My Thoughts on Gladwell's Thoughts on Ketchup

Going into What the Dog Saw, I had heard of the infamous rant on ketchup. Fellow students questioned sanity, as well as family members that had also read the book before me. The beginning of the chapter starts with a tangent about mustard, and it is then that I realized that Gladwell does actually have a very valid point. There are wide varieties of mustard, including Grey Poupon, a brand in which its advertising associated it with luxury and "the finer things in life." After a string of advertisements full of Rolls Royce cars and lavishly dressed business men aired for Grey Poupon, its sales broke records across the country. Howard Moskowitz, taking notice of the mustard brand's success started to question the monopoly of Heinz ketchup. Moskowitz owned a large food testing and market research business. After a series of testing, unlike mustard, Moskowitz found that no brand of "fancy ketchup" would appeal to a large enough audience for it to gain a significant piece of the ketchup monopoly. Moskowitz realizes that instead of looking for a product that will satisfy all consumers everywhere, companies should be focused on providing a variation of different products to more effectively car for consumers' needs. Gladwell calls this his "theory of variation;" it is unrealistic to expect one product to satisfy nearly every consumer, therefore variation is required. Moskowitz shared his findings to help shape the market for spaghetti sauce with companies like Ragu. This chapter was particularly interesting because theories of variation are most often applied to investments, not ketchup. Definitely a new perspective on how I dress my hotdog.