Mike Chirveno and
Matthew Ernst
More than half of cellular phone customers now use a smartphone, and more than half of all Americans will have a smartphone in hand by 2015. Twenty percent of American consumers will own tablets by 2014. Imagine leveraging that connectivity and computing power to grow produce more efficiently and sell it more effectively.
Not that long ago, the main disruptions mobile phones created in the grocery store were startling ringtones in the checkout line or a not-so-private conversation by the bananas. But mobile technology has matured as fast as a zucchini.
Changing the Game
The produce industry is familiar with disruptive technologies - new ways that overturn traditional business models. Loads of strawberries used to be shipped to markets in ice-filled railcars from places like western Kentucky and Arkansas. But when non-ice based refrigerated trucks were adopted in the 1940s, longer-season producers like California and Florida captured the nation's strawberry market. Refrigerated trucking fundamentally changed fresh produce distribution and supply. Mobile technology is now poised to alter both the way produce is supplied and how it is demanded.
Strengthening the Grip On Demand
On the consumer side, smartphones can transform the way that groceries are purchased. Produce industry trade press regularly report the introduction of apps designed to read QR codes and take consumers to product videos, recipes and handling information. Check out the new app recently introduced by Melissa's. As mobile technology matures and growers and retailers become more creative in their development of mobile products, consumers will have unprecedented access to information about the food they eat and the best way to store and prepare it.
Presenting more product information can absolutely help increase the quantity of product purchased while building brand loyalty. But apps could also start dialogues between growers, customers and retailers. Those conversations might start in the store when a customer uses a smartphone to scan a QR code on a clamshell of berries to get an ingredient list for a recipe using those berries. After purchasing the berries and the additional items needed for the recipe, she gets home and discovers the berries are super-sour. Scanning the QR code again, the customer uses her tablet to navigate to another part of the grower's mobile web site and enters a product review. Since the QR code was unique to that lot of berries, the grower knows exactly what berries were sour and how the growing, harvesting, storing or shipping methodology differed from other products. Now, using the grower's traceability software, the review is forwarded to every retailer and distributor that received berries from that lot. The store produce managers now realize why the store's berry sales are so soft. In the mean time, the consumer is emailed a coupon along with an invitation to purchase that brand of berries again, along with assurance that the sour berries were an aberration.
Disruptive? Yes. Potential for improving the way we do business? Absolutely. That's why companies that figure out how to leverage the immediacy and accessibility of mobile computing will improve efficiency,increase sales and increase customer satisfaction. This is just one simple example. Inside FreshXperts we're working on a number of initiatives that leverage the power of mobile not just for customer-facing activities, but also behind the firewall.
Shaking Up the Supply Side
Consider how managers at United Supermarkets of western Texas, as recently reported by CIO.com, use a smartphone app to manage employee shift schedules. Managers use the app to approve schedules, clock workers in and out, and make scheduling changes. The supermarket initially adopted smartphones for better communication among managers. Now incorporating new business-centric apps is allowing improvements in productivity.
A recent Pew Internet and American Life Project survey found that half of all adults in the US use a cell phone to access the internet. For nearly half of young adults, their phone is their primary device for accessing the internet. Among all respondents, the primary reason for accessing the internet on their phone (64%) - it's convenient and always available.
This is a wave you don't want to miss. This change in the consumer and wholesaler landscape has implication for your packaging, your traditional website, your internal communications and more. If you have questions about developing and implementing a mobile strategy, please call us at FreshXperts.
