The Malaysian Economist - Muruku Ikan Popo.

I saw this Popo's Fish Muruku at Isetan today. Yup, ISETAN. Other than the super old skool packaging design which I totally dig, something else caught my eyes.

Fine print reads: Jika sesiapa melaporkan kepada syarikat kami tentang keluaran palsu yang tidak disahkan, akan mendapat wang sagu RM20000.00, wang sagu akan dibahagikan serata jika melebihi seorang.

Translation: The person who reports to our company on any unauthorized production of this product will receive a monetary reward of RM20,000, and this reward will be divided equally if there were more than one person reporting.

Now, this is what I call a very practical solution to overcome a potential principal-agent problem. The principle (the company) may have unscrupulous agents (the staff) working within the company that may steal the product idea and get it produced elsewhere, selling under a different name. It will be extremely challenging for the company, which I believe is a family-run business, to monitor the activity of its agents. Instead, by providing an incentive to the product's customers, they are encourage to 'police' for unauthorized productions on behalf of Thien Cheong Sdn Bhd. This is the first time, I see such fine print on a food packaging and I thought the idea was simply ingenious (and the packaging is awesomely old skool)! Now, I'll just have to see if it tastes any good :P