Discover the Top 8 Surprising Fun Facts About Consumer Behavior You Never Knew!

1. Recycling Chewing Gum

Feeling a bit "stuck" between wanting to chew gum and saving the planet? Sticky no more: Gumdrop is the world's first company to recycle and process chewing gum into a versatile material used in the rubber and plastics industry, crafting unique items like shoes and coffee cups. With over 600 hot pink bins made from recycled gum scattered across the UK, Anna Bullus's brainchild is tackling the massive litter conundrum caused by the $25 billion global gum market.
Source => nowthisnews.com

2. Pumpkin Flavor Mania

Hold on to your lattes, pumpkin enthusiasts: Sales of pumpkin-flavored products saw a massive spike with $488.7 million in the last year alone, including $5.6 million in a single week before the infamous Starbucks' Pumpkin Spice Latte returned. With PSL-guzzlers shelling out an extra $1.14 per purchase on average, this autumnal goldmine for Starbucks has boasted over 350 million PSL sales in the last 15 years, raking in an estimated $1.4 billion! With pumpkin mania sweeping the nation, grocery stores are now stocking up on 446 pumpkin-related offerings - each one tastier than the last.
Source => delish.com

Did you know that the famous phrase "A diamond is forever" was coined in 1947, after De Beers and the Gemological Institute of America revolutionized the industry with the 4Cs grading system in 1939? Discover more fascinating facts about pottery!

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3. Bean Burrito Uprising

Mexican cuisine lovers united in a bean-filled uprising in 2018, as the humble burrito upstaged its feathery counterpart with a record-breaking blitz: Bean burritos experienced a whopping 276 percent increase in popularity, ousting chicken burritos from their previous throne and securing a spot in Grubhub's top 5 favorite American foods.
Source => cnet.com

4. Grocery Divider Etiquette

In the wild, wild west of supermarket etiquette, a fierce battle rages over a simple plastic tool – to place or not to place the grocery divider, that is the question: A spirited UK TikTok influencer brought to light that there is no definitive rule on whose responsibility it is to place the divider on the conveyor belt. While opinions differ, many agree that it's a considerate gesture to prevent the horror of unintentionally paying for another's organic kale chips.
Source => nypost.com

5. Black Friday Origin

Before laying down the law on Black Friday, the men in blue in the City of Brotherly Love were dishing out Tylenol like it was going out of fashion, to cope with the headache-inducing shopping bonanza: The term Black Friday actually originated in Philadelphia in the 1960s, where it described the shopping chaos that ensued the day after Thanksgiving, much to the annoyance of police dealing with traffic jams, accidents, and shoplifting. However, it wasn't until the late 1980s that merchants spun the story claiming Black Friday marked the day when stores finally entered the profit zone for the year, conveniently overlooking that the biggest sales occur on the Saturday before Christmas.
Source => britannica.com

6. Tab Soda's Rise and Fall

Once upon a soda-pop time, when alternatives were as rare as a unicorn sighting and diet cola was just a twinkle in a mad scientist's eye: Tab stormed onto the scene in 1963 as Coca-Cola's low-calorie counterpart! Fueled by a cyclamate-saccharin sweetener medley, Tab bubbled its way to the top, becoming the best-selling diet soda in 1982. And although Diet Coke eventually stole the limelight, Tab continued to sparkle in the hearts of die-hard fans until its bittersweet retirement in 2020.
Source => en.wikipedia.org

7. Telescoping Shopping Carts

Next time you're out shopping, don't forget to thank Orla E. Watson for making your grocery haul just a bit more magical with his contribution to the Marauder's Map of supermarkets: In 1946, Watson invented the first telescoping shopping carts, designed to nestle into one another, thus creating compact storage, and ultimately transforming our ventures down the cereal aisle into a smooth sail.
Source => americanhistory.si.edu

8. Tomatoes: Fruit vs. Vegetable

In the great tomato turf war – where fruits fought vegetables for salad supremacy and ketchup's true identity was at stake: the 1893 Supreme Court case of Nix v. Hedden ruled that tomatoes, for customs regulations purposes, be classified as vegetables due to their usage in main dishes, rather than desserts, setting a juicy precedent for interpreting common meanings and dictionary definitions.
Source => en.wikipedia.org