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Learn about big data technology and trends for the consumer packaged goods (CPG) and retail industries.
There are 4 key returns on investment (ROI) stories that we help our customers to understand before they make a decision about LabelSync. All can be found here, outlined on the LabelSync solution page. Today we’re going to dive into “Improved Operational Efficiency” to better understand how and why a CPG manufacturer would get a return on their investment in LabelSync. Who is LabelSync for? To start with, LabelSync is a best-in-class solution that helps CPG manufacturers and brands manage their product data for digital transparency. The LabelSync solution is for brands who want to finally solve their digital product data challenge, after years of struggling to create, verify, and manage product data that meets all needs. LabelSync is utilized for such use cases as best-in-class SmartLabel product data (there is an option to add on the pages for an all-in-one solution) but can also go beyond SmartLabel to power all digital product data initiatives.
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This week we partake in some gratuitous self promotion with 3 posts published by some of the brightest among our team!!??!! The first is a post by yours truly, published in fooddive.com exploring how the consumer demand for transparency is changing the way we think about Category Management. The second is a guide to help brands with their SmartLabel decision making process, and the third is an exploration of how off-package attributes can change the way your brand is perceived in the market. The remaining articles this week are largely related to developments in retail and in particular e-commerce, exploring the space from both a trend and business model perspective as well as a user experience perspective. Hope this keeps you curious heading in to this week. Transparency and buying behavior are changing the game for category management - Fooddive.com The last several years have proven challenging for the CPG industry. With more emphasis than ever on convenience and experience, customers are demanding a personalized shopping experience. Busy shoppers no longer want to spend time walking down each aisle in the grocery store. That quest for convenience has driven many customers to buy groceries online. Nielsen and the Food Marketing Institute forecast that e-commerce could grow more than $100 billion from 2017 to 2025. This fundamental shift has created both a massive challenge and opportunity for CPG brands. (curated by @antonxavier)
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Another video about Alibaba's Freshippo (formerly known as Hema) shopping experience in China. I'm a little obsessed about the new ideas and the connectedness of these stores. “If I have any questions at all about a product, I just scan and get the full ingredient list on my phone." – Alibaba I continue to get excited about the level of data competency that Alibaba displays in the Freshippo execution. In this video in particular the host talks about the importance of freshness using the example of how some fresh produce has a large "3" printed on the packaging so that you know it arrived and was packaged that day (Wednesday in the video) and is therefore fresh. The bringing forward and connecting of data competency, logistics innovation, and a digital shopping experience can truly change the way we shop. As you can tell, i remain very excited about the future of grocery. Have a good weekend.
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SmartLabel™ | off pack attributes
It's no big secret that Millennials are more likely to purchase products from brands they feel a connection with. Even when we’re not actually shopping local, we crave insight into the lives of the people who created the products we use and consume. Millennials are interested not just in what you make, but how it’s made. In fact, a 2017 study done by graduate student researchers at the Fashion Institute of Technology found that 48% of Millennial consumers are more likely to buy from a brand if they know the people behind it, and recommend creating a “strong brand community” to target this subset of shoppers. Given the amount of research that has been done on the topic, it is no surprise that brands are clamoring to respond. But with limited space on product packaging, brands have had to think outside of the box, pun intended, to tell their brand's story. Hence, the rise of “off-package attributes.”
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Everywhere we look these days, technology is driving change and growth. Phones are folding, groceries are being delivered to our doorsteps, and our parents are investing in digital currencies that may or may not be real. Not immune from change, Amazon’s acquisition of Whole Foods has added fuel to the fire of technology-driven change in the retail environments and the means in which we interact with food and everyday products. One example of this change is being driven by the GMA’s SmartLabel initiative, which allows customers to interact with a digital replica of their products in their hand via their SmartPhones to gain additional insights. As companies increasingly look to leverage technology to meet their goals, here are five questions to consider before participating in SmartLabel.
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In last weeks post of "video of the week" we introduced a video about the "Hema" shopping experience - a new concept in grocery retail that is growing rapidly in China. This week we follow on from that with a video from Alibaba, the leaders in online commerce in China and their explanation about what the "Hema" stores are all about. “For Alibaba, the future isn't total domination of e-commerce, rather it is the complete digitization of ALL commerce that could be the key to saving retail. We call this NEW RETAIL" – Alibaba It is exciting to see this holistic vision being executed. It's also eye opening when we think about Omni-channel, and Transparency, and Digital Commerce vs Mobile Commerce, each individually as hurdles to overcome, we aren't really seeing the forest for the trees. A vision like Hema, takes complete, and connected data and systems to execute. No matter which way you look at the future of grocery commerce, it is, in the least, going to be interesting!! Hope you had a good week.
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Explore+ | Product Updates | high-order attributes
My name is John Veltri, and I am a product manager at Label Insight, responsible for the success of our joint offering, Nielsen Product Insider (NPI), as well as our solution offerings of using attributes for insight and category management. I’ve been with Label Insight for a bit over two years now, where prior to leading our product efforts for these use cases, I was responsible for other joint offerings Label Insight has with our connected partners. I’ve been working within the CPG, Retail and Analytics industry for the last seven years, and am incredibly passionate about using data to innovate and bring new offerings to market in this rapidly-evolving industry. In my day-to-day, I’m constantly thinking about ways we can make it easier and faster for our customers to realize insights about their category and see more value from using Label Insight data. This could mean anything from partnering with industry powerhouses such as Nielsen to integrate derived high-order attributes (HOAs) into a portfolio of advanced Analytics offerings, making it easier for Label Insight’s customers to join high-order attributes with other data sources in their data lakes, or making it easier to analyze data directly in our Explore platform.
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SmartLabel™ | household cleaners | regulation
Consumer-facing product data for household cleaners is getting a major overhaul due to multiple state regulations mandating radical transparency. At a federal level, household cleaning products are not required to make their ingredient list publicly available. This year, that standard will change for any product sold in the states of New York and California. New York, in particular, is requiring that an unprecedented amount of information about household cleaning products be available for consumers online. Not only will brands have to disclose information about their “intentionally-added” ingredients, but they will also be required to provide consumers with insight into the by-products and contaminants that may be present in formulations. These “unintentionally added” ingredients may be present in the raw materials used to create the product or may have developed during the manufacturing process. In addition to a list of ingredients, brands will also have to disclose the function for each ingredient, the Chemical Abstracts Service registry number*, and whether or not that ingredient is present on a designated list of chemicals of concern.
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We kick off this week's curated news with a research project that scores a host of retailers in regards to their level of competency in online grocery. The conclusion of this report is that Amazon and Walmart are leaders in this area. It's interesting that this report did not include pure-plays like Instacart, Thrive, and Peapod. Following that, we include 3 articles from our in-house Personal Care Manager, Anna Thibaut who helped educate the team about developments in this vertical. Following on with the non F&B theme, we wrap up the curated list of news from last week with a post focused on how Petco has moved to ban artificial ingredients in their products. It's interesting to see the same trends taking place across all product types. Hope you have a productive week. In online grocery, Amazon and Walmart at ‘genius’ level - supermarketnews.com Amazon and Walmart stand above other food retailers as “geniuses” in online grocery, an area that has become the industry’s top growth catalyst, according to Gartner L2’s Grocery U.S. 2019 Digital IQ Index. The only two grocery retailers achieving the Genius level in this year’s index, Amazon and Walmart earned respective scores of 144 and 140. (curated by @john veltri)
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This post was supposed to go out last friday but there was an outage with our Content Management System, so only able to get it out today. So a video, to start the week. We have often looked to China, in this blog, to learn about the future of Grocery as the "blank slate" approach they are taking to addressing grocery challenges is serving up some incredibly futuristic solutions. One of the most comprehensive solutions being Alibaba's Hema stores. “There are three pillars to its strategy, serving as a place to shop, a distribution center for online orders, and a robot powered restaurant" – Uptin Saiidi, CNBC These stores combine the grocery store with a distribution center for 30 minute online delivery, as well as automated robot delivery restaurants to pull in visitors. The experience is connected across all stages of the buying process through the Hema app, which enables the shopper to get information about products and supply chain, navigate the store, place orders, as well as to pay. It's a pretty fascinating to get a real life view into what the future of Data and AI powered shopping experience can lead to. The shopping experiences in 10 years time could be very different from they are now. Hope you enjoyed this one.
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