Our colleague, Mark Whitten from Microsoft (who looks after xbox accessories) told us about a great move to improve the consumption chain for soda drinkers.
Seems that Alcoa (yes, the aluminum people) were brainstorming about how they could get their customers to buy more aluminum. They enhanced their ruminations by following consumers around as they shopped and consumed soda.They noticed an unusual pattern of behavior – when consumers bought soda, they seldom put the whole pack in the fridge. Instead, they would put just a few cans in the fridge. They also didn’t utilize the space in back of the cans very effectively. A Eureka moment ensued, during which the Alcoa folks innovated a cardboard “fridge pack” that would encourage people to put the entire case of soda in the fridge, then to drink more soda, and ultimately to cause Coke and its competitors to buy more cans to put that soda in.
For more on the story, check out this web site:
http://www.pointforward.com/articles/news_items_fridgeAP.html
Today, the fridge pack has become something of a dominant design – at least in my local supermarket!