Towards shoppable health

Abstract

Preventing or decreasing chronic health conditions by healthy eating is increasingly seen as a shared responsibility. Defining what is healthy is person-specific, depending amongst others on a person’s health and responses to food. Supermarkets, which are considered highly influential in shaping the diet of customers, are starting to serve customers based on their health needs. This thesis explores how the Dutch supermarket chain Jumbo can tailor their service provision to the health-driven dietary needs of their customers and what implications and strategic advices are connected to this. The thesis focuses on customers with pre-diabetes. In pre-diabetes, blood glucose levels are elevated. People with elevated blood glucose levels have a high risk to develop diabetes type 2, which causes them to live in suboptimal health and simultaneously puts pressure on the care system. Although food is part of the cause to develop pre-diabetes, this thesis emphasizes the role food can play in the solution, namely: a healthy diet can prevent, delay, improve and reverse diet-related diseases. However, adopting a healthy diet is seen as complicated. Through a service design study, which involved participants who adopted a carbohydrate-restricted diet to manage their blood glucose levels, thoughts and emotions during the process of dietary change were translated into a customer journey that reveals multiple opportunities for service delivery to support healthy eating. In co-creation and co-reflection with participants, these opportunities led to the construction of a portfolio of concepts. Based on the insights of literature research, fieldwork and these co-creation activities, the work outlines several strategic advices and considerations for businesses that support healthy eating to establish services related to precision nutrition. The work concludes by emphasising the view of food-as-a-solution and describing how personalized services, by means of precision nutrition, are suggested to positively impact people, society and the business results. Therefore, the service design approach and outcomes outlined in the thesis inspire and stimulate Jumbo, and other businesses that support healthy eating, to take social responsibility by utilizing diet-as-a-solution to reduce and prevent diet-related diseases, and thereby contribute to the health of society, via group-based and personalized services.