Give the customer what they want

I stopped in to my local AM/PM store the other day looking for a Diet Coke and a snack. I had a sweet tooth and wanted a "Powerbar". These are a better choice than a traditional candy bar, (Snickers! Yumm!) because we can rationalize to ourselves that we are having a healthy snack.

Anyway they were no Powerbars to be found! Nor were there any similar energy-type bars in the place. I looked everywhere. The store had been recently remodeled so I spent what must have been a good five minutes looking around trying to find them. No luck. What they did have though were chips. Lots and lots of chips. In fact, every single aisle was probably 51% - 76% chips. Include nuts and that store was 80% chips and nuts. This was so odd to me that I remarked to the sales girl, "Hey, what's with this, is this a chip store now? You have chips everywhere!" I received that vague grunt and 1000 mile stare that passes for customer service nowadays back in return. (See my previous post on learning Spanish.)

So I gots to thinking! This is Capitalism at work. Obviously the store moved a lot of chips and very few Powerbars. People were in the habit of dashing in, grabbing a beverage and some chips and then were out of there. There weren't many fools like me looking to paying $2.97 for a glorified candy bar (great example of positioning by the way.) so they had stocked the store with what was selling. Quick aside - There was still a hot demand for glorified and repackaged soft drinks, I mean Energy Drinks.

Brilliant demonstration of giving the customer want they obviously want.