I don’t know if anyone else notices, but at least two companies – Home Depot and Wal-Mart – established a sort of branding with their plastic shopping bags. You know, those cheap ones into which your stuff goes when you visit the checkout counter.
Home Depot’s have always (at least in recent memory) been a sort of brownish color. I think orange might be better, but perhaps the added expense isn’t worth it. Wal-Mart’s have always (again, in recent memory) been blue.
So I went to Wal-Mart yesterday and it took me until I was back in the car before I noticed that their bags had changed! They are now white, which as you may know is probably the most common color for this sort of bag, providing no differentiation at all.
Now it’s entirely possible that these companies never looked at their plastic bags as advertisment in the first place. But if that’s the case, why did they ever color them, much less put their names across the bags? No, I think they are an advertising tool.
We can look at our collection of saved bags and tell where we’ve been recently – an overwhelming amount of blue would mean we had been to Wal-Mart far too often, while a lot of brown would say that we had been engaged on many home projects. The bags could also serve as a reminder of needing to return to make yet another purchase.
So assuming these are advertising tools, why did Wal-Mart switch? Perhaps they want Wal-Mart to be associated with the generic bag market – figuring that if they associate white with Wal-Mart, they’ll see way more people thinking Wal-Mart when they see white bags. I don’t think that will work. They won’t stand out any longer.
Maybe the motivation was instead due to cost. I have no idea of the cost of producing blug bags, but I can see that if it costs one hundred thousandth of a cent less to product the white bags, a giant like Wal-Mart will save millions.
Is it worth the trade off? Dunno. Maybe I’m the only one who ever notices things like this. But if Wal-Mart starts losing sales, you heard it here first.
Comments
8 responses to “Plastic Bag Marketing”
what do you say about this report? walmart is changing the bags once again…bag-less will be the future….
It has nothing to do with “environmental” issues but everything to do with price. It costs less money to make a white bag than one with color
Generally speaking white plastic produces a greater value when recycled vs. colored plastic. The revenue from the baled plastic to walmart is greater when switching to white. Also, the purchasing of the plastic is cheaper, for no dies are added to the material. As someone else said, a fraction of a cent on a bag saved is very significant when considering the volumes generated.
I have noticed the white bags. I noticed today two peculiar names on the bags. Juan Ortega and Quang Nguyen. What significance do they have?
Janet
Interesting point – but do you really think that Wal-Mart (or any retailer) cares? Even if I were to see blue bags floating down the street, my thought would be “Moron… couldn’t find a trashcan” before it was “Wal-Mart sucks. I’m not shopping there again”.
I can think of another reason why Wal-Mart may have switched from blue to white. Stop and think about the ubiquitous blue bags that you see tumbling in the wind alongside highways or the blue flags hanging from tree limbs. I don’t think Wal-Mart would want to be associated with those, yet it is because those bags obviously came from there. White bags? Those could have come from any number of stores. Better the anonymity of white to the raw, negative advertising they get from escaped blue bags.
I’m glad I’m not the only one who noticed!
Very valid thought. While I don’t think it’s easier to recycle white than blue, I suspect it’s easier to recycle white into blue than the other way around. Look at the recycled paper at your favorite office supply store. New paper is generally pretty bright, and very white. Recycled paper generally, well, isn’t.
I’d assume that the same would apply to plastic. If you’re starting with blue material, it would seem more difficult to me to recycle it and turn it into white material than the opposite. Perhaps the answer is that they aren’t recycling these bags anymore?
You are not the only one! I noticed that Wal*Mart was giving white bags last week, too. Like you, I was concerned for their product recognition and curious as to why they changed. I’d like to hope that maybe it was environmental. Perhaps it is easier to recycle white plastic than blue?