PRODUCE MARKETING

Evening Post, Volume CXXV, Issue 126, 31 May 1938, Page 12

PRODUCE MARKETING

THE RETAIL ASPECT

METHODS CRITICISED

_ Criticism of the methods employed in the marketing of New Zealand meat and butter in London is contained in a letter received by the "New Zealand Herald" from Mr. G. J. Bruce, who says that from his observations there the Dominion's ideas are out of date. He adds: "The manner in which our butter is placed before the retail consumer-buyers in a city like this is deplorable."

Mr. Bruce said that instead of being offered butter in neatly-wrapped pound and half-pound lots, it was generally "hacked out of large lumps," evidently box lots emptied on to a counter slab, exposed to flies and shop dust, before being handled over in wrappers of various kinds.

"No wonder that this butter has often to be offered as a catch-line, a penny or twopence a pound below what is really a lower-grade butter that is nicely wrapped and taken as required from a cooler or chest," Mr. Bruce writes. "New Zealand butter, made up in pound and half-pound lota, carefully wrapped, with a New Zealand Government copyright design imprinted on each wrapper, would attract far more attention and retail buying than the slab chunks one gets today."

The writer says that after making over 50 visits to London shops to buy New Zealand butter and observe how it was retailed, the most telling replies he received to his inquiries were those from household-buyers, who pointed to the slabs of Dominion butter on shop counters, then to the well-wrap-ped lots from ice-cpolers. "Selling butter in box lots makes it easier for the trader to run it through blending machines and- mix it with lower grade products,. have it placed in wrappers with such slogans as 'Best Empire Butter' or 'Contains Best British and Empire Butter,'" he continues. "If all New Zealand butter were marketed in containers or wrappers bearing an official, copyrighted design, the buyers would know exactly what they were getting."

Meat suffered similar disabilities, Mr. Bruce said. In a London window display he saw 20 or more carcasses described as the best New Zealand lamb. Upon close examination he saw the words "New Zealand" were faded on the better ones, but fresherlooking on inferior carcasses. He suggested that a copyrighted design would overcome this problem. He had talked with marketing experts from over'2o countries, and,i to say the least, they were not impressed with the Dominion's marketing practice. ,