume brands together you will enjoy them more.”

But that means actually knowing that brands match and when serving guests this summer – when most of us dump chips into the bowl or put buns and burgers on a platter  – it’s lost entirely. What you likely have instead is a table topped with full-priced items – not a comparable store brand or sale selection – even if you stop at the supermarket’s display.

That’s why when considering displayed items, you should also check out the larger selection from the aisle, says Andrea Woroch, a consumer expert who contributes to couponsherpa.com. Because even if those hamburger buns are on sale it might not be the best sale. And don’t forget not only to look at prices but also at price-per-unit, which is more telling, she says.

“There are so many tactics making a consumer think you need this product to go with that product,” says Woroch.

“You see it online also – when the site shows you ‘people who bought this also bought…’ But it’s a marketing tactic and nothing more.”

 

 

Secrets To SMART Supermarket Shopping

You may be devoted to brand names but experts say your favorite toothpaste will work just fine with any brush while your clothes will be clean regardless of whether your detergent brand matches the fabric softener. Instead shop smart and:

1)   Be aware of the brand bias, which makes it go away.

2)   Remind yourself that it works for lower-priced brands also – if you want matching, you will enjoy the generic or sales matches just as much.

3)   Compare price-per-unit, which gives you a better comparison than simply the package price.

4)   Instead of buying from displays, head to the item’s home aisle to see all your options.