Fooducate – Eat A Bit Better!

When I searched the keywords "nutrition, education" in Google search engine, an article got my attention, because there is a wired word in this article - "Fooducate". After reading the article, I realized that "Fooducate" is an application designed for mobile phones.




The App "Fooducate" enables smart phone users to scan a product's barcode by their camera, and then a nutrition grade along with product details will pop up on their phone screen. It also offers "browse" option, in which users can browse product by category or simply enter product name or barcode, and they will get a nutrition grade together with product details as well. The App has both Iphone and Android version. Non-smart phone users can go to Fooducate website and use their search engine online.

It sounds like an interesting App, so I downloaded a free version from Apple store store, and used it right away. Firstly I scanned my Hamburger Helper pasta & Sauce mix, the picture on the left is what I got. The nutrition grade of this product is C-, as you can see, there are some warnings in the middle of the screen: "contains trans-fats! Even if label says 0!"; "contains controversial artificial colors"; "Salty! have over 25% of the daily max"; and "made with refined flours, not whole grain". When I touched the option of "alternatives" on the bottom right of the screen, a few alternatives with better grades such as B, B- and C+ appeared.

Fooducate Logo

The App is so easy to use, and it is fun to get nutrition grades for different food by just a simple scan of the barcode.
I was obviously exciting about this little App and tried to scan almost everything with a barcode. My Extra Winterfresh Gum got a grade of C-, my Ritz Cracker got a C, my Morton Salt got a C and my Quaker Oats got a B+(I though this would get an A!). I also scanned some products that could not be found by "Fooducate". For example, a bag of orange I bought from Sam's club, a Band-Aid box, a book and a lipstick. For these products, there was a notice popped up saying "we don't have this product, please help by taking 3 pics: 1. product front of package 2. nutrition label 3. ingredients".

After further research I found that Fooducate is promoting their App heavily. They made a commercial with a funny song, they have Fooducate Channel on YouTube, and they have exposure to a variety of news media, such as Newyork Times, abc, Fox News, etc. When using the App, I had a few doubts in my mind. What is the standard of their grading? is their analysis correct or accurate? how do they recommend alternative products? is it possible that they are advertising the recommended produts? However, with all these doubts in mind I still choose to use it, because it is free, it is fun to use, and it gives information.

Sources:

http://www.fooducate.com/

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LFsC_4xFU8A
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UJvwfFakm0A&feature=BFa&list=UUrNsrnM5_Y0NvD-2xv2BPRw
Fooducate – Nutrition Education While You Shop
http://www.welljourn.org/2012/04/fooducate-nutrition-education-grocery/

Drugstore.com Uses Dynamic, Personalized Ads To Reach Customers

Last week, in order to write my last blog "Online Sales of Nutritional Supplements", I visited a few online supplement retailers, Drugstore is one of them. Separately, I Google searched a product named "Sambucus Original Syrup" together with a few vitamins. Yesterday, when I was playing a Chinese song on YouTube, I noticed that there was a drugstore Ad on the right side of the screen displaying 3 sambucus products and one vitamin. I was surprised for a second and then realized that it is customized advertising, which we just learned in class!

 

Drugstore calls this approach as “behavioral targeted advertising”, a function conducted by a third party on their behalf. On Drugstore's website, there is a web page explaining what information they collect and how they approach individual customers. Using cookies, web beacons, and other technologies Drugstore's partner collects data such as customer's browser type, operating system, Web sites an individual has visited, the time of the visits, the content and ads viewed, etc. By connecting information about an individual's visit on drugstore.com website with the information on other sites, Drugstore's partner could tailor advertisements and deliver product-specific, personalized ads.


In further research, I found out that Drugstore's third party should be TellApart. TellApart is a Silicon Valley based company founded by ex-Google product and engineering executives Josh McFarland and Mark Ayzenshtat. From October, 2010, Drugstore chose TellApart to deliver its dynamic, personalized Ads.

TellApart's target shoppers are those visited Drugstore online shop but left without purchasing. To display proper content in these personalized ads, TellApart rulled out a list of personal products from this retargeting program. Also, per Drugstore's request, TellApart managed to selectively display coupons and special offers to individual shopper based on the products the shopper viewed previously.


Of all of the drugstore.com shoppers who are served dynamic personalized ads from TellApart, 4% click on an ad and return to drugstore.com.Study showed that the presence of TellApart ads increased drugstore.com’s conversion rate by 19% and drove millions in incremental revenue (data from TellApart's case study on drugstore.com). 

The future of personalized ads

Sources:
1. drugstore.com Gains Substantial Incremental Revenue with TellApart’s Transactional Retargeting
http://tellapart.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/10/drugstore_casestudy_approved_08051111.pdf


2. drugstore.com web page.
http://www.drugstore.com/drugstore/qxc148674

Online Sales of Nutritional Supplements

My own shopping experience


Last December, before I went back to China for the winter break, I got a shopping list from friends. As a convention, they want me to buy all the items on the list and bring them back to China. On this 8 page shopping list, there are some nutritional supplements: Centrum Multivitamin/ Multimineral Supplement, Kirkland Glucosamine Chondroitin, Hyland's C-plus cold tablets, and Nature's Way Sambucus Original Syrup.

My first thought was to buy all the 4 items from CVS or Walgreens, because there are CVS and Walgreens shops in walking distance from where I live. However, it turned out that the task was not so easy to achieve. The 4 items are from different bands, for different functions and are placed on different shelfs. The most frustrating part was, I checked all shelfs in both CVS and Walgreens for a couple of times, but could not find Nature's Way Sambucus Original Syrup. When I finally found the rest 3 items, a few questions came to me: how do I know if there were cheaper sellers? Why don't I check prices on Amazon? I went home without buying any of them.


When I got home I visited the website of CVS and Walgreens and found out that Nature's Way Sambucus Original Syrup was out of stock in both stores. After a few online searching, I bought Centrum from Drugstore, and Kirkland Glucosamine Chondroitin and Hyland's C-plus cold tablets from Amazon. The two online stores offered free shipping for certain amount of purchase.


Pros and cons of online shopping


This shopping experience inspired me to look into the online sales of nutritional supplements. Comparing to traditional supplement retailers, online stores have their advantages. Firstly, search engine enalbes consumers to search product easily. My experience of searching all shefs in physical stores would not happen in the online stores. Secondly, customers can visit different websites at the same time to compare prices. Doing this in physical stores would cost huge amount of time and energy; but doing the same online is just a few mouse clicking. Thirdly, the shiping service saves customers trips, all customers need to do is to make payment with their credit cards and wait for their products to be delivered.
There are also a few obvious disadvantages for online shopping. First of all, customers must alow a few days for shipment. If a customer was in urgent need, he/she probably will go to physical store. Also, shipping fee could stop some customers fron buying online. Online retailers usually offer free shipping for a relatively bigger amount of purchase. Customers who need small amount may go to physical store.
Online supplement retailers and market trends

According to Packaged Facts, GNC and Vitamin Shoppe ranked as top 2 supplement specialty retailer in the United States. Other supplement specialty online retailers include Puritan's Pride, Drugstore,  Mysupplementstore, etc. In addition, the online retailer giant Amazon also attracts large amount of supplement consumers.

Supplement Trend Update

Datas show that the nutritional supplement industry is recession-resistant. It is among the few industries that are not affected by the downturn of the economy. A survey by Council for Responsible Nutrition (CRN) in 2009 shows that 65% percent of adults reported taking dietary supplements, and 73% of them said that the economy had not affected their supplement purchasing habits.


According to Packaged Facts’ May/June 2010 online consumer poll, 26% of supplement users have purchased vitamin, mineral, or supplement products online in the last 12 months. Packaged Facts also expects annual sales growth in nutritional supplements to increase over the new few years to reach $13.2 billion in 2014. Research from the Nutrition Business Journal shows an average of 7% increase per year between 1999-2008 for the combined nutrition industry direct-sales channels (including internet sales, catalog sales, TV-based sales, sales from multi-level marketers, and others). In 2010, online sales of supplements increased by 13% and reached $1.3 billion in sales. 







 Source: Nutritional Supplements in the U.S., 4th Edition, Packaged Facts (Septemter 2010).

The Use of Social Media by USANA



USANA Health Sciences is a Salt Lake City, Utah based company publicly traded on the NASDAQ stock market. This company is one of America’s leading companies in the field of health and nutrition.

USANA produces nutritional supplements, foods, and personal-care products and sells them through a direct selling network composed of more than 200,000 independent distributors or "associates" and nearly 80,000 "preferred" customers. (Data from Hoovers).

While USANA achieves success continuously in its expansion to Asia/Pacific region, the sales in North America dropped in 2011. To continue to fight the declining sales in North America, part of USANA’s strategy is to increase its brand awareness. USANA is exploiting social media as one of their tools while implementing this strategy.

 
Facebook


USANA  created its facebook page on March 19, 2008, currently it has 52,578 likes. On their facebook pages are photos, videos, events, etc. Content of these posts include media news release, USANA products promotion, corporate events, executive interview, consumer experience, and so on. USANA updates the facebook page very frequently. I started following this company since late last year and I usually see a few USANA posts every day.

Youtube


USANA is also very active on Youtube. The USANA Youtube Channel has reached 1,493 subscribers and 739,277 video views. We can find videos about the exeutive speaches, tips of healthy food, promotion of its corporate social responsibility, etc. The below video is a commercial for USANA 2012 International Convention. USANA is also advertising its international convention on its own website, facebook, twitter, and its blogs. 

Twitter


Similar to its Facebook page, USANA's Twitter page is up-to-date. We see up to tens of daily posts on its Twitter page. Different from that on their Facebook page, the posts on Twitter are more casual, there are employees sharing their professional experiences, and their love to families, etc.


Blog & LinkedIn


Blogs and LinkedIn are also adopted by USANA to increase awareness. SANA has two blog sites, What's Up, USANA? hosts articles from crew members, and Corporate Blog collects blogs from its executive team. The USANA LinkedIn page are attractive for professionals and job seekers, its LinkedIn page has currently attracted 4,607 followers.

Interactive Health Communication (IHC) Applications

Interactive health communication (IHC) can be defined as the interaction of an individual--consumer, patient, caregiver, or professional—with an electronic device or communication technology to access or transmit health information or to receive guidance on a health-related issue.

IHC applications are the operational software programs or modules that interface with the end user rather than the hardware and infrastructure technologies that run or disseminate these applications.

Examples of IHC applications

Health web sites, mobile applications and News groups are all examples of IHC. As the prevalence of smart phones, mobile apps are playing more and more important roles on personalized nutrition communication. The benefits of Interactive Health Communication through mobile apps include:

• Easy access
• Enable usage any time and any place
• Automatic recording of personal data
• Notifications of special events, launches, etc.

Logo of Nutrition Genius

IPhone screenshots of Nutrition Genius

Nutrition Genius

Here is an excellent example of mobile apps being used in personalized nutrition communication. A mobile app named Nutrition Genius is currently available on Apple Store. Nutrition Genius has large in-app food database with over 75,000 unique items, 540+ Restaurant Menus, and 7,000+ common grocery items. PLUS 160+ exercise items with low, normal, and high intensity intervals. Nutrition Genius records user’s calories and food score, tracks weights, and suggests daily calorie intake.

Advantages of IHC applications

Comparing to traditional health communication, IHC applications have its unique advantages.

  1. Delivers personalized health recommendations.

Computer based mass data processing has the capability to store individual health data and customize health recommendations according to customers’ needs, preferences, education level and language.

  2. Improves access to health information, provides broader choices and options   to both professionals and consumers.

  3. Interactive self-assessment tools help individuals to focus on key issues and take   action to improve their health.

  4. Provides a confidential and anonymous environment for health seekers

  5. Reaches large amount of consumers at low costs 

Disadvantages of IHC applications

Just like a coin has two sides, IHC applications have both pros and cons. Major cons of IHC applications are outlined as below.

1. Inaccurate or inappropriate use of IHC applications can result in inappropriate care.
2. Health professionals may perceive IHC technology as a threat to professional autonomy.
3. IHC applications collect personal data, which may raise the risk of personal information abuse.

Resources:

LI Bouwman, GJ Hiddink, MA Koelen, M Korthals, P van’t Veer and C van Woerkum. (2005).

Personalized nutrition communication through ICTapplication: how to overcome the gap between potential effectiveness and reality.

http://www.health.gov/scipich/IHC/IHCdefin.htm IHC Application Checklist

http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/nutrition-genius-calorie-exercise/id331419853?mt=8 Nutrition Genius - Calorie, Exercise & Weight Tracker

http://phiwiki.wetpaint.com/page/Interactive+Health+Communication Interactive Health Communication

The Impact of ICT on Nutraceutical Industry

The definition of nutraceutical in the latest edition of the Merriam-Webster Dictionary is: nutritive + pharmaceutical: a foodstuff (as a fortified food or dietary supplement) that provides health benefits.

Nutraceuticals is one of the shining parts in global market during the economic crisis. Part of the reason is that consumers tend to adopt healthy food and supplements to prevent health issues and reduce their medical costs.


According to Global Industry Analysts, Inc., the global nutraceuticals market is projected to exceed US$243 billion by 2015. This number is driven by consumer desire for a healthy life, as well as by the rising healthcare costs; aging population and growing beauty industry. In the long term, the nutraceutical market is expected to continue its growth at high growth rate.


In the following weeks, the topic of this blog will focus on “the impact of ICT on nutraceutical industry”.


As the wide use of internet, computer-based information and communications technology (ICT) has being affecting the entire nutraceutical industry and it will continue to contribute to the further development of this industry. For example, the emerging personalized nutrition communication through the internet influences customers’ consuming behaviors; the prevalence of social media is changing the way nutraceutical companies market their products and services.

Resources:

http://www.prweb.com/releases/nutraceuticals/dietary_supplements/prweb4563164.htm Global Nutraceuticals Market to Cross US$243 Billion By 2015, According to a New Report by Global Industry Analysts, Inc.
http://www.ana-jana.org/nut_info_details.cfm?NutInfoID=4