Framing Effect - The Naked Truth

You must have noticed that nowadays many products are marked as :

40% Less Sugar

80% Fat-Free

60% Gluten Free

100% Organic

Do you really think that the claims made by these companies are 100% true ?

Well, that has to be regulated by some statuary body like fssai.

Food Administration apex body Centre for Science and Environment (CSE) recently claimed that honey sold by 13 major brands in India including Dabur, Patanjali has been found adulterated with sugar syrup.

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But, Many a time, these are smart marketing trick to make you buy.

Suppose Bruce and Clark are fans of a Ice-cream Brand A. One day Bruce noticed that a 100g tub contains 30 g Sugar, i.e. 30%.

As both Bruce and Clark are health conscious, they decide that they should consume a healthier ice-cream with less sugar. Now if more people start demanding less sugar content ice-cream, then Brand A would lose customers.

Brand A can do two major things now:

1. Do R&D and formulate a new product - It will require a lot of money and time.

Or

2. Launch a new variant of the same product with just new packaging.

Suppose the brand chose the second option.

It launches another version of the same product mentioning "70 % Sugar-free".

Now factually it is correct, remember it contained 30g of sugar in a 100g tub, i.e. 70% Sugar-free.

Hence the mention of "70 % Sugar-free" would appeal to Bruce and Clark.

Brand A doesn't lose both of them as a customer just by changing how it frames the product description.

This Concept is called "Framing Effect."