According to the Nielsen 360 report, mass consumption grew by 3.7% in 2017. Good data for the retailer , a sector forced to respond to the habits of a hyperconnected consumer. Those who are increasingly demanding are more committed to their social environment and more concerned about their diet.
In response, AINIA Technological Center has developed together with other European partners “My Prefs”, as a result of the ASSET Project. A mobile marketing technological solution that allows retail companies to know purchasing behaviors or changes in consumption habits.
The ASSET project, framed in the “Collective Awareness Platforms for Sustainability and Social Innovation” program , is based on collective and social innovation through new technologies whose objective is to improve the responsible and sustainable consumption of food by consumers.
Thanks to this APP, the consumer has a solution on his mobile that helps him choose one product or another based on the synergies established between his values and the values of the companies, and the opinion of other consumers with similar profiles regarding priorities and buying behavior. In addition, it rewards their loyalty through a system of discount points.
These results also allow the concept of a “bidirectional” value chain to be strengthened, so that retailers and manufacturers benefit from the information that is generated at both ends. That is, that the former can provide information on the consumer that can be used to improve the products made by the manufacturers, and the latter, provide all the technical information on the products that may be of interest to consumers.
A technological solution that connects the retailer with the consumers
This is a technological solution aimed at both the final consumer and distribution companies, which offers a wide range of interaction possibilities. After various improvements in terms of usability and gamification, this application is ready for testing by retail consumers.
Functions of the technological application APP MyPrefs
- Verification of possible changes in purchasing behavior. Thanks to the implementation of a monitoring mechanism, it is possible to know the behavior of the consumer to later analyze it. The application will save both the interactions that each consumer makes during their purchase in the supermarket, as well as where they are and what route they take during their purchase. In this way, it is possible to verify if the consumer modifies his purchasing behavior based on his shopping list.
- Categorization of products by their commitment to the environment, sustainability, quality and the healthy nature of the product/brand AINIA, as responsible for the categorization criteria of the MYPREFS APP, has added new rules after the Dathaton study carried out in Estonia with university students and retail companies. As a result, more than 25 new rules have been added, and 10 new categories related mainly to the environment, sustainability, quality and healthiness of the product, so that this integrating vision of all these aspects gives it a more complete and rich to the consumer. Thus, for example, among the suggested and validated labels we find some that are new in this type of application such as “animal rights”, “factory farming”, “fair trade”, “workers right”, “without animal testing ”… AINIA has led the construction of a product database with more than 10. 000 references from different sources in which this multiple product and brand information has been included, with the aim of categorizing it according to user preferences. To make it operational and practical for the consumer, we have worked with semantic technologies and artificial intelligence in the categorization of products.
- The evaluation of consumers as the axis of gamification. The process of evaluating preferences for products has been improved, responding more precisely to the needs of consumers. Examples include preferences such as: “I follow a vegetarian diet”, for which labels such as “vegetarian” are suggested. and related product categories and proposed correlations for the recommendation of products or brands typified as vegan, vegetarian, Vegan Company, vegetarian Company.
- Viralization of opinions on social networks. The Myprefs APP offers the possibility for consumers to comment and share their assessments anonymously through their social networks. In addition to creating a collective assessment around the products, a collaborative consumption is generated .
How consumers interact with the MyPrefs APP
The consumer, after downloading the APP on his mobile device, has two lines of interaction:
- Setting your preferences. From the main screen you can start the configuration of the preferences grouped into 4 categories: health, social, environment and quality, and each preference is evaluated from 1 to 5 where 1 is in disagreement and 5 is in total agreement.
- Product recommendation. From the main screen you can start the product recommendation process once you press “show me”. The application shows the categories of products closest to the consumer according to their location in the store. He selects a category and all the products are listed ordered according to the result of the evaluation taking into account his preferences. At that point, the user can access the product to obtain more information or to write an opinion and share it on their social networks or read those of other users.
The implications of the ASSET project technology open up a range of possibilities for consumer-consumer and consumer-retailer interaction for consumers and distributors.
In this project we collaborate with other partners such as the Technological Center of Linz (Austria), coordinator of the project; VKI, an Austrian consumer association, the University of Zurich (Switzerland), Fastline, a German company specializing in the development of APPs, and the Spanish supermarket chain Alimerka.
A technological and social solution for a hyperconnected consumer
The European ASSET project is a collective and social innovation for the responsible and sustainable consumption of food, aimed at a hyperconnected, increasingly segmented, social consumer, committed to sustainability, the environment and the quality of food.
Thanks to the know-how and expertise of AINIA technological center, it is possible to offer consumers and retail companies a final solution that improves and rewards their shopping experience, and in turn, allows retail and food companies to know and analyze the behaviors and new shopping habits
Likewise, understanding the need to improve the flow of information from the consumer to the manufacturer itself, AINIA is working on global solutions that integrate the entire value chain. To this end, the opportunities offered by ProductSphera as a manager of product and supplier information are taken advantage of, to incorporate the benefits of an application such as MyPrefs de Asset, with the aim of facilitating the implementation of agile production processes, led by the real consumer needs.
If your company requires technological solutions for data analysis in terms of consumer opinion, that improve the shopping experience or that integrate the consumer in the development of new products, and you understand that the exchange of information with suppliers plays a role essential in your management processes, we can help you.
