Sometime soon Wrigley’s will start promoting its new Slim Pack packaging in select markets, and nationwide by 2009. It’s slimmer! It’s easier to carry! And it’s got 15 sticks instead of 17—for the same price! A Wrigley’s vice president told Brandweek that consumers wouldn’t care that they’re getting less product: “To them the value goes up because they’re getting a better tasting product in a better package.” Ha ha consumers sure are stupid, aren’t they, VP of Wrigley’s?

Okay, so it’s not like more expensive gum causes cancer or anything, but we thought you’d like to know why Wrigley’s is bragging about their new packaging in the near future. From Brandweek:

When asked if the package shrink would turn consumers off to the product, Paul Chibe, Wrigley’s vp North American consumer market-gum, said consumers wouldn’t care if they were getting 15 sticks of gum instead of 17 sticks. “To them the value goes up because they’re getting a better tasting product in a better package. Price is not the way the consumer is looking at this,” he said.
 
Brian Morgan, senior research analyst at Euromonitor, Chicago, concurred: “[Package shrink] is the strategy that has been used in many categories to accomplish a price increase without consumers really noticing or to smooth over the negative reaction.”
 
Morgan added that, in the gum category more so than in other categories, consumers would likely respond positively to slimmer packaging: “Packaging innovations like that do make a difference, independent of what that does to the price.”
 
Though the new packaging is, in effect, a price increase, Wrigley is hailing it as a packaging breakthrough. “Consumers like the fact that [the envelope] is slim, sleek; it feels very contemporary,” said Chibe.

Hmm… maybe consumers are kind of stupid.
 
“Chew on This: Less Gum, Same Price” [Brand Week]

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