Customer Nutrition

What are your customers hungry for?  Do they come to you for food, or are they looking for nutrition?

This WSJ article highlights the effort of some Food Retailers to implement health-scoring systems in their stores.   Shoppers have been seeking satisfied stomachs from their grocery stores for years. Now, they're  seeking health as well.

Food products are the means not the end.  This is customer-centricity at its core and retailers like Kroger, Hy-Vee and Meyer are on the right track.

It is a brilliant extension of value to consumers along a new dimension.  Why sit passively as a storefront when you can create an interchange with a customer?  These grocers are getting out of the commoditization death spiral. They're no longer simply shelf space for the Kellogg's and Nestle's of the world.  The grocers are taking control of the customer experience with this new dimension.  They're also likely to build loyalty.


What are the key factors influencing a grocery shopper's choice of supermarket?

• Convenience - Good Location, Speedy Shopping
• Selection
• Quality
• Prices
• Aspirational qualities - Brand, Look & Feel of store

Now let's add a social and informational component to the value equation: Learning nutritional information.

What this does is accelerate the consumer trend towards health foods and away from empty calories.  With an eye towards leading customers with a valuable information exchange, these grocers are positioning themselves to build lasting bonds with their consumers as an enabler on leading trends.  By shopping at these stores, the consumer becomes more knowledgeable in an area of increasing relevance and importance.  This is a value exchange that goes beyond price stickers the cash register.

Intuit's Taxcaster

A parallel example of adding a value dimension comes from Intuit's TurboTax. Kings of designing the user experience around customers, Intuit included a "Scoreboard" in its software about two years ago.  With  "taxcaster", one can see how data entered in the software results in higher deductions or smaller tax bills.

The concept provides an interaction, a dialog, a level of engagement, that enhances the user experience.  This essentially expands the benefits of the tax prep software. In this case, if getting your taxes filed is food, then excitement is nutrition.