The contents of my fridge
Marketing influences our daily lives, so much so, that many people don’t even realize that a lot of their actions stem from marketing activities that have happened before an actual purchase is made. Some of these marketing activities may have taken place years and years before, and continue to influence our buying behavior.
To see how I’m personally affected by Marketing Activities, mainly in the FMCG space (or more generic; retail), I decided to test myself and try to figure out why I bought the food, drinks, salads, sauces, wines, cheeses and so forth that are in my fridge. And before you start, yes I do need to do some shopping, but given that I also eat out quite frequently, the fridge is a little empty (I’ve decided not to show the contents of the freezer, that may be the topic of another post.) Also, depending on who visits me, I have other food in my fridge, often better quality and more fresh. This is my ‘weekday supermarket fridge’ for the quick bite and snappy drink. (I know I sound apologetic, I just don’t want to scare anyone from having dinner at my place!)
The contents explained
Before I go into the special mentions below, let’s have a look at a table of all the contents, categorized, branded, where I bought the item, and most importantly WHY I bought the items.




To summarize some of my findings;
- When I do regular weekly shopping, I often go with what ‘I know’ and what I like and know to expect. This is why familiarity is a driving force behind many of my purchases. I know I have an adventurous taste, but for the weekly purchases, I often don’t take the time to think about it too much. When I want to make myself a special meal, I typically also go to the more specialized retailers, a good butcher, the bakery around the corner, the greengrocer, the fish-market. Product Marketing works more on the senses there; smells, the ability to taste, the way the products are displayed, the ‘name’ of the place, the variety offered, the ability to try something different.
- Another aspect for day to day shopping is still Marketing and Commercials. I do notice that some of the products I buy are mentally embedded, because of what I’ve seen once and something I like to associate myself with, not even deliberately so.
- Less so than the other two aspects, even packaging does have an influence on my buying behavior. I noticed I’m sensitive for how long a brand has been in existence and since when they produce their products. The imagery, the visuals plays a key role there as well. If a product looks nice, it will almost have to taste nice, right?
Special Mentions
When I buy eggs, I always look at their label in terms of rating for what we call ‘Better Living’ in the Netherlands. This ‘Better Living’ rating is given to the product from the animals perspective (sounds strange ;). A rating of 3 stars is the highest a producer can get. In the case of chicken, a 3 star product means the following:
- More space for the chicken; max 6,7 chicken per m2
- The chicken can freely walk in and out of the grange
- There’s a maximum of 6000 chicken altogether
- Debeaking the chicken is not allowed (trimming of the beak)
- Natural day and night rhythm

All of the above always makes me buy the 3 star product. The eggs are a little more expensive, but I’d rather eat produce from an animal that leads a happy — rather than a miserable -life.
Parmesan Cheese is not a product I buy often. There’s a couple of choices in the supermarket and I went with the Zanetti. It wasn’t even the cheapest I could find (and some of my very close friends know how cheap I can really be ;) So I asked myself why I went with this brand, over the others which were available. In looking at the packaging again, there’s a couple of reasons why I did.
- The name of the product; couldn’t sound more Italian (and if you buy Parmesan, obviously it HAS to come from Italy.)
- The packaging; even under the name of the product you see the Italian flag
- ‘Dal 1900’, the brand has been in existence since 1900; they must do something right
- The image; it made me want to prepare my own pasta
- The language used; all words are Italian, apart one ‘Grated’. It gave me a sense of authenticity.

The following special mention is a funny one; as I had come up with my own story around the Yildriz sauce brand. They make sauces from all over the world, with original ingredients, trying to stay as close as possible to the traditional recipes that may exist. I had tried their shoarma sauce once, and given the name Yildriz, I automatically linked it to either a Turkish or Egyptian brand. I thought the products were imported and offered as an alternative to the more common Calvé sauces (which couldn’t be more Dutch). In looking at the Yildriz website I found that the founder of the brand is actually a Dutch man who one day ate in a snackbar, liked the sauce-bottle he was given (User Experience!) and the recipe of the sauce itself. He then decided to create his own sauces, and produced 500 bottles which he displayed in several supermarkets. Within a matter of 4 weeks all of the bottles were sold. Long story short, in 2008 Yildriz sold 15.000 bottles of (sambal) sauce, in 2011 Yildriz sold around 1 million bottles of sauce…
Ending this article with my own prepared juices. I recently bought a Nutribullet; a machine that allows me to blend practically every ingredient I can find; fruit, spices, nuts, vegetables resulting in what’s supposed to be healthy for me. I had been on the lookout for a blender or food machine for some time, until I found the Nutribullet online; The reasons why I chose their product over that of many of their competitors
- their branding
- the recipes they shared
- the design of the product
- but most of all the outlook of being healthy!
And I admit, I’ve never had as much fruit as ever since I bought the product. There’s more to explore and I will even try to make vegetable & fruit smoothies. And if that goes a little too far for my sensitive taste buds I luckily still have the beer and wine in the fridge to wash it down with.

Final question to you, the reader; do you know why you buy what you buy? I like to think about everything, and to me, this was a small exercise in trying to understand why I do what I do. One outcome; I need to do some shopping!
