Miniaturize Your Serving Size

Earlier this month, a Wall Street Journal article analyzed the trend to serve cocktails in mini versions. Advantages to the retailer include opportunities for higher profits. You won’t shrink the price as severely as you shrink the serving size. The trend parallels what a range of retail lines are doing, including restaurants offering smaller portion alternatives and health clubs selling ten-minute chair massages.
     But the customer must conclude they’re getting full value. Here are some research-based tips:

• Point out the advantages of the miniaturization for the consumer. The WSJ piece says bartenders are reminding customers how the later sips of the martini are too warm when it’s been served in a container resembling, in size and contour, a goldfish bowl. With other products, an advantage can be a lower sale price than for the previously sized version. 
• Change the look of the container. Research at University of Michigan finds that when customers hold a reusable container—as they will if refilling it at your store—they will perceive the container as having more when it is short and wide rather than tall and narrow. The WSJ Waterford Mixology barware line features 3½-ounce cut crystal stemware in bright colors. The difference is striking enough that the customer is less likely to fret about the reduced serving allocation. 
• Change the contents. Bartenders are using the smaller cocktail size to introduce alcoholic potions which would be unpleasant in an eight-ounce dose. Massage therapists can alter the nature of the ten-minute massage to best fit the diminutive duration. 
• Associate small size with prestige. Researchers at HEC-Paris and Northwestern University found that when the large size of a product or package implies power, consumers craving more power go for the large. However, when other consumers were offered four sizes of hor d’oeuvres, the smallest was favored. That’s because those consumers had been told the smallest hor d’oeuvres were the type recently served at a White House event. (The research article I cite here was subsequently retracted following the discovery of a set of statistical errors which cannot be explained, since the authors no longer have the data. I’m leaving my reference to this article in place with this notice so that my blog readers coming here via a hyperlink won’t get a search error message.)
• Wean the customers over. When two bartenders profiled in the WSJ article got customer complaints about smaller sizes, they responded with the ice cream shop malted milk method. Your malt comes in a glass alongside a bonus amount in the silver mixing tin. The bartenders serve half of an ordered cocktail in a small glass alongside the other half on ice in a small carafe. After some months, the routine can be changed to omit the carafe. 

Click below for more: 
Short & Wide for Reusable Containers 
Influence Consumption with Shape & Size 
Slice Off Consumers’ Small-Penis Syndrome
Miniaturize for Profitability