Sabotage marketing

Seems I'm a bit late on the uptake on this one, but there is a strategy to target consumers called 'sabotage marketing'.

I'd call it reverse marketing, and once you've heard of it, you sense you've probably known about it all along. The idea is this: that products and services are deliberately dressed down to encourage those who can afford it to 'trade up'.

The experts at this it seems are Starbucks, with a drink called the 'short cappuccino'. It's cheaper, stronger and technically more like a proper cappuccino than the Grande, Venti or the other silly-named one. But it's not on the menu board and the cup isn't on display with the others on top of the counter.

The aim is this: people who can afford it or who don't even look at the prices will blindly buy those on display. Only those who are watching what they spend will ask 'Do you have anything smaller?', implying they don't have the money like the rest of us. It's like assuming youwant to super-size on your meal unless you ask to 'go small' please. Coffee Republic do the same thing.

And when you stop and look around, shops and other names are doing it all around us. Another example is the 'Tesco Value' lines. Deliberately designed to look basic, they were all in fact 'normally' packaged products some years ago given a downmarket makeover.

This way, Tesco look like they're helpfully serving the financially challenged, while actually persuading everyone else to 'trade up' and buy their higher priced, nicely packaged products or name brand equivalents. Nearly all of the UK's other supermarkets pull the same trick, such as Sainsbury's 'Basics' and Asda's 'Smart Price' ranges.

Airports are another example often given. Lounges are designed to be not as comfortable as they could be, to encourage well-heeled travellers to fly Business or First Class so they can relax in the Member's Lounges. And of course, computer companies, car manufacturers and beer makers are known to make a standard product, then slow the processor, limit the engine or water pints down and market the result as a more basic product.

This tactic says two things really: how companies systematically try and extract more money from consumers for essentially the same product; and just as tellingly, how most of us are quite happy to go along with it and pay up every time.