Planned Forgetfulness

We rely a lot on the Amazon reviews around here. They help us strategize exactly how we want to sell a given product. What are the perks, what are the drawbacks, can we play up those perks and downplay those drawbacks given our inevitably way-lower-than-Amazon price, etc. But, before we do any of this, we need to make sure the results are serious. And the best way to do that is to see how many reviews there are.

Well, with a net rating 4.7 out of 5 based on more than 126,000 reviews (!!!), we can say these Contigo travel mugs more than pass the test.

But despite such excess, we wanted to highlight just two.

First, this one from Eugene C. Hayes:

Love my Contigo - this is the sixth one I have purchased. I need to keep buying them because my family members fall in love with and abscond with them. I buy the stainless steel because it can go in the dishwasher.

And second, this one from Amazon Customer, who we assume is maintaining anonymity to protect their forgetful husband:

I have been buying these travel mugs for years. They keep your coffee and tea hot for hours. My husband always loses his and we have never had to replace one from it getting broken or no longer keeping things hot.

(We should note, that’s a review of a 20oz model, which we are not selling today, but still, all the positives apply to these 16oz ones.)

Why focus on just these? Because together, they shed some light on a brilliant business model, one that stands in stark contrast to the cynical practice of planned obsolescence. Instead of building something that’ll break down in a few years and require replacement, Contigo instead puts out a high-quality, long-lasting product and relies on an external factor to keep them selling: the consumers’ inherent forgetfulness.

They are travel mugs, after all. It’s right there in the name; they’re supposed to leave the house. As such, they’re far more likely to get lost than something that stays home. And when that happens–when you forget your travel mug in an Uber, or your spouse leaves it at the airport, or your aunt “borrows one” and you never see it again–you feel no moral compunction to research the field and check if there are better options out there like you would when a piece of tech simply stops being updatable. Because it’s not Contigo’s fault you lost the mug. It’s yours. Or your spouse’s. Or your aunt’s. In other words, you can just go back to them without feeling like a chump!

Brilliant, right?

But there’s another lesson here, one beyond business talk: if you’re gonna buy these things, you should buy as many as you can.