Part 2: Exploring Customer Trends- What’s possible? Is it worth the investment in Blockchain for Provenance?
Part 1: http://bit.ly/part1blockchainforprovenance
We live in a yelp, facebook reviews, world…
We’re moving away from a mass production one size fits all model and more towards a niche, we’re all different and we like what we like, so give it to us model.
Increasingly we see that consumers are informed, millennials increasingly are reported to be spending their money on supporting businesses with a social or environmental “give back” aspect. With the success of Amazon, Alibaba, Ebay just to name a few) the marketplace is increasingly accessible, global and searchable. It is entirely possible for us to have access to the exact product that ticks all our boxes and have it delivered to our door within days.
What’s more interesting here is that these “boxes” we have of things we want in our products didn’t even exists before. These desires popped up when we realized it was an option. This phenomena is particularly important when considering the impact that information availability has on purchasing decisions. There are product categories that haven’t even been created yet that will be multi million dollar opportunities for businesses prepared to jump on them.
In part one I discussed what happens when people are more connected to their food, and the choices they make. I also discussed the importance of the onus and responsibility being in the customers hands. It’s a very slippery slope when we take that onus away and assume some entity other than the person themselves knows what’s best for them. If connection to the source of food can impact positively on food choices and ultimately health, so does information impact a person’s ability to desire different things.
If the ultimate goal is to create healthier humans, then I say more information, more available information, aggregated in meaningful ways is the key to that.
In my life as I’ve spoken about transparency and open access to information many challenging comments often come my way. To be quite frank, I’ve been on the farming side and I have often thought the very same… “too much information just makes for irritating customers”, or as the saying goes, “just enough information to be dangerous”. I’ve also been privileged enough to spend a LOT of time with customers, to engage fully in conversation about whats important to them and why. I’ve also been able to show them through exactly what it takes to provide that ideal product that they have in their mind. After all of those conversations we are left with understanding, compassion, and even respect on both sides, it’s not always a fit in the end, but there is definitely more of an informed choice being made. These conversations are important and they’ve become less and less as urbanization has happened. Complex distribution channels have been created in order to serve the growing urban population at prices that can be afforded by the middle class. Thus, we’ve created more and more distance, whether in kilometres or cognition, from our food. The disconnect of what it takes to produce high quality food is rampant. The cost to the environment as consumers continue to ignorantly purchase the cheapest food (through no fault of their own) is quite high. There is also a disconnect that farmers have of the customers they are serving. So then how do we bridge this gap. How do we keep efficiencies in the food supply chain (maybe even make them better), and be able to farm and produce food responsibly?
I personally don’t want to ever be thought of as ignorant and have someone else assume the job of “educating me” or assuming the responsibility of knowing what’s best for me because it’s all just “too complex” its insulting and it just doesn’t read well in a post millennial, post internet, free information world.
Farming is complex. What has made the food world even more complex however is the onslaught of marketing terms created to create differentiation. What’s really beautiful is that food is so different and there are so many ways to farm, we really don’t need these marketing terms to create points of difference. We only needed them because we didn’t have access to seeing and understanding this information prior to blockchain technology.
Enter petri dish foods or lab grown foods. Where do they fit? Who will buy them? Is it ethical? Is it ethical to NOT go this way? There are so many questions. Beyond appropriate testing and research that will be required, transparency of source, and creation is paramount as we enter into a world with vastly differing food options. We no longer look like a homogenous market of food consumers. It is a very diverse market with very diverse interests from environmental, health, sustainability, macro nutrients, micro nutrients, source, etc.
When we can match the consumer with the food product for them we all win .
Natural selection of inferior products happens due to how the supply chain is built. Transportation companies, distribution and (traditional) retail makes it’s money on volume. It selects the products that are high in volume and quick to market. If you’ve ever as a farmer tried to sell your wares directly to a chef, you quickly learn that they love the idea. They are after all food lovers and curators and artists of food. In the end though, the chef can not effectively communicate the value of the artisan product on the menu or to the person because it’s value gets lost amongst everything else. This is the same with bakeries and other processors of products (beverage companies, prepared foods companies etc). They often aim for good quality ingredients, then realize that they have to cut corners, they select mass produced ingredients that are all from the same source because at the moment it makes more business sense.
So the question is how can we help communicate the value of ingredients easily and effectively to the end consumer, so that they might have a full picture of what is in their bread, cakes, juice etc. If you choose to use higher quality ingredients for some of your ingredients, your lower quality ones don’t cancel it out. As the end consumer you get nuance, you get choice. How do we empower resellers to be able to pass on the value that’s created in the processing or the farming or the creation of a food product to their customers so it doesn’t get lost in the supply chain that currently works best on “standardized” products in high volume.
The beauty of this is that by answering the consumer question we are also answering the supply chain question. How do we make it possible that these manufacturers and processors that make our beautiful breads, juices, canned goods etc can have the volumes they need, while keeping the source transparent and ensuring that message/value is not lost? If we make this information more accessible, start to utilize smart contract technology the efficiency of how food moves will be dramatically improved. We can more easily aggregate from many places vs trying to mass produce. We can also keep more of the dollar in the pockets of producers because that marketing message (and the money that it takes to do that) is taken out of the equation.
We can return more of the final dollar back to the producer, back to the land, creating more sustainable farming practices and healthier soil. We can keep the consumer more connected to their food source, creating healthier people.
What’s possible:
Viome tells you what your gut bacteria is up to and what foods are best for YOU. This technology is revolutionary and only goes to show that what is “healthy” is no longer stock standard. We’re entering into the personalization era. As mentioned before you can get exactly what you need and it can be searched for, paid for, and delivered to your door in a matter of days if not hours. If you as a consumer have this technology in the palm of your hand, in addition to the understanding of the characteristics of your food. There is a whole host of companies working on making testing technology available at the farm level and processing level (increasing the quality of digital data into the blockchain), as well as companies working on making this testing technology available to the end consumer. Imagine for a moment that you can in real time understand what your body needs due to your testing through Viome, you go to do your shopping for food and you are instantly able to understand if the product you’re about to purchase will be beneficial for the state of your health and move you closer to your desired outcomes in the health department or not.
The condition of ones health is powered by information, accessible, digitally captured, and unique to them.
What is important to customers is a long list. The power of the blockchain is only as good as the quality of information in. The opportunities are endless, but lets not get ahead of ourselves too much. Below is a list of a few things that are important to consumers, are currently being collected digitally (or in the very near future), and could be aggregated into a usable, meaningful format for either the stakeholders in the supply chain or the end consumer.
You could:
-See how the quality of the soil your carrots/veggies grew in
-Understand the amount of fertilizer used on the paddocks your meat was raised in
-Understand how much water was used in making your vegetables, milk, meat, dairy
-See how many times your “grass fed” cows were moved around paddocks
-Understand how far your product has travelled (kms by road, kms by boat etc)
-Understand the degree to which your food is organic or isn’t.
(right now it just IS or it ISN’T… no accounting for the vastly different degrees of organic)
-Ability to inform consumers if recall is needed or new information becomes available that is pertinent to consumers of that product
-Allowing for more intimate engagement with customers, and very clear understanding of end use, location of consumption or purchase
-Allowing for ease of export and proper taxation of exports and imports because you can accurately assess where every bit has come from
-Keeping more portion of the value of the product in the producers hands (because the last mile to the customer no longer adds the most value)
-Carbon emissions tracking and tracing (if carbon is important to you, you can understand how much it costs the earth for you to consume coconut oil imported from Brazil or Indonesia vs what it costs the earth to consume butter from the cows down the road.
In the end the question on most executives minds will be
“Is this something I need implement into my business?”
“Is it worth investing in?”
“How do I consider this in my future decision making and strategic direction?”
The trends of how consumers are purchasing, the IOT technology, the retail trends as well as transportation trends are all leaning towards a very decentralized, personalized, and information empowered landscape. Regardless of whether you like or dislike the blockchain technology, the ecosystem surrounding this has strong undeniable trends, the question is will your organization be at the front of the wave or join the wave later?
