Exotica Sells! Appeal to Your Customer’s Sense of Novelty!
People who buy ice cream and gelato are always on the lookout for that new novelty flavor. They want to stand around the water cooler the next day and tell people at the office – “Guess what I had the other day at that new little Italian Gelato place. I had a Maracuya flavored gelato in a chocolate covered waffle bowl!”
In the picture below, taken from a well-appointed and very busy gelato place on College Street in Toronto you can see how the vendor has gone to a great deal of trouble to glamourize ordinary flavors to give Westerners the feeling that they are tasting something a little more exotic. Pamplemousse Rosa is simply Italian for Pink Grapefruit but it sounds much more exotic than that. Maracuya is Passionfruit and Fragola is actually “fresh wild strawberries in sweet cream.”
Notice too how this clever gelato marketer has gone to the trouble of translating the meaning of the Italian flavor name for Westerners and is using as much space and language as possible on the flavor markers in the ice cream. This is an old form of upselling that makes people really feel that they are buying more than ordinary strawberry gelato; they are buying something that makes them feel special — a wild Fragola!
Image by Donna Lypchuk All Rights Reserved.