Soda Pop Culture
How much food and drink can your stomach hold? The answer is generally agreed upon at about one liter, some 33 ounces or so. How many ounces are in a Big Gulp? 32. Wow, that’s a whole stomach worth of liquid! How about the Super Big Gulp? No, no, scratch that, the Double Big Gulp! It’s 64 ounces. Do the math, that’s almost twice the amount you can comfortably fit into the first stop of your gastro-track. Yum.
That begs the question: why would they do that? (They, as in the corporate fat cats who are soiling our American culture.) Well, it’s probably because they have the same mindset of all those cliff-diving, parasailing, sky-diving adrenaline junkies out there: Why not?
History in brief, consumers loved soda, so out strolled the Big Gulp, a national phenomenon. People loved Big Gulp so much that 7-11 marketers almost immediately released the Super Big Gulp. Then someone dreamed up the “2-Liter-With-A-Straw!” (Unfortunately, the 2 liter bottle of soda was indeed already being sold in supermarkets everywhere, so they landed on the name Double Big Gulp. They worked hard on that one, huh?)
QT is wildly successful with their fountain drinks as well, but in a different light. The strategy is different. They offer many different sizes, but they are priced so closely together that the consumer just gets the next size up and the next size up until they reach the biggest one! There are really only two choices: the small (which is still like 20oz) and the might-as-well-just-get-this-one (Which is ballpark 40-something ounces, maybe more).
This begs another question: what’s next? Search the internet long enough and you’ll figure it out.
By: S. Cole Garrett
2 comments:
Yes, I think an extra kidney would help to process all of that excess liquid. Perhaps 7-11 will start selling those too?
Maybe 7-11 was placing their bet on the fact that most people skipped the kidney stone chapter in health class. great picture BTW.
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