Do you know about the essential themes to enhance every consumer experience in retail? We deep dived into five themes that shape today’s and tomorrow’s world of food retail. These themes correspond with the different topics relevant in our Strategy 2025. As a result, we created a Consumer Themes 2020 Insights report.
In this report the following themes are addressed from a consumer perspective:
- A more sustainable world
- Loyalty
- New generations
- New ways of shopping
- Brands & suppliers
Although these 5 themes are all very different, some are upcoming others have been on our mind for a while; all are essential to food retail today and tomorrow. We see that several retailers tend to focus on one theme and try to do this (a short period sometimes) really well. They experiment with new technologies through a pilot, they run an influential campaign through TikTok, they change a few products to reduce plastic. But an integrated approach or fundamental continuous changes are lacking. The consumer will not choose; they want it all, now and all together. To consumers the story of retailers is not convincing enough. It appears that retailers use these themes only to their benefit to improve their image, but not because they really care. E.g. by focusing on improving their ‘sustainable’ image it can even damage their image if gone wrong and be perceived as ‘green washing’.
For each theme we give you the 5 key insights and what retailers can do to leverage these insights. You will find examples, illustrative stories, quotes and explanation about these themes and why they matter to consumers.
On top of that we created a superhero for each trend; inspired again by our consumer stories. The goal of these superheroes is to make our main insights tangible and applicable. If a retailer is struggling to find a solution within a specific theme, our superheroes are there to spark directions to innovative thinking. For example, during our first day focusing on sustainability we quickly came to notice how parents are influenced by their kids to make more conscious and sustainable decisions in their household shopping: meet our superhero Better Planet Parent-Pusher who is encouraging and rewarding its parents for (loyal) sustainable decisions.
All the detailed consumer stories in this report are based on our visits to the largest consumer fair in the Netherlands in February 2020 ‘The Huishoudbeurs’. Around 40 people from all departments of our company visited this fair to personally talk to consumers and learn what matters to them and what is trending in the world of food retail.
Interested to learn more or to receive the Consumer Themes 2020 Insights in your mailbox?
Give us a shout at uxlab@icemobile.com
We hope you will enjoy these consumer stories! 🛍
Cheers from your editorial and UX research team,
Anna, Lenneke, Liefke
