How do you choose your toilet paper?
Your first thought might be that price is the dominant factor, but you’ll almost certainly take into account the texture/comfort factor as well. None of us want to use the low-grade sandpaper that we saw in our schools, for example. A few extra pence can make for a far more comfortable experience.
I assume that the manufacturers have an uphill battle to separate themselves from their competition for two reasons.
The first is familiarity. There’s a good chance that the next time you buy toilet paper you’ll simply buy the same brand as last time. Which is why here in the UK so many of the options on offer use a similar blue or lilac colour scheme. Blue looks clean, and lilac looks… purple. But I myself have on occasion bought the wrong brand, which is one of the many reasons that I usually leave such matters to my wife.
The second reason is that it’s very hard to create a competitive advantage. Too cheap implies a painful user experience, so how do you differentiate what you have, when the product only performs one very basic and ultimately unpleasant task?
One way might be to lean towards the absurd:
Do this company really believe that your toilet experience will be any more luxurious by what the toilet paper is enriched with?
Or could this even be a little tongue in cheek (pun intended) humour?
Aside from the absurdity, I’m absolutely amazed by their choice of colour scheme.
Differentiation is important in a crowded market, which is why I’m surprised that there are no major “eco friendly” toilet papers on the shelves of our supermarket.
Surely a paper designed to biodegrade far quicker than any of the competition would have a competitive advantage that might actually persuade their loyal customers to switch?
If customers are merely loyal out of habit and convenience, the market is usually ripe for innovation.
Stupidity probably won’t make a dent.
Note: I was overwhelmed by compelling ideas when choosing the title for this blog post. I exercised my rarely-used self-control.
