Oral B has tied toothbrush promotions to the springtime switch to daylight savings time.
Another strategy is to provide consumers with better information about either (1) the time they
first used the product or need to replace it or (2) its current level of performance. Batteries have
built-in gauges that show how much power they have left; toothbrushes have color indicators to
indicate when the bristles are worn; and so on. Perhaps the simplest way to increase usage is to learn
when actual usage is lower than recommended and persuade customers that more regular usage
has benefits, overcoming potential hurdles.
If consumers throw the product away, the marketer needs to know how they dispose of it, especially
if—like batteries, beverage containers, electronic equipment, and disposable diapers—it can
damage the environment. There also may be product opportunities in disposed products: Vintage
clothing shops, such as Savers, resell 2.5 billion pounds of used clothing annually; Diamond Safety
buys finely ground used tires and then makes and sells playground covers and athletic fields; and,
unlike the usual potato chip maker, which discards some of the spud, Pringles converts the whole
potato into dehydrated potato flakes that are rolled and cut into chips.72