What I've asked myself time and again is why, even though all of us who are old enough to remember, know how lovely Cadbury's, Nestle and Mars chocolate used to taste and how dreadful it is now, we still keep on buying it. Is it some kind of Pavlovian response, so ingrained into our psyches, that we see, say, Cadbury's Dairy Milk in the shops, automatically latch on to our retained memory from our formative years and buy some. And then eat it, think how foolish we were to do so, vow never to bother again - and then, next time we see it.... ?!
How do they get away with it? Cadbury's, in particular, seem to have regular promotions where they ask people to vote for their favourite flavour or to design their dream chocolate bar etc. Every single time, the comments section is flooded with people saying never mind any fancy new gimmicks or flavours - just change it back to the old recipe.
It makes me wonder: if they still continue to sell shed-loads of the new pale-imitation chocolate, just how much more would they be able to sell if they restored the old recipe? They could even test the water if they wanted to avoid risking alienating the young who never knew 'proper' CDM and are used to the modern waxy rubbish, by introducing a limited edition 'classic taste' range - even if it cost 30-50% more (I assume the whole driving force for changing the recipe is cheaper ingredients and more profit) and giving people the choice. Then they could keep the two streams going or, if one proved massively more popular (ooh, I wonder which), eventually just dump the other one.
I'm just baffled as to why a company would have such a hugely-successful winning formula that makes them into a trusted household name over more than a century and then just decide to ditch it, so that advertising and memories of former glories are all they're building their continued business on.