Flashback Friday.
When companies offer instructions as to how much of their product to use, what do you think drives their decisions as to what advice to give?
Theory 1: They give the best advice.
Theory 2: They give reasonably good advice, erring on the side of you using more product versus less.
I’m with Theory 2. The quicker you go through their product, the more frequently you have to purchase it, and the richer they get. So they have an interest in your over-using their product.
Dan Myers agrees. He put up a great example of this on his website, Blue Monster. He writes:
When you buy laundry detergent these days, the cap usually serves as a handy measuring cup… Now, if you were a company that wanted to get people to use it up as fast a possible (read: waste as much of it as possible) so you could get some more out of them, what would you do? Well, having a devious mind myself, I’d make the cup bigger that it needs to be hoping people would consistently use more than they need. Especially given that people are more likely than not to fill the cup up to the top.
And that is exactly what you get on with the TIDE packaging. The cap, shown here, has three measuring lines in it: 1, 2, and 3. All of these are significantly lower than the top of the cap.
Furthermore, if one actually takes the time to read the instructions on the bottle, the 1 line is for “medium” loads, the 2 line is for large loads, and the 3 line is not even mentioned!!!
Why is it there if it isn’t mentioned? I say that it’s because for those who actually look at the cup instead of just filling it up, they want to give you the impression that 1 is small, 2 is medium, and 3 is large–thereby getting you to use more than necessary every time you launder. Scam Masters!!!
In another illustration, Myers videos himself brushing his teeth with the liberal swirl of toothpaste seen in your average advertisement. The result is a hilarious excessive frothing. A blob of toothpaste the size of a pea is likely sufficient for most of us, but toothpaste companies would probably prefer that you overdo it.
Relatedly, I’ve always been suspicious of how gas stations order the gas by quality/expense. Sometimes it goes cheaper on the left to expensive on the right, which is what you’d expect because we read left to right, but sometimes it’s reverse. Do people sometimes hit the far left button, assuming it’s the cheap gas, and accidentally spend more than they have to? I bet they do.
There must be hundreds of examples of this kind of trick.
This post originally appeared in 2009.
Lisa Wade, PhD is an Associate Professor at Tulane University. She is the author of American Hookup, a book about college sexual culture; a textbook about gender; and a forthcoming introductory text: Terrible Magnificent Sociology. You can follow her on Twitter and Instagram.
Comments 47
Mounir — September 6, 2009
I'm sorry but I don't think that people will be so easily and consistently fooled. Rather, it would be strange if no other brand tries to provide a more decent product. I'm with you on the fact that companies would prefer Two theory, and problably do try it out every so often. But if we're going to talk incentives here, there's good money to be made in designing a better cup and bragging about it consumers.
By the way, who would use that much toothpaste again if they tried it once? Maybe it just looks good to cover the tooth brush in ads.
lucy — September 6, 2009
I read a book once in which a character got a big promotion at the shampoo company for adding the word "repeat" to the instructions.
Annoyed — September 6, 2009
Every brand seems to have the same (or similar) cup. And I always thought I was using less than I needed, and I am still using too much! I have a front loading washer which uses less water and needs less detergent. So I always used a little less than 1. Turns out 1 is for medium loads. So there isn't even a mark for me! I should probably be using A LOT less than 1!
I first noticed this phenomenon with dog food. The dog food companies suggest you feed your dog about 6 times as much as a vet would.
My roommate took care of my cats when I was out of town for a month. When I got home they were enormous. Turns out he was giving them the amount of treats suggested on the back (6/day!).
Sam — September 6, 2009
A notable exception to this phenomenon is food - the "recommended serving" on the back of the box always strikes me as nowhere near enough. There are two advantages of this. First, people think they're getting more meals than they actually are. Second and more importantly, however, the small serving sizes come with low calorie counts, creating the illusion that the food is healthier than it is. Because how much people eat is controlled by how hungry they are/how delicious it is, rather than by the instructions on the box, there's no real downside to this tactic.
Jane — September 6, 2009
Actually Sam the obesity epidemic is, in fact, a downside.
Sam — September 6, 2009
I meant no economic downside for the manufacturers, obviously.
Andrew — September 6, 2009
Theory 2 applies to a pretty limited range of products. For high-value or warranty-inclusive products, there's a pretty big incentive to make sure that the instructions are as clear and accurate as possible. As the value goes down, the benefit of having a product misused as a result of poor instructions increases right along with the consumer's likelihood of replacing it with a higher-value product from the same supplier (IKEA probably has a foolproof metric of this).
Sabriel — September 6, 2009
When I got contacts a few months ago they sat me down and showed me a video about how to clean and store your contacts as well as how to put them in and take them out. The video was produced by the distributor of the contact lens solution (Alcon), and in the video the model used a TON of solution.
Conscious of the fact that the stuff costs almost $9.00 a bottle, I asked the optometrist if I really needed to use that much, and he said no, that the video was ridiculous. He further recommended that I use a preservative-free saline solution for getting off particles and save the expensive solution for a quick rinse and store. It would cost me at least $40/month to use the contact solution the way it was in the video, but I can cut that down to $5/month by being careful.
Normally I expect this sort of thing from marketers, but it bothered me to see it in a medical setting. I am normally inclined to follow doctors orders obsessively and questioning doctors is a skill I am lucky to have. I was tempted to do it exactly like I saw in the video anyways just to be sure, but I don't have that kind of cash.
Mounir — September 7, 2009
I agree with Andrew. Although I am no enemy of markets, clearly there is a need for vigilance towards marketing tricks like these. I would expect the problem to be most significant when there is little competition in a particular detail of products. Recommended dosages might just be such a detail.
Btw, I'm not in the States so this might not apply to you, but I always have to use MORE rice, pasta, couscous etc than recommended per person when cooking (and I'm no big eater).
Alex — September 7, 2009
Not only are they telling you to use way too much, but the stuff is mostly water anyway. I recently found a recipe on the internet to make laundry detergent, and decided I had to try it. The ingredients--borax, washing soda, and soap--cost less than one small bottle of detergent, and you use one bar of soap, a cup of one of the chemicals and half a cup of the other (I forget which way it was), and three gallons of water to make an enormous bucket of detergent. I'm still using the first batch, and have enough ingredients left that I can make four or five more, if I want to. The store-bought kind is slightly more concentrated, but not that much.
Louisa — September 7, 2009
hmm, well on most toothpastes they have directions for using only a pea-sized amount. I think on the commercial they just want to show you what the toothpaste looks like to have brand recognition.
Village Idiot — September 9, 2009
Y'all need to check out this blog: http://architectures.danlockton.co.uk/2007/02/07/packet-switching/
That link goes to a specific article about portion sizing (it's a big article), and there are many other examples found of "design with intent," and the intent is making you consume more product. Here's a snippet:
Packet switching
By Dan Lockton ⋅ February 7, 2007
Both Dr Tom Stafford (co-author of the fantastic Mind Hacks book & blog) and Gregor Hochmuth (creator of FlickrStorm, an improved Flickr search system) have been in touch suggesting packaging/portion sizes as a significant everyday architecture of control, (or at least an aspect of design which has a major impact on consumers’ behaviour, and can be used to change it), and pointing to articles on the work of Professor Brian Wansink, of Cornell University’s Food & Brand Lab.
That blog is full of fascinating research that will consume supersize portions of your time before you know it. Highly recommended.
Packaging = A Lot of Hot Air » Sociological Images — March 19, 2010
[...] Livingston of MontClair SocioBlog, in the tradition of Dan Myer’s takedowns of TIDE and Aquafresh, tells the tale of his aspirin purchase: It came in two sizes – 120 pills and 300 [...]
Original Will — March 19, 2010
I'd be interested to see how many people have double- or triple- sized washers and would actually be doing a "large" load on a regular basis. I'd also be interested to hear some alternatives for improvements, given that there has to be some excess to prevent spillage, as someone said above. Maybe a clear cap with obviously-labeled "large", "medium", and "small" lines?
One thing I've noticed that I find obnoxious is that practically all lotions now come in pump bottles. That way, when the bottle is "empty" there is still an inch at the bottom, unused. Heck, even ketchup comes in a squeeze bottle (not that I suggest using ketchup as hand lotion).
Leslee Bottomley Beldotti — February 20, 2015
Allergan would like for me to believe that I must use a separate disposable brush for each eye when applying it to my eyelashes.
They also recently increased the cost of a 3ml bottle of Latisse to $150. So there's that...
Dan — February 20, 2015
The makers of Alka Seltzer were looking to find a way to sell more of their product, so they came up with the catchy, "Plop plop fizz fizz" jingle to imply you should be using two of their pills, when researched showed taking two pills didn't provide any more relief than taking one. They effectively doubled their sales by singing at us. And knowing this, I still take use two pills.
fork — February 20, 2015
I haven't noticed the different ordering of gas; it's always cheap on the left. But I do buy the expensive gas now because it is ethanol-free. Big difference in gas mileage. Enough that it's more economical on a per mile basis to buy the expensive gas.
Speaking of cars, I just recently found out that it's no longer recommended to change the oil every 3000 miles/ 5000 km.Maybe it's just me and everyone else got the memo back in 2010. Or maybe the auto industry wants you to keep servicing your car frequently and hasn't been too keen on getting this info out to the public.
Designing for Profit: On “Instructions for Use” - Treat Them Better — February 20, 2015
[…] Designing for Profit: On “Instructions for Use” […]
Caleb — February 21, 2015
Well, maybe I just eat too much, but I find the reverse happens with food. 6 servings in this tiny packet of chips or cereal? Yeah right. I've always thought it's so that, in the store, it looks like better value than it really is. (It seems to happen worst of all with gluten free pasta, which makes sense. That stuff is so expensive per serving - it would look even more expensive if they were honest about serving size!)
With laundry detergent they also like to boast that it does x amount of loads (sometimes even "now 3 extra loads - 33 total" etc). So I guess by technically telling you a reasonable amount so they can say it has lots of loads, but then hoping you'll use more and not actually get that many loads out of it, they win both ways.
robert e — February 22, 2015
Yes there is greed and deception. There's also a kind of performance anxiety: the need to assume the worst case--e.g., the clothes from the kids' backyard party rather than the adult's casual friday office outfit; or the head-to-head torture test by a reviewing organization.
Clothes is one thing, but this overconsumption approach is also apparent in, for example, shampoo, where using too much of it can do damage.
I've also noticed that, at my grocery store, certain items are actually less economical in larger packages than in the smaller, contrary to expectations, logic and common sense.
cebow — February 23, 2015
I use a coin operated laundry that has clear glass windows on the front of the washers. If you run an "empty load" without adding any laundry detergent at all, you will almost always see enough suds to fill the entire window. Which I think means that even after the 2 rinse cycles, there's probably enough leftover detergent to do another full load of laundry, because people are so overestimating the amount of detergent they need. With the HE washers and the ultra concentrated detergents I bet you only need a couple of tablespoons.