Posted on: August 22, 2018 Posted by: James McQuiston Comments: 0

It’s no surprise if you have never given a thought to cellophane, not only as a food preserving wrapping but also as a customer choice manipulation method. In this article, we would want to give a short insight on the origin, historical predispositions and merchandising role played by it, and especially why women are the ones who are aimed at by big grocery companies.

Self-service of the 20th Century

When it comes to the United States, goods distribution of the early 20th century didn’t offer much to customers. They had to get by on only two major options: big open-area markets or small town shops.

Markets would always be associated with a place where one could use their senses, like smell, touch, taste, and eyesight to determine a product’s quality and freshness. However, alongside this, they had to deal with not the most pleasant views of a slaughterhouse reality. Whereas small town shops were offering a clean and civilized way of getting your dinner onto your table, but a customer didn’t have much choice in choosing a product since it was all kept under the counter and selected by shop assistants themselves.

Notwithstanding, it all changed with time and most of the grocery stores adjusted their services to self-service purchase. Food was now kept on open refrigerating shelves, but not for meats, since self-service came to the butcher’s counter only after WWII with the development of better cooling technologies and, mostly, better cellophane. Now the choice of your food was based on your own experience of how it should look like, but not a shop assistant preferences. This change was crucial not only to the technology of food preservation but also to the cellophane elaboration, and a lot of specialists relate the last one to the development of America’s retail grocery shops in general.

 On Origins of Cellophane

1908 was the year when cellophane first came into production as an invention of a Swiss chemist who created a whole organization based on this patent, La Cellophane Societe Anonyme. It is also interesting to mention that the word cellophane is a derivative of two different units, cellulose and transparent (originally diaphanous). Two decades later the company sold the right to produce and distribute the product to America, from where it gained its worldwide popularity.

The material was almost flawless since it could be used for preserving goods (sweets, Tobacco products, etc.) and keeping them water-resistant. However, it was not perfect, and the only danger left was – moist substances. Only almost 10 years later the company managed to eliminate the moisture flaw and develop a new kind of wrapping to provide the best quality, which multiplied their sales.

The American filial was not the only one trying to elaborate an impeccable food wrapping material. However, they always kept themselves on top, mostly, by accusing others of stealing their patent and forcing them via court to take on their brand and pay interest.

Why did Grocery Stores Aim mostly at Women?

Their promotion campaign was quite pushy, and the company would do anything to the best of its ability required to sell an idea of cellophane as the best way of preserving food. They even conducted an investigation which deduced that purchases made with the use of eyesight and visual impressions included up to 90 percent of all purchases made at grocery stores. This enabled them to change the way of selling food. From now on customers had open access to groceries sorted orderly on the shelves, whereas they were no longer allowed to have direct contact with a product by smelling, tasting or even touching it. The only way one could evaluate was…seeing it while it was wrapped in cellophane.

Moreover, the company concluded that a major part of customers were women and they were to be targeted by advertising agencies in order to encourage them to buy more of a company’s product. Therefore, plenty of promotions include female eyes with some fancy description of items without actually showing the items, as a way to imply that looks and visual features are the primary criteria when it comes to choosing a product.

The Meat Coloration Issue

Though cellophane was good enough in the early 20th century to store foods for a longer time without having them expired, yet, big grocery stores encountered a tremendous problem when it came to preserving meat. Since meat has three main stages of freshness as indicated by its color plum, cherry red and brown cellophane couldn’t isolate it from a contact with oxygen. Therefore, to keep a wanted color alongside with this meat being exposed to the room temperature on an open-access shell would rapidly turn from plum to cherry red. For a long time, it was believed to be the color of meaty freshness, even though it wasn’t.

Notwithstanding, a common opinion on meat’s freshness color didn’t mean its actual durability. It was a huge issue to deal with for grocery stores. It took the cellophane giant a few more years to figure out how to slow down this process by changing the chemistry of cellophane again. But that didn’t change the way people saw fresh meat anymore. Therefore, advertisements present us with pictures of blood-red meats and we take them as of the best quality, whereas it’s an artificially created perception of how food should look like.

Lastly, it’s sad to acknowledge that inventions, like cellophane wrapping, created with a single purpose of keeping the best quality of a product for a customer, have lost it and are mostly nothing but a way of manipulation, commercialization and simply a good old advertisement.

Bio
My name is Erica Fleming. I support the effective adoption of new technologies or ways of working within writing by communicating complex information in an informative and inspiring way. My works you can at https://freebooksummary.com. I’m fond of writing articles for students, helping with essays.

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