We've had these in the Netherlands for about a decade or something. You also get a 35% discount on the products with a sticker on them. The sticker says something like: "shame if had to be thrown away".
The only sticker they needed to design was a discount!
I feel like this might only work in Japan...
So if I grumpily (sorry) understand this correctly, the business wants to make customers feel guilty that the business over-ordered?
The business could have been a little conservative in how many units they ordered, but no, the just couldn't give up on even one potential lost sale, so they ordered too many. The solution, put a sticker on it to try to talk a customer into buying something perhaps they otherwise wouldn't.
Grant that overordering will often be the correct strategy, economically, since the marginal cost of unloading a few units is low and the damage when customers think you're poorly stocked is high. In a perfect world, they'd discount the extra food instead of throwing it out, but that devalues your stock and people start expecting that as the real price.
Enlisting social cooperation leads to an even better world: the store always have products in stock, and never wastes any, while consumers get to feel the moral satisfaction (not guilt) of cooperating to choose the food that avoids the most waste. Highminded signs about "please choose the earliest expiration date" may give less of that satisfaction than a sticker that makes you feel like you're helping the food.
I think this sort of small discount is mainly aimed at people who were going to buy the item and eat it immediately regardless. If there's more than one tuna and egg sandwich on the shelf, it doesn't really matter to you which one you buy, but the store would rather you choose the one that expires sooner so they don't have to throw it out.
Its not just the lost sale of the specific out-of-stock items that are at risk in a competitive market though. Over time their customers will notice that frequently one or two items they need are out of stock, but when they go to the competitor to get those missing items, they always have them. So they start shopping at the competitor to begin with and rarely have reason to return to the original store since everything is always in stock. Now the original store has lost most of the sales they used to get from that customer.
It similar to why not offering vegetarian food at a restaurant can have a much larger impact on sales than just the loss of the small number of vegetarian purchases - you loose out on the entire group that came with the vegetarian.
The alternative to over ordering is probably going to be always having shortages...
can't they just give it away for free if the alternative is to throw it away?
> In selecting the design, we created several illustrated designs based on the criteria of ‘being able to gain consumer sympathy
Do people really feel sympathy for cartoons of crying food?
> Based on a an experiment, they adopted the design that received the most support.
Line just after your quote.
Seems like yes.
Receiving support is not the same as being effective.
If you ask people which sticker is the best to end hunger in the world, sure they will pick one...
Per the linked article:
> In an experiment, the company found that the stickers actually resonate with customers, reminding them of the problem of food waste.
The article misses it off but you can see the evolution of the sticker on the FamilyMart webpage: https://www.family.co.jp/content/dam/family/sustainability/t...
I feel sympathy for the 30 yen that stay in my pocket for sure. But also cute mascots and things are the norm in Japanese marketing.
Does symbolism elicit emotion? I hope that's sarcasm. Let's ask some folks about gold stars and swastika and and and...
Probably not for the cartoons, but we're hard-wired for emotional empathy that depictions of it are eye catching enough to get attention (and then motivate others to action once they understand the purpose of those stickers).
Yes. it's the point of the article.
Do you think people are able to feel sympathy for cartoon characters?
Seeing a character crying on a package certainly doesn't make me want to buy it OR eat it.
But the character is saying "please save me!"
Yep, which is even worse.
People find vtubers worth watching so probably yes
