I thought this was interesting; the screenshots tell all. I started my ‘free’ federal income tax return and at no point did I ever choose the deluxe or ultimate edition or use options specific to those versions. I remained within the ‘free’ return throughout the entire process until the end, where it asked to charge $9.95 and no free option. How nice of them to offer their ‘Totally FREE Tax Return!’

Most people buy juice from a grocery store from time to time. The actual ingredients of juice, however, may vary from what is advertised on the package. Perhaps this is obvious to some, but to others, they may think they’re buying real juice when they are only buying sugar and water.

While the FDA regulates some aspects of the information presented on the packaging, juice makers still have enough wiggle room to mislead buyers through tricky marketing language.

How do you know if you’re buying real 100% juice?

You have to read the ingredient label on the back and ignore the label on the front. The FDA requires labels that list the ingredients in descending order of predominance according to weight. The heaviest ingredients are first and the lightest are last. Manufacturer’s don’t have to reveal the % of each ingredient in order to protect their trade secrets. Yet, if they claim something is juice, they have to say what % juice it contains. Let’s look at some examples of how buyers can still be mislead…

Safeway apple juice cocktail = not juice
Anything that says ‘cocktail’, ‘blend’, or ‘drink’ is usually code for a mix of cheap ingredients like corn syrup. Companies often substitute the syrup for the real juice, because it’s cheaper to produce.

Mott’s 100% apple juice = real juice
These are 100% apple juice. They’re usually from concentrate and well diluted, but that’s about as close as you can get to pure juice, without buying expensive apple cider. Note that you can’t simply rely on a name brand for real juice. The same brands may offer different product lines- some not containing juice at all.

Snapple = not juice
This Mango Madness Snapple is 95% sugar water and other unnatural ingredients. Only 5% of the drink is the mango juice advertised. The ingredient label reveals what’s really in it: Water, High Fructose Corn Syrup, Kiwi Juice from Concentrate, Citric Acid, Natural Flavors, Mango Puree, Vegetable Juice and Beta Carotene (for Color).

Sunny Delight = not juice
Some people confuse Sunny Delight for orange juice, but it’s not even close. The ingredients reveal that it’s again just sugar water and various unnatural ingredients, which aren’t that healthy. Water, High Fructose Corn Syrup and 2% or Less of each of the Following: Concentrated Juices (Orange, Tangerine, Apple, Lime, Grapefruit), Citric Acid, Ascorbic Acid (Vitamin C), Thiamin Hydrochloride (Vitamin B1), Natural Flavors, Modified Cornstarch, Canola Oil, Sodium Citrate, Cellulose Gum, Xanthan Gum, Sodium Hexametaphosphate, Sodium Benzoate to Protect Flavor, Yellow No. 5, Yellow No. 6. (This was just copied and pasted from a website)

Dole Pineapple, Orange, Banana 100% juice = mostly apple juice
While this is 100% juice, it isn’t the juice the front label suggests. It’s apple juice with some pineapple juice and even less of the other ingredients.

Safeway Pomegranate juice = mostly pineapple juice, apple juice, and water
This is 100% juice, but not the juice you think it is. When you’re spending $5.99 for it at Safeway, you’re probably serious about getting what is advertised. But a look at the ingredient label reveals this is mostly water, pineapple juice, and apple juice- contrary to the front label saying pomegranate juice and showing only pictures of pomegranates. A much lower percentage than the other juices is pomegranate and blueberry. The FDA doesn’t require them to put the exact percentage of the pomegranate and blueberry, but with 3 higher % ingredients, you could assume it’s not very much.

Pomegranate juice = real 100% pomegranate juice
This is actual 100% pomegranate juice. It says it right on the ingredient label. And it’s the same price at the fake pomegranate blend above.

Misleading tactic:
Marketers discovered people become used to looking for the word ‘100%’, as in ‘100% juice’. So guess what? They now put ‘100% vitamin C’ prominently on many labels- perhaps so you think it’s actually 100% juice, when it isn’t. This is common for grape juice, since it’s one of the most expensive juices to produce. So, they cut many corners in not giving you real 100% grape juice but pass it off as real by the ‘100% vitamin C’ tactic. Beware!

To summarize, marketers are crafty with their juice product labels and fancy graphics. The prudent shopper should just ignore the wording and look at the ingredient label for the real story on what the drink contains. If you’re going to shop for fruit juice, you might as well get the real stuff.

Any businessperson knows the importance of research. Market research is critical for business planning. Imagine how much insight it would give you if you had a copy of your competitor’s business plan, for instance. Or, perhaps financial reports, units sold per month, website traffic per month, the number of employees a business has, and more.

Fortunately, a lot of this market data is floating around out there ready to be seized and analyzed- if you know where to look. Sometimes it takes creativity and extra effort to learn secrets about your competitors, but this endeavor is quite worthwhile.

I would like to share the 3 useful ways to glean information from your competitors. This mostly applies to internet businesses, but can be a source of inspiration for any general business, as well.

1. Estimate a competitor’s web traffic

Use tools like compete.com, alexa.com, and quantcast.com as general guides for traffic. You can also see any competitor’s page count in Google or Yahoo by typing in a search ’site:domain.com’. The higher the page count, the better. You can also see exactly how optimized their site is and how many incoming links it has from tools like websitegrader.com. You can logically figure that a website with x pages with only x% optimized will yield about x visitors per month. If your competitor is lacking in optimization for certain keywords, but is fairly successful in traffic from a low quantity of incoming links, you can make predictions of how much more traffic you can get with your own similar site, but better optimized.

2. Acquire competitor information through a ‘business for sale’

Pursue a possible purchase of another business like yours- perhaps even a direct competitor- and learn a lot of critically important information about a business’ health. Use websites like bizbuysell.com.

The idea here is not to manipulate the seller, but to be genuinely interested and open minded about a potential purchase while enjoying the informational benefits. You will likely sign a non-disclosure agreement and perhaps even write a letter of intent. The time invested is worth it to learn about another business’ strategy, financials, strengths and weaknesses. This information can be invaluable to help you operate your own business, and who knows, you might actually choose to buy it.

3. Calculate competitor’s Ebay sales

For Ebay businesses, you have it made. Ebay is fairly transparent and allows you enough information to calculate units sold per month and monthly sales revenue of any competitor. How? First you can estimate units sold by feedback. If you figure about 85% leave feedback, you can take the feedback from the last 30 days, divide by .85 and you should get a rough idea of a business’ monthly customers, which may correspond to the units sold, then just multiply their average selling price by the units sold to get their estimated monthly revenue.

Even if you don’t sell on Ebay, it may still be interesting for you to compare prices of someone selling similar products/services as you in the Ebay marketplace. Ebay may also be used for test-market new products, such as to estimate demand. You can test pricing, for example, by listing something at $1 and see what it bids up to. You aren’t obligated to sell the item if you simply put the hidden reserve price high enough that no one will ever buy it. Craigslist is another place you can test interest in a particular product/service.

BONUS TIP: Estimate retail sales

This is the single most useful piece of information I learned in my graduate school MBA program.

If you’re interested in buying a brick-and-mortar retail store, here’s a very useful way to gauge sales. Let’s say you’re thinking about buying a Taco Bell franchise…

1. Walk into the store as the first customer at the beginning the day and buy the cheapest thing they sell- a Coke or something.
2. Keep the receipt and notice the customer number on it
3. Return at the end of the day and order something as they close, trying to be the last customer of the day. Try to order from the same cash register.
4. Subtract the customer # at the end of the day from the one at the beginning. Now, you have a good record of how many customers came to that particular cash register. You could also ask whether that register was used most of the day or what % it was used in order to estimate more precisely how many customers they served.
5. Finally, estimate an average cost per customer (you can even ask them) and multiply by the # of customers. Now, you have a rough estimate of daily gross sales. Very cool.

I hope this competitor research information helps equip you with more tools to make better business decisions.