Discovering value for health with grocery shopping data

Abstract

Food retailers are taking more active role in the customer value creation process and shifting their attention from the sale of goods to support customer’s value-creation to discover more innovative service-based business models. From customer data consumers may develop more responsible consumption behaviour, make more economical choices, and raise awareness on food healthiness. This exploratory study sets out to answer the question what value if any does the use of grocery shopping data bring to the customers.

Using design science research, the thesis makes use of grocery purchase data available to S-Group customers and presents ways of applying the data while making it meaningful for them. The aim was to construct visualization application prototypes for seeking value and benefits of purchase data experienced by the customers. To evaluate the application design, a study group of eight customers were invited to provide purchase data and feedback on the data visualizations. The focus was on building designs of the grocery consumption patterns based on customer interviews and then evaluating the impact on the study group via interviews and usage data.

The visualization prototypes allowed the participants to discover something new of their shopping and food consumption behaviour, not known to them before the study and not visible from the mere purchase data. Interviews suggested that the visualizations of health data encourage reflection of consuming habits, and thus may be used as a tool for increasing awareness of one’s shopping behaviour. A number of limitations in the data utilization were met hindering inference-making and reflecting on the data. Lastly, the prototypes led the participants to envision new digital health services, some of which might have commercial value.