‘You cannot fool all of the people all of the time’. Both scientific observation and everyday experience show that people simply do not carry on buying a particular thing unless they derive satisfaction from its consumption. This satisfaction exists in a number of dimensions, and the image alone of a product is not sufficient to overcome defects in its performance. It is not easy to create satisfaction. It can be argued that many consumer products are not exactly necessary; it is undeniably true that most innovations do not succeed in pleasing the consumer, and consequently fail. Whatever your personal opinion about items on supermarket shelves, the probability is strongly that their presence there means plenty of other people like them.
For generations, Guinness ran highly creative advertising campaigns for its close-to-unique brew, campaigns which achieved the highest recall ratings, and which by and large the public found entertaining and charming. Yet, when it came to the crunch, the number of people drinking the brew regularly did not increase ¡ª for the rather fundamental reason that a large proportion of people do not like the taste of Guinness.
The public’s demand for a reliable taste is what is thought to have caused the great volte face at Coca-Cola when the new recipe was withdrawn within a few days of its launch (though the alacrity with which this happened suggests something more subtle may have been taking place). It may be that the taste of Coca-Cola has actually changed subtly over the years (and it is quite impossible to prove of course), in line with changes in taste generally; yet, not even Coke’s massive advertising budget could persuade consumers to accept an abrupt change.
Consumer satisfaction is of direct importance to the manufacturer when the product is a frequent purchase. When it is infrequent, the individual consumer’s ability to experiment and decide on preference by trial and error is more or less removed, particularly for expensive things. Unscrupulous manufacturers might consider selling less than effective products (and historically they have done), but it is the relationship with the distribution channels which brings about fair deals.