Gluten-Free Follow-Up
A couple of weeks after my column on the new Betty Crocker gluten-free mixes, the Wall Street Journal ran an article July 2 about the mixes. (Note: the paper’s Web site requires subscriptions.)
Two things in the article stuck out to me:
1) Customers are clamoring for these products. And big corporations are starting to listen.
2) Accommodating specialized customers is at least partly possible because these companies realize that they don’t need to advertise them so much. Instead of a $50 million promotion, companies apparently can get away with just $ 5 million, says Ann Simonds in the article. Simonds is the president of baking products for General MIlls, which makes Betty Crocker products.
It really is amazing what can happen when companies stick to responding to customer demand instead of racking their brains for just any old way to get people to spend more money.
