It’s amazing how the talk of consumers demanding traceability went away when the pandemic hit and we realized how fragile the whole system is. When grocery shelves emptied it was on a price is king sliding scale. Organic and all natural premium products were the last products to move. Fast forward a couple of years and we are right back to the same old discussions, as if we learned very little.
Sure, consumers say they want all sorts of things but in this instance, especially when you consider the current narrative around painfully high grocery bills, it seems highly unlikely they’ll pay for it, making it a moot point entirely.
Jan 9, 2023·edited Jan 9, 2023Liked by Janette Barnard
Thoughts? That was quick! Anyway.....no one ever is willing to pay. Walmart/costco (costco is worse imho) does not say "hey please do this 33rd party audit at our cost so we can pay more to you producer/processor". Its, "do this $xxxx dollar 40th party audit so we can mark up Y produce with a sticker saying its special. Oh we wont pay you anymore or really reward you at all. But hey we will buy it at a loss to you if thats ok? Unless a guy in Peru can make it even cheaper even without audits then all agreements are off"
The consumer deal IS fickle. Who wants what? Why? The person who told my associate (tdf honest) the other day he didnt show calves on his vlog since dairies kill all of them. WTH....where does this come from, how can they not find the facts in like 15 seconds? These people VOTE for people who make the reg which we have really more issues with than the end product in my mind. Generally speaking its safe and abundant and cheap. But the wildly misinformed electorate and their chipping to a rep for some un needed regulation are the hard thing to fight/manage. Anyway...what is education and what's selling/differentiating?
The internal struggle is this…what does a premium product offering say about your standard offering? I was part of a discussion with a large packer years ago that was looking into offering an “antibiotic free” line. Their proposed marketing campaign clearly implied that “antibiotic free” was safer. My response was simple…”so does that mean the rest of your products are unsafe or at least less safe?” “Are you throwing 95% of your product under the bus so you can sell 5% of your product at a premium?”
To some degree, I think we have to disconnect the values from the product offering. The message can be about delivering on consumer demands regardless of their motivations behind the demands. The trust factor then revolves simply around your delivering on the promise. You don’t need to share the underlying value with your consumers, the value that’s most important to them is that you take seriously your commitment to do what you say you’re going to do and deliver the product that the consumer demands.
If you want to purchase beef from a rancher that gives the cattle twice a week massages, I’m sure you’ll find someone willing to do that for the right price. The deliverable then, is that the cattle got the twice a week massages and not, “all cattle should get twice a week massages because that’s the right thing to do” or even “our meat quality is better because cattle get twice a week massages.” This arrangement makes it a lot easier to scale these offerings. That assumes that consumers will accept this model. I’m not sure, but I don’t think they’ve ever really been asked.
It’s amazing how the talk of consumers demanding traceability went away when the pandemic hit and we realized how fragile the whole system is. When grocery shelves emptied it was on a price is king sliding scale. Organic and all natural premium products were the last products to move. Fast forward a couple of years and we are right back to the same old discussions, as if we learned very little.
Sure, consumers say they want all sorts of things but in this instance, especially when you consider the current narrative around painfully high grocery bills, it seems highly unlikely they’ll pay for it, making it a moot point entirely.
Thoughts? That was quick! Anyway.....no one ever is willing to pay. Walmart/costco (costco is worse imho) does not say "hey please do this 33rd party audit at our cost so we can pay more to you producer/processor". Its, "do this $xxxx dollar 40th party audit so we can mark up Y produce with a sticker saying its special. Oh we wont pay you anymore or really reward you at all. But hey we will buy it at a loss to you if thats ok? Unless a guy in Peru can make it even cheaper even without audits then all agreements are off"
The consumer deal IS fickle. Who wants what? Why? The person who told my associate (tdf honest) the other day he didnt show calves on his vlog since dairies kill all of them. WTH....where does this come from, how can they not find the facts in like 15 seconds? These people VOTE for people who make the reg which we have really more issues with than the end product in my mind. Generally speaking its safe and abundant and cheap. But the wildly misinformed electorate and their chipping to a rep for some un needed regulation are the hard thing to fight/manage. Anyway...what is education and what's selling/differentiating?
The internal struggle is this…what does a premium product offering say about your standard offering? I was part of a discussion with a large packer years ago that was looking into offering an “antibiotic free” line. Their proposed marketing campaign clearly implied that “antibiotic free” was safer. My response was simple…”so does that mean the rest of your products are unsafe or at least less safe?” “Are you throwing 95% of your product under the bus so you can sell 5% of your product at a premium?”
To some degree, I think we have to disconnect the values from the product offering. The message can be about delivering on consumer demands regardless of their motivations behind the demands. The trust factor then revolves simply around your delivering on the promise. You don’t need to share the underlying value with your consumers, the value that’s most important to them is that you take seriously your commitment to do what you say you’re going to do and deliver the product that the consumer demands.
If you want to purchase beef from a rancher that gives the cattle twice a week massages, I’m sure you’ll find someone willing to do that for the right price. The deliverable then, is that the cattle got the twice a week massages and not, “all cattle should get twice a week massages because that’s the right thing to do” or even “our meat quality is better because cattle get twice a week massages.” This arrangement makes it a lot easier to scale these offerings. That assumes that consumers will accept this model. I’m not sure, but I don’t think they’ve ever really been asked.