Product Differentiation is not new

I often rant about product differentiation. Before I blogged, I wrote the following on my family’s private spokt.com site:

I am glad that we have so many choices at the grocery store these days compared with, say, the 1970s but there is a downside. Kara wrote “Ritz” on my shopping list but when I grabbed a box I noticed that they were “Whole Wheat.” What does that mean? Is that normal? Are regular Ritz partial wheat? I’d better try to find regular. That proved to be challenging. Every box had some kind of special description in the blow-out bubble: Reduced Fat, Low Sodium, Cherry Swirl. It was crazy! I started looking for “Classic” or “Original” or even “Old School” with no luck. I just wanted some run-of-the-mill Ritz crackers and I couldn’t find them. I finally settled on the whole wheat, regular fat content, knowing it would likely be a reject at home but I was getting tired of reading. At home Kara looked at the box and said, “This isn’t the kind we get. Didn’t they have any extra crispy stuffed crust jalapeño (kosher) reduced fat deep ridges?”

OK, I was exaggerating. She didn’t really say “kosher.”

With apologies to family that already read this, I continued:

The problem is that when shopping I'm usually working with incomplete instructions and indefinite choices. Like spaghetti sauce: original, chunky, garlic, garlic and onion, overpowering onion, sleep-on-the-couch onion, chunky onion, meat, three cheese, three meat, oregano, oregano basil. It is like they call out every ingredient separately. I want all that stuff, except for the onion chunks and mystery meats 2 and 3.

I was thinking about this the other day and I realized that it really isn’t a new phenomenon. I think that marketing folks just don’t try to disguise it. Back in the 70s it wasn’t Franco-American Spaghetti, ringlet style or Almond Joy, nut-free! They invented whole new names.