Big Box Organic
As of recent, many of the larger grocery chains as well as food producers are moving to heavier production and marketing of organic products. Kroger, the nations largest retail grocery chain operating Ralphs, Fred Meyer, Food 4 Less, King Soopers, Smith’s and Smith’s Marketplace, Fry’s and Fry’s Marketplace, Dillon, QFC and City Market recently announced their new organic line with a 19 page Kroger “mymagazine.” My guess is soon they will try to collect more information from their consumers about how they are using the organic products via a social media platform or wiki.
In the New York Times article “Store Chain’s Test Concludes That Nutrition Sells ,” the Hannaford Stores, owned by the Belgin Delhaize Group devised a rating system for food that allows customers to see nutritional value quickly based upon a start system.
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.
As the star system gains in popularity and consumers are better empowered to discuss nutritional values online in collaborative environments, a wider understanding of nutritional value will spread.
Recently, Quaker released a $25M campaign aimed at “box turners,” consumers who are interested product information. Agencies responsible for the campaign for Quaker Simple Harvest Campaign include Ogilvy Public Relations Worldwide, 141 Worldwide and two Omnicom Group agencies (Element 79 Partners and OMD), and an independent shop, NuOrbit Media. The interactive division of Element 79, Tractiv, is involved in the online aspects.
My guess is General Mills, which sells natural and organic products under names like Cascadian Farm and Muir Glen will start to roll out similar campaigns to these consumer targets.
If you enjoyed this post, please consider to leave a comment or subscribe to the feed and get future articles delivered to your feed reader.
[...] a continuation on the discussion on Big Box Organic, there will be a potential upcoming clash between stores creating their own nutritional guidelines [...]