Saturday, October 16, 2010

Buyer Be What?

    People today are so health conscious that companies who make food have started to manufacture and market “vitamin enhanced” food products. The companies also put the word “vitamin” on the product’s label so as to attract those healthy conscious people. The question my team and I wanted to answer was: What is the effect of the word “vitamin” to consumers. And the purpose our research was to inform the public if these vitamin enhanced products are indeed good or bad for them.

    My team and I (for buyer beware) decided to focus our research on beverages that claim to be vitamin enriched. Particularly about the effectiveness of the word “vitamin” when used on a product’s label to entice consumers. We wanted to find out if and how the word “vitamin has an effect in the perception of consumers about a product.

    In order to gather information, we researched about the many different vitamin enhanced drinks in the market today. We also looked into the FDA requirement in order to be considered a health supplement. And as for a representation of the public, we made a survey and had this answered by 53 random people.

    Our survey included questions about their preferences when buying beverages, if they would buy a product just because it said “vitamin” on it, or if they would be skeptics and still check the nutritional facts before buying a product.

    Through our research we learned that there is only a small percentage of consumers who would buy a beverage just because it said “vitamin” on it. A larger percentage said that they would buy a beverage, regardless of if it is vitamin enriched or not, just as long as they like it. And a majority of consumers said that even though beverage products have the word “vitamin” on them, they will still make their own research on these products to make themselves aware of the claims of a product is indeed true.

    It is important that before we buy anything, we always check the nutritional facts of a product. A company may be using some marketing techniques to get consumers to buy their products, but it is also important not to let yourself be influenced by these, and to make yourself aware of what you are buying.

ciao! ;p

1 comment:

  1. I read an interesting article about Vitamin Water in particular, about how some of the vitamins it lists aren't actually water soluble - so you'd have to eat something as well as drinking the water in order for your body to retain the vitamins at all. Otherwise, your body just washes the vitamin out with the waste!

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