Winter 2011

Green Message in a Bottle By Lin Grensing Pophal

What Customers Want

Dianne Martz is with Sustainable Life Solutions, a retailer of sustainable living products, including reusable bottles, in Bolton, MA. Generally, she says, customers look for a few key qualities in a reusable bottle:

• Sturdiness. “They’re worried about denting and breakage, especially if they have children.”
• Attractiveness. “Color and style do matter, as does a well known brand name.”
• Taste quality. “Some people are sensitive to a metallic taste with metal bottles, and prefer glass or ceramic.”
• Cap style. “Some prefer a sports cap that they can drink from; others prefer to remove the cap and drink straight from the bottle. It’s highly individualized.”
• Cost. “They need to believe that they are getting good value for their money, and the prices on reusable bottles can be a bit shocking to some folks.”
• Ability to fit in a car cup holder.
• Ease of cleaning. “Being able to run through a dishwasher is a huge plus.”

Lin Grensing Pophal

Lin Grensing-Pophal is a freelance business journalist in Chippewa Falls, WI. She writes about marketing and business management issues for national and trade publications and is the author of Marketing With the End in Mind (IABC, 2005).