Talk:Free sample

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Another reason is as follows.

Suppose Mark ate beef stew for dinner every night.

Mark got sick of the beef stew so he dicided to try something different.

Mark saw something that looked good: "Apple Plieshnauzres".

However, Mark doesn't want to buy an entire box of Apple Plieshnauzres if he will only eat one and decide he doesn't like Apple Plieshnauzres, then have to throw away the rest.

Thus, he gets a free sample of an Apple Plieshnauzre and decides if it's any good.

The last scenario depicts why a free sample would familiarize a person about a particular product so that they could make an educated decision on whether to buy that product. Usually, when a free sample is not available, one would ask a passing stranger if said product was good enough to buy. However, one may not want to try that, as the stranger's tastes would obviously be different from theirs, as shown below.

  • Mark asks Flip if Apple Plieshnauzres are any good.
  • Flip (being an apple farmer and apple aficianado) says that Apple Plieshnauzres are good to eat.
  • Mark (who HATES apples) buys the Apple Plieshnauzres and discovers that they taste unpleasant.
  • Mark, unwilling to eat something which tastes unplesant, must now waste the Apple Plieshnauzres he just bought.

[edit] Cut from article

I removed the above content from the article as unencyclopedic - if someone wishes to incorporate it in a more appropriate way, I'm sure some content could be merged, but it all appears to be original research anyway. -GTBacchus(talk) 20:53, 3 June 2006 (UTC)

Yeah, this could be moved to Wiktionary or merged into an article on marketing. I mean, really, how far can this article be expanded?--WilliamThweatt 03:36, 8 June 2006 (UTC)
There might be a fair amount of industry history, about the use of free sample marketing, but there might not. At this point, it's not much of an article. I just added a link from Sales promotion and put this article in that subcategory. Maybe that will help bring it attention from someone knowledgable about marketing. -GTBacchus(talk) 04:07, 8 June 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Not about food

The concept of a "free sample" isn't specific to food products; it's a general marketing strategy. I've gotten free samples of household and personal care products in the mail, and my doctor and veterinarian also hand out free product samples they get from manufacturers for that purpose. Can somebody please expand and generalize this article? Dr.frog 22:23, 10 June 2006 (UTC)