“That is just publicity. We do that in order to advertise our coffee and attract our consumers,” said financier of the “New Force” company representative of the “Nescafe” branch in Armenia. “The mugs have not been produced here. They were sent to us with the coffee.”
“The mug is not given separately, but rather, it is wrapped with the two 100 grams of coffee,” said one of the company deliverers.
Resident of Davitashen and “Nescafe” consumer Karen Yeritsyan saw that commercial and decided to take advantage of the opportunity. But he realized that in that case the price of one box of coffee goes up by 100 drams, most probably because of the mug. Besides that, Karen saw the same mug being sold in the shelf of sets in the same store.
“I think that the store clerks have opened the wrapper and sell the mug separately,” says Karen.
We tried to get the two boxes of coffee and the one mysteriously wrapped mug, however we could not find them in any of the 15 stores in the Central community. “They didn’t give us a cup,” said all the store clerks. “It is quite possible that the sellers took the mug out and sell it as a separate product,” said the same deliverer. “What can we do? There has not even been a change in prices recently at our store. True, when the dollar exchange rate goes up and down, we change prices. The last time the dollar rate went down; we lowered the price of coffee.”
“Yes, recently coffee was inflated by 30 drams-jumping from 850 drams to 880,” said another store clerk.
The “New Force” company did not tell us for how much they sold the coffee to the stores. “That is our secret,” said company workers, “as for the store’s fixed price, that doesn’t interest us.”
The company workers make a point; however, is it right for the company workers to do nothing when the store hurts their publicity stunt by separating the mug from the coffee? What is this-tolerance or disrespect towards the consumer? What if somebody thought about pouring “CafePele” in the “Nescafe” box? It is possible that the “New Force” company would not take steps in preventing this too. How about, for example, taking the cigarettes found in the “Marlboro” pack and exchanging them for the “Bond” cigarettes while the “Philip Morris” company would remain silent? Let’s face it: “New Force” disrespects consumers by doing this and it violates the consumer’s rights. Let’s not even mention the fact that the dollar rate has gone down by 30% and it would be logical for the price of “Nescafe” to go down as well. After all, it is an imported product. However, only normal countries go along with that logic. In Armenia, the price of this coffee has also gone up along with all the imported products and it is obvious that this provides the importing company with extra profit.