Post #8: Consumer Behavior

A product that was recently re-launched successfully was Hostess's Twinkies in 2013. In January of 2011 Hostess filed for bankruptcy. This meant that Twinkies were no longer going to be produced. Once this shocking news came out in the media people went crazy and proceeded to buy all the Twinkies in stores. Fast forward two years later and Twinkies was bought out of bankruptcy by Apollo Global Management. The successful relaunch of Twinkies can be explained by multiple reasons.

First off the new managers of Twinkie dubbed the return as "the sweetest comeback in the history of ever". Playing off the nostalgia card is a powerful marketing tool. Twinkies have been around since the 1930s. This meant that the Twinkie's return campaign targeted all age groups, not just younger audiences. Age is an example of an external influence that can possibly affect consumer behavior. Another example of an external influence that affects consumer behavior is gender. When Twinkies returned they labeled it as "dude food", in a brilliant strategy at getting more guys interested in the snack.

An internal influence that affects consumer behavior is memory. By using the nostalgia approach, Twinkies were able to capitalize on peoples recent memories of Twinkie production being discontinued. When people saw that Twinkies were coming back their memory triggered an emotional response. The mental image of eating your favorite childhood snack is powerful enough to compel consumers to go out and buy Twinkies.