General 
Bruising is considered to be the most serious defect of apples (86), and 
the principal consumer complaint is that bruised apples are not worth the price 
often asked for them. t/ The consumer often pays higher prices for apples than 
for eggs, yet the apples are 30 times more often damaged (38). It seems sure 
that bruising hurts the market for apples whenever the housewife must trim away 
any bruised or damaged tissue (46). Some retailers reported it is impossible 
to sell badly bruised apples at a price that will return a profit (38). In New 
York markets, Blanch (8) reported in 1946 that seriously bruised lots of apples 
were discounted as much as 28 cents per bushel over those least bruised. The 
discounts for intermediate bruising were in proportion. It was reported in 
1948 that apples auctioned with severe bruising present were discounted 8 per- 
cent (108). Bruise credit allowances to retail outlets by chainstore systems 
were found to average 5 percent (33). McColloch and Hansen a reported that 46 
percent of the unsalable fruit discarded by retailers in Washington, D. C., and 
Baltimore, Md., was due to bruises. Costs on the New York market alone were 
estimated to be $3 million yearly for bruising discounts, and another $2 million 
was lost by culling of bruised apples (109). Losses to the industry as a whole 
due to bruising have been estimated to be over $10 million annually (23, 38, 
46). 
Tay The interaction of price and volume of sales has often been considered a 
means of selling bruised apples. However, investigators have found that the 
effect of this interaction generally was insignificant (5, 11, 104, 106). 
Armentrout (5) found that at best customers will pay no more for apples that 
have one-fifth the number of the bruises of an adjacent lot of apples, and he 
reasoned that customers probably do not make relatively narrow quality distinc- 
tions. Others commented that customers are concerned not how many bruises are 
present on apples but rather whether the apples are bruise free (8). If apples 
cannot be purchased without bruises, it appears that sales will be made but in 
lesser volume. Woodward (120) found that when 1 to 3 slight bruises per apple 
increased to 3 to 5 moderate ones, sales dropped 26 percent. When bruising 
became 5 or more moderate-to-large bruises, sales dropped another 3 percent. 
In 1951, a°New York experiment showed that retail sales of apples might be in- 
creased about 10 percent if apples with only one-fourth less bruising could be 
offered consumers (105). 
Interest in reducing bruising of apples seems to have begun in earnest 
in the early fifties. In 1952, Brunk (12) observed well over 100,000 customers 
in large cities and in large stores during 3 months, and concluded that bruise- 
free apples increased sales 20 percent over sales of apples that were not 
bruise free. In Michigan retail stores, customers bought 28 percent more of 
carefully handled apples than of apples that were badly bruised; and it was 
found that the bruising could have been reduced at little or no added cost (1). 
In Dallas, 65 percent more customers in chainstores bought from displays that 
had the fewest bruises and increased their purchases by 69 percent. Twice as 
many apples were sold from the better condition display as from the poorer ones. 
It was reasoned that an apple crop two-thirds larger than normal could be moved 
if bruising could be eliminated (35). Im another survey (120) sales of bruise- 
free apples were 79.6 percent greater than sales of apples of the same quality 
4/ See footnote 3, p. 134. 
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