Umair Haque / Bubblegeneration

Thursday, September 06, 2007

Strategy School: Context Shock

The context shock ins't just confined to media - it reaches across consumer industries.

Here's a killer example of a food - not media - player learning how to use context to begin redefining industry economics.

Highly recommended.

"...The Hannaford program was introduced at a time when many food companies were promoting their own labels to denote healthier choices. For instance, PepsiCo has Smart Spot items, Kraft offers Sensible Solution, and Unilever promotes My Choice, all involving foods that meet certain nutrition guidelines.

But when Hannaford ran its 25,500 products through the formula devised by its advisory board, many products that were marketed as healthful received no stars, usually because they had too much salt or sugar. Twenty-eight percent of the items in the store received one star or more."

How do retailers regain market power? By getting back to the roots of their economic rationale for existence - providing context for consumption.

-- umair // 11:29 AM // 2 comments

Comments:

i'm surprised more retailers don't take a similar approach to brick-and-mortar shopping.

Bring the Amazon consumer reviews and recommendation engine to the storefronts and the aisles.

Is someone developing a dynamic program that allows consumers on special diets to have dynamic messaging and ratings based on their goals/diet needs?

I'm interested in high protein, low sodium, low fat, I have high cholesterol - show me foods that are BEST FOR ME.

Easy for online grocers and retailers, the technology not yet developed for traditional stores...although where there's value, someone's probably working on it.

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jayred // 8:20 PM

hey Umair :-) Would you mind defining "context" a bit? I'm pretty sure i know what you mean but I'd struggle to explain it.

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jamescoops // 2:21 AM