» Why Do Companies Give Away Free Samples?

Although it often seems like very little in life can be had for free, this is not actually the case. In fact, there are many companies who give away millions of pounds worth of free samples each year. Why do they do that? What’s in it for them?

The answer is simply that these companies give away free samples of their own products or whatever they’re selling to increase their sales and therefore increase profits. You may be wondering now how they can increase sales, never mind profits, by giving away free stuff. Obviously, in the short term these promotions and giveaways require some initial loss. However, the idea is that in the long run people will try the product and like it so much they buy the ‘full version’

Freebie promotions are most often utilised to promote a completely new product or service that people haven’t tried before. The classic example here is cosmetic samples, which are often given away in magazines to get people try them and maybe switch to a different brand of moisturiser, say. This type of promotion works particularly well.

It’s very likely that you have seen this type of promotion before. Have you ever been doing your weekly shop at the supermarket and come across a sales assistant offering customers little cubes of cheese on a stick, or tiny glasses of a new wine to try? Like the cosmetic samples in magazines, these promotions all work on the same principle: to introduce you to the product and get you to start buying it on a regular basis.

Another slant on a traditional giveaway promotion is where a company will give away samples of its own product, along with samples of a rival brand and ask you to say which you prefer. Remember the Pepsi Challenge in the 1980’s where they set up stalls all over the country asking you to taste-test Pepsi against another brand of cola? The objective there was not only to increase sales of Pepsi but also to injure sales of a rival product at the same time, by making it look inferior. A ‘double whammy’ as it were.

So as you can see, there are good reasons why companies often dish out free samples of their products. The predominant one, of course, is to generate more sales for themselves in the long run. This isn’t bad news for the consumer though. At Freestuff.me we can help you tap into all the promotional freebies the internet has to offer and this could mean that you in fact buy less products because you can always find what you need here for free!