Jim's thinking is "spot on" in my view. If we can use P&G's leadership (and a couple of other receptive larger companies) to help come up with a white paper or some such that could lay out the case for rationalization of package sizes and the advantage of hard metric sizes to boot, I think FMI's objections could be met head on.
This might be a project for the USMA to take a leadership role in. Lorelle??? :-) Ezra ----- Original Message ----- From: "Jim Elwell" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To: "U.S. Metric Association" <[email protected]> Sent: Saturday, October 15, 2005 2:25 PM Subject: [USMA:34894] Re: Picking apart FMIs arguments > At 15 October 2005, 02:08 PM, Pierre Abbat wrote: > >We already have a proliferation of sizes. I've seen 500 g and 454 g pasta > >packages on the same shelf and two bottles of water, one a round number of > >fluid ounces and the other metric, from the same company. I think what we > >need is some litership ;) > > This brings up an interesting point: two or three years ago I was in > the local supermarket (Smith's, now owned by Fred Meyer), and was > somewhat taken aback when I actually thought about the number of > different packages of toothpaste in that aisle. > > There were variations in: > manufacturer (Colgate, Crest, private labels, etc.) > "purpose" (whitening, sensitive teeth, etc.) > taste (mint, regular, etc.) > size (travel, home, family, etc.) > tube variations (screw top, flip top, etc.) > package variations (tube, dispenser, etc.) > > I stopped counting the different items when I hit 100; total was > probably 150 or so. > > Now, ask yourself: how many people can tell you the size of the tube > of toothpaste they buy? I don't mean something like "travel size," > but something specific like "3 oz" or "50 g". I doubt 1% of the > population can answer this question. I can't. > > There are eleven people here at QSI today (yes, on Saturday) and I > just ran around and asked each of them. Ten had no idea, or just said > "the big tube" or something like that. One actually said "The six > ounce tube." But, she was an executive at Proctor & Gamble (Colgate > brand) for 20+ years, and so is a bit more attuned to such things > than most of us. > > So I would suggest that a toothpaste company packaging its toothpaste > in hard metric sizes (e.g., 100 g [3.4 oz]) cannot possibly be a > detriment in the consumer's mind, since the consumer will not notice it! > > And the unit of measure cannot be very important from a marketing > standpoint, because if it was there would not likely be such a > variety of other marketing angles to a single product. > > Now, how do we get a consumer products manufacturer to realize they > can switch at least some items to metric-size packages and NOT suffer > any consequences? Plus realize the benefits of having the same > package sizes all over the world. > > Jim Elwell > > > Jim Elwell, CAMS > Electrical Engineer > Industrial manufacturing manager > Salt Lake City, Utah, USA > www.qsicorp.com > >
