..and More Oreos!

Today in class, we continued to dig deeper into our investigation about Oreo cookies. I can't say I minded this- because food is fun to talk about in class (and eat!). I find that I enjoy talking about products I have a personal interest in or connection with. I've always loved oreos, so I have a lot to say about the product.

Our assignment over the weekend was to pass along the Oreo survey to three people. I was surprised to see that most of the answers to the associated words portion were the same/similar to what I had put. This goes to show that people have similar thoughts about the product in general. I would be curious to see if consumers thought of Oreos when I named some of the words mentioned such as "cream filling" or "cookie sandwich". Oreo does seem to have achieved top of mind awareness with many consumers.

I think our activities these past few days with Oreos can relate to the marketing concept of consumer motivations. We did some in-depth research on what consumers' needs and motivations are for purchasing Oreo cookies. It's interesting to me that consumers have such specific motivations for buying/using a product even if it is one that you would consider to  be low involvement. I would typically associate a cookie as being a low involvement product, but our discussions show how much hedonic and emotional value Oreos actually provide.

We also looked at the Hierarchy of benefits and determined the product attributes, functional benefits, and emotional benefits are for Oreo. I thought the Hierarchy of Benefits was interesting and I don't remember that concept from previous marketing courses. I was curious to see if the Hierarchy of Benefits is applicable for all consumer goods? After doing our investigation about Oreos, we know that they provide both hedonic and utilitarian value to consumers. Are other food items considered to have emotional benefits like oreos do? Or, is it because they are a dessert? Our activity has triggered some questions like these, and I would be curious to see what our class activity would be like if we did it for less of a "special" product or food item. It would be cool to see the activity done with a basic snack product- like chips or popcorn. I think that because people get excited about Oreos and desserts, it makes for an interesting product to research and investigate further.