Test Marketing of Package Designs, Part 1 The General Products Company produces and sells a variety of household products. Because of stiff competition, one of its products, a bath soap, is not...

Test Marketing of Package Designs, Part 1

The General Products Company produces and sells a variety of household products. Because of stiff competition, one of its products, a bath soap, is not selling well. Hoping to improve sales, General Products decided to introduce more attractive packaging. The company’s advertising agency developed two new designs. The first design features several bright colors to distinguish it from other brands. The second design is light green in color with just the company’s logo on it. As a test to determine which design is better, the marketing manager selected two supermarkets. In one supermarket, the soap was packaged in a box using the first design; in the second supermarket, the second design was used. The product scanner at each supermarket tracked every buyer of soap over a 1-week period. The supermarkets recorded the last four digits of the scanner code for each of the five brands of soap the supermarket sold. The code for the General Products brand of soap is 9077 (the other codes are 4255, 3745, 7118, and 8855). After the trial period, the scanner data were transferred to a computer file. Because the first design is more expensive, management has decided to use this design only if there is sufficient evidence to allow it to conclude that design is better. Should management switch to the brightly colored design or the simple green one?