The Best Value of Peppermint Gum for College Students

Arebria Burr Jessica Davis Darryl Du

Paul Perez

The Best Value of Peppermint Gum for College Students

Table of Contents

Introduction ............................................................................................................................................................ 5 Overview of the Options and Criteria............................................................................................................ 7 Tests and Results .................................................................................................................................................. 9 Conclusion............................................................................................................................................................. 13 Recommendation ............................................................................................................................................... 14

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The Best Value of Peppermint Gum for College Students

Introduction

College students have many options when it comes to buying gum. Because college students are often on a budget and on the go, picking the best brand of gum is important. The best brand of gum for college students will be cheap, have a flavor that lasts for a long time, and be packaged efficiently, with many pieces per package and an easy method of sharing. Our team studied and tested four brands of gum in order to find the brand that gives students the best value for their money. We chose to study gums of the same flavor— peppermint—and approximately the same size piece. For our study, we chose to compare Eclipse, Orbit, Dentyne Ice, and Stride.

We created a table comparing basic information such as the price, package style, and the number of pieces included in each package. The members of our team each chewed one piece of each type of gum and rated the strength of the gum’s flavor on a scale of 1 to 5. We averaged these ratings and used the information to conclude that Orbit was the best brand of gum for a college student.

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The Best Value of Peppermint Gum for College Students

Overview of the Options and Criteria

Our team chose four types of gum to compare for our study. To avoid having to compare different flavors, we chose to buy the peppermint flavors of all four brands. The four brands of gum we used were Eclipse, Orbit, Dentyne Ice, and Stride.

The four criteria we used in our study were the price of the package of gum, the number of pieces per package, the style of package (pill or individually wrapped pieces), and the strength of the gum’s flavor after 30 seconds of chewing. After testing, we used these four criteria to determine which brand of gum was the best value for college students.

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The Best Value of Peppermint Gum for College Students

Tests and Results

The tests, based on the criteria discussed in the previous section, were fairly simple. Before performing any of the tests, we went to Sack and Save and purchased four brands of peppermint gum—Eclipse, Orbit, Dentyne Ice, and Stride.

Figure 1: The four brands of gum purchased.

The first three sets of data we collected were the price, style of packaging, and number of pieces in each package of each brand of gum. Because these could be determined from the packages themselves and the receipt from purchasing the gum, we did not have to test for them. We collected this data in a table.

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The Best Value of Peppermint Gum for College Students

Figures 2-4: The different packaging styles of the brands of gum. Eclipse and Dentyne Ice use “pill style” packaging, where all pieces of gum are arranged in rows and enclosed in plastic, and must be pushed out through a thin layer of foil. Orbit and Stride gum have individually wrapped pieces.

We only had to perform a test to determine the strength of the gum’s flavor after 30 seconds. Each member of our team chewed one piece of the same brand of gum for 30 seconds. We chewed our pieces simultaneously, keeping track of time using a stopwatch on a member’s phone. After 30 seconds, we all spit out our pieces of gum. We then ranked the strength of the gum’s flavor on a scale of 1 to 5, with 1 meaning there was almost no flavor left after 30 seconds and 5 meaning the flavor was still as strong after 30 seconds as it was when we began chewing. We repeated this for all four brands of gum and compiled the ratings for all in a chart.

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The Best Value of Peppermint Gum for College Students

Figure 5: Chewed pieces of all four brands of gum after being spit out.

Because every team member has different preferences and taste perceptions, we averaged the ratings for each brand of gum. The following chart contains the strength of taste ratings from each member for each brand of gum, as well as the average rating for each brand of gum. Table 1: Strength of Gum Flavor Ratings Team Member

Eclipse

Orbit

Dentyne Ice

Stride

Arebria

3

5

5

3

5

4

4

3

Paul Jessica Darryl Average Rating

5 4

4.25

4 2

3.75

5 5

4.75

3 1

2.5

We used the average rating when considering which brand of gum to recommend.

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The Best Value of Peppermint Gum for College Students

Conclusion

The first three sets of data that we compared for each brand of gum were the price, style of packaging, and number of pieces in each package of each brand of gum. The data is included in the following table. “Pill style” packaging refers to the style of packaging where all pieces of gum are arranged in rows and enclosed in plastic, and must be pushed out through a thin layer of foil. “Individual” packaging refers to gum wrapped individually and placed in rows in a package. Table 2: Gum Data Price Packaging Number of Pieces (per package)

Eclipse

Orbit

Dentyne Ice

Stride

$1.19

$1.19

$1.19

$0.99

12

14

12

14

Pill style

Individual

Pill style

Individual

The first three sets of data were fairly similar for all brands of gum. Our team used the data from our test of the strength of gum’s flavor to determine which brand of gum had the best value for college students. Figure 6: Strength of Gum’s Flavor After 30 Seconds

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The Best Value of Peppermint Gum for College Students

Recommendation After testing the brands of gum and comparing the data, our team determined that the best value for college students is Orbit brand peppermint gum. We recommend Orbit for several reasons. It comes in packages with 14 individually wrapped pieces, which allows students to carry multiple pieces at a time, even outside of the package. The individually wrapped pieces make it easy to share, which often happens in class in college. Based on the average of our group members’ ratings, the strength of Orbit falls somewhere in the middle compared to the other brands’ flavor strength. Our team felt that a flavor that was neither too strong nor too weak would be appreciated by most people, as gum that is too weak would not be worth the price, and gum that was too strong might not be appropriate for some students. Based on our data, Orbit is the best value of peppermint gum for college students.

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