Creatures of Habit

Why do companies have to change the packaging their items are in?!

I know they probably think it keeps the items modern-looking and fresh and NEW! and IMPROVED!

But.....

It confuses customers (and occasionally the salespeople, too).

Several of our big vendors recently redesigned their ENTIRE LINE OF PRODUCTS. Within the last week I can't even begin to count how many confused people I assisted.

One lady tried to narrow the search for her favorite product, "It was purple." Key word being WAS......it may very well be a new color now. Do you know the NAME of the product? One brand has 30 different but similar items. "It was purple" is not a big help. There are two purple ones, one purple patterned, one maroon, and one dark pink that some people consider purple. After I showed her all of those choices, to hear her respond, "No, that's not it," to EACH ONE, suddenly she remembered that the product she was looking for was actually GREEN, her husband's favorite was purple. Then we started all over with the 5~10 shades of green products.....that all have names......that have not changed. Only she didn't remember the name.

Another woman wanted to know the difference between two products. I flipped them over, saw that the item numbers were identical, and told her they were the same items in different packaging. "They don't look the same," she insisted as she demanded to know the difference between them and which one was better. THERE IS NO DIFFERENCE, only different packaging. REALLY! I PROMISE!

Yet another woman (are men not as picky about getting the same item each time?) was looking for some {soap}. What kind of soap? Liquid? Bar? Hand? Antibacterial? With lotion? Can we be more specific?? When we finally narrowed it down to the lavender body wash with massaging beads, there was still the choice of dry or oily skin. In the past they only made one formula for all skin types. She acted like it was my fault that they changed the products. "I want what I always buy!" Well, they don't make that product anymore. This is what they make now. Still angry, she wanted to know the difference in ingredients between the old product and the two new ones. Well, since we don't have any of the old product left, we can't compare them now, can we?