Packaging continues to be one of the hottest topics in the produce industry. Would it surprise you to know that it was also a big topic in the late 1960s?
Check out this excerpt from an article in the 1968-1972 edition of The Packer’s Ideas in Merchandising. Jerry Law, then an associate professor in the department of agricultural economics at Louisiana State University, wrote about sweet potatoes and the “rapid trend toward prepackaging of produce.”
“Experiments have shown that some customers prefer to select sweet potatoes from the open bin,” Law wrote in a 1968 article. “But a significant core of consumers indicate a strong preference for the prepackaged product. And they are willing to pay more for the convenience of the prepackaged item.”
Sound familiar? This next part will also ring a bell.
“If we would satisfy the preferences of the largest numbers of customers we need to make use of both methods of merchandising,” Law wrote.
And so the discussion continues about whether to carry more packaged or bulk. The most basic answer, as it was more than 50 years ago, seems to be to do both.
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