Whenever an industry or business reduces service or somehow diminishes the experience by offering less to consumers in an effort to reduce cost, there are feelings of alienation and maybe even indignation.
And although most passengers on airlines are used to not having food during their trips, a product manager at Kraft thought it might be a good idea to take advantage of the captive audience to do product testing. Kraft is now handing out packets of cream cheese that has 1/3 less fat with bagels to people on select JetBlue flights.
What if multiple vendors were lining up to offer this service for product testing? If you were an airline executive, what if every single brand touchpoint in your customer experience was outsourced to a product testing market research firm? You’d have literally no control yourself. Pretty scary. Like the marketing professor at CMU, I feel that the novelty would wear off pretty quickly and consumers would be wary that they are actually guinea pigs.
Slightly related, springwise posted about a company called Matter that offers product samples that companies *think* adds value to potential consumers (most of it seems like useless marketing schwag that adds to our garbage). Unless this was an opt in service, the waste created seems like it would be worse than the onslaught of weekly coupon mailers we’re already subjected to.
I don’t know man, I think I’d be more than willing to be made a guinea pig in return for getting something more than a bag of 5 pretzels on a flight. What do you guys need to know? Social security number? Blood type? Entire Amazon purchase history? You got it, now give me that bagel.