How to support value-minded shopping

Abstract

A transition towards a sustainable food system needs to happen to ensure people can live a healthy life on this planet. Picnic as a retailer in the food system is the bridge between producers and consumers of food products. Many people hold values which are in line with the food transition, which means they care for others, the environment, and their health. During the purchase of food however, these values are not always acted upon. This can be described as a value-action gap. There is an opportunity for Picnic to support customers in closing the value-action gap for food-transition friendly grocery shopping.

There is a knowledge gap around what the values are that are important to Dutch customers when online grocery shopping, and which hurdles are present in the service of Picnic to foster the food transition. An exploratory study amongst Picnic customers shows the hurdles are formed by a lack consideration, confidence, and information. Furthermore, other values can be more important and there can be hesitancy towards change. To overcome these, dedicated moments should be created in the shopping journey to consider values. The design statement therefore is:

I want to design an experience for Picnic customers who have values in line with the food transition but do not fully act upon them, by providing them with a moment to reflect and adapt so they can become proud of their actions.

To design an experience for Picnic customers that allows for the desired behaviour, an iterative design process is used. During this process, four design guidelines are uncovered: interventions for reflection on food decisions should be controlled, specific, goal-oriented, and quick.

The final proposed intervention is a Betere Boodschappen functionality, where customers get control over their shopping environment. They reflect on their values through answering three questions and based on those answers get personal suggestions for functionalities that can help them pay more attention to their values. A mixed method study, consisting of a quantitative between-group study and qualitative interviews, is used to test the effect of the intervention. There is a positive significant effect on behaviour and behavioural control over buying sustainable groceries. Customers furthermore indicate that doing better groceries is made easier for them through the functionality, and the store feels more personal. A plan for implementation of the functionality in steps is proposed, and recommendations are made to others designing for transitions inside a business.