When I was a kid, my family used to frequent a very popular Tex-mex restaurant that was known for its fajitas. They were so good, I can still remember them to this day. But as we continued to visit the restaurant, I noticed that the fajitas weren’t quite as good as they used to be. And as the years rolled on, the fajitas continued to get worse and worse. And this decline in quality is actually quite common amongst many products and services. I refer to this as watering down the orange juice.
So let me illustrate what’s happening, starting with this first glass of orange juice I have drawn, and it’s from 2010. An orange juice stand opens up, and the owner has 100% pure orange juice. And everybody loves it. It gets five-star reviews. People will drive 30 minutes just to get this orange juice. It is that good. But then in 2013, the owner decides, well, let me dilute this orange juice by 5% by adding water. And so we get now 95% orange juice and 5% water. And so it’s still really good. Not too many people notice, and all is still, well, maybe a few people have complaints, but generally, everything’s going okay.
But then in 2015, the owner thinks, well, maybe if I just dilute the orange juice another 5%, I can increase profits by that much more and still have good orange juice. And to a large degree, it still works, because the orange juice is still fairly good. It’s not as good as it used to be, but many people don’t notice. And the few people that do, they’ll still get the orange juice because it’s still decent. But this trend continues on into 2024 and nine years later, after the 90% orange juice, we are now down to 70% orange juice. And this latest orange juice no longer resembles the excellent orange juice that we started off with. And so this decline in quality, this degradation in quality, happens all of the time.
And so what are some of the ways it happens? Well, we get worse. Ingredients in our food, the materials that are used to make products are worse. The talent and skill that goes into services lowers. Same with the experience. Whereas before we get more experienced people, now we get less. Let’s say the craftsmanship of a product. Before it was handmade, now it is fabricated. The availability of a service goes down the lifespan of a product. It’s no longer as durable. It doesn’t last as long. This happens so often.
And what makes it especially difficult for consumers is it is hard to know exactly when quality drops. And so what I have on the whiteboard, the first bullet point is we have a dilution of quality of a product or service over time, and it’s nearly imperceptible at first. Some people may notice, but a lot of people don’t. And so again, we go back to the illustration I have on the whiteboard. When the orange juice originally dropped from 100% to 95%, it was still really good. And so many people weren’t aware that the quality had even gone down.
And this is related to, but distinct from shrinkflation. So with shrinkflation, we have a decrease in size. And let’s just say we have a cereal box. And the cereal box goes from 64 oz down to, let’s say, 58. Well, in this case, that’s going to be printed on the box. And people are also going to notice, they’ll likely notice the tangible size of the box. So my point here is that this is more noticeable. Maybe some people overlook it, but it is more noticeable, whereas with product quality, it is very difficult to perceive.
And so there are a number of psychological phenomena in effect that cause people to keep coming back to this product that is now of much worse quality. And let’s start off with the premises effect. And basically here we remember most. Our memory attaches itself to what happened in the beginning. So we have these fond memories and those stick with us. And so they even override sometimes the fact that we know it’s not as good, and maybe sometimes it’s even that. We keep trying, hoping to relive that initial experience.
We also have cognitive dissonance. And this is where we are at a discomfort because we have two conflicting beliefs, or we have a belief and our actions are not matching that belief. So even though we might think, okay, this isn’t as good, let’s say what’s at an 85% orange juice concentration, it’s not as good. But we still keep coming back because we think, well, we can excuse it or we can rationalize it. Maybe it’s just not as good this day. Maybe the people that were working on the orange juice, or they hired new employees. And so we keep coming back even though we know it’s not as good, and we believe we’re at, 85%, or we believe the quality is lower, we have these conflicting beliefs, or our actions don’t match our beliefs because we keep going back and buying the orange juice.
Another psychological phenomenon is confirmation bias. And so this is where we seek out information that confirms that what we want to believe is true. So in the case of this orange juice, maybe we want to continue to believe that it really is this amazing experience that we had back in 2010. And so we keep coming back to it, hoping that it’s going to be this good. And so, with confirmation bias, we are seeking out information to confirm that. Maybe we look for reviews and we select and we focus in on the positive reviews. Maybe we disregard other information that is available to us. But the point is that we are having a hard time getting away from this product.
There is also what is referred to as change blindness. And so this is where we don’t perceive the changes. And so this could be because the change is so gradual that we just don’t notice. It could also be that we’re not paying attention. So in the case of orange juice, who’s sitting there and monitoring the quality of orange juice on a regular basis, let’s say a monthly basis, we have this newsletter that comes out and tells us, well, we’ve tested the quality of the orange juice again, and it’s still at 100% or it’s still at 90%. Even if such a newsletter existed, we probably wouldn’t be reading it. So we just have our attention elsewhere so we don’t notice the changes that are occurring.
And when we get back to some of these initial psychological phenomena that I talked about, the cognitive dissonance and the confirmation bias, this is also contributed to by brand loyalty and brand reputation. So if we’re initially tied to a brand, we believe in it. And let’s say we go back to this orange juice. We love this orange juice, we love the orange juice stand. We have fond memories of it, we are loyal to it. We have bought since the very beginning. We are more likely to stick with that orange juice stand. And that gets to my next point is there’s emotional attachment.
The reason I’m covering this is because it is something that looms so large over society, and yet it’s something that goes relatively unnoticed, at least until we get until this point where our new product, our current product, the current iteration or version of our product, no longer resembles this initial start. And this happens so often, but it’s so sneaky because we are not aware of these quality changes. Sometimes we are, but many times we aren’t.
So, I just wanted to make this video because it’s so important that this watering down the orange juice, that’s happening all across all different products and services, it’s so important to be aware of it, but so few people realize what’s happened until we get to this point where we’re at the 70% orange juice when we started out at 100.