Third-pound burger
hamburger type
A third-pound burger is a hamburger containing a patty that weighs one-third of a pound (approximately 5.3 ounces or 150 grams) before cooking. It is larger than a quarter-pound burger (4 ounces or 113 grams), which is commonly offered by fast-food chains. The third-pound burger became widely known in the 1980s following a marketing campaign by A&W Restaurants in the United States. The campaign, which sought to compete with McDonald's Quarter Pounder, was unsuccessful because consumers misunderstood fractions, making it a case study in consumer behavior and marketing communication.
History
In the 1980s, A&W, under then-owner A. Alfred Taubman, sought to challenge McDonald's highly successful Quarter Pounder by introducing a larger, higher-quality hamburger. The campaign, called "Third is the Word," was designed to promote A&W's third-pound burger as a better value for the same price as McDonald's quarter-pound burger. Despite the promise of more meat for the same price, the campaign failed to resonate with consumers.
Taubman recounted the experience in his book, Threshold Resistance. He described how the company aggressively marketed the third-pound burger through TV and radio promotional spots, but sales remained lackluster. Confused as to why the burger was not selling, Taubman hired a market research firm to find out.
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This entry incorporates text from “Third-pound burger” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.