All gummed up

Unsplash / Quinten de Graaf

William Wrigley started out in the soap business. When a vendor placed a large order of soap, he would throw in some free chewing gum as a thank you. People liked his gum more than his soap, and the rest is history.

By the 1920s, the average American chewed more than 100 sticks of gum each year; however, according to The Economist, gum sales are stuck. Sales have jumped a little in recent months, as people shed their masks, but even before COVID, sales were falling.

Experts offer all kinds of theories. There are point-of-purchase issues. Gum is often an impulse purchase in the checkout aisle, but if you’re shopping online or looking at your phone while you’re in the checkout lane, you will probably forget about the gum.

Increased attention to healthy eating may also be a factor. Some new brands are using biodegradable ingredients but, generally speaking, gum is not really perceived as a natural or healthy product. (Those of us who collected baseball cards as children remember how the stick of gum that came in those packs was built to survive a nuclear winter.)

Plus, there is some vague sense that chewing is perceived as less cool or rebellious in our culture than it was in the past.

What do you think is the problem? How can gum regain consumers’ attention again…or can it?