TRACEABLE RETAIL
More brands providing consumers with detailed backstories of their products Plus: Amazon Green
Today's global economy has given consumers an endless variety of products and services to choose from. With no real personal connection to the companies and brands creating such, a new generation of consumers that demands more information about their purchases is growing. They want to know how a product was made, where it was made, who it was made by, and how it was transported to them. In addition, information regarding the company's carbon footprint, fair treatment of labor workers, and distribution methods is important to them as well.
A small but growing number of companies have begun to incorporate this type of detailed backstory information into their products. Joining brands such as Patagonia and Timberland are Love, Earth and Icebreaker. Love, Earth, a line of fine jewelry sold at Wal-Mart and Sam's Club, allows shoppers to enter each item's batch number online to reveal a "chain of custody" - a documentation of locations the item has traveled, from its country of origin clear through to the store it was purchased in. Icebreaker, a sustainable merino wool clothing company, provides shoppers with a special tag that features a Baacode. Consumers can enter the code on the Icebreaker site to read about the exact sheep that provided the wool in the garment, meet the sheep farmer, and follow the garment along the supply chain from sheep to finished product. Providing an in-depth look into the lifecycle of a product before it hits the shelf gives consumers vital information they can't usually access, as well as some reassurance that the process in which it was made and how it came to be in their hands was a positive one.
And By The Way: Giving shoppers an easy way to filter down some of that endless variety mentioned above, Amazon recently launched Amazon Green. By utilizing consumer reviews and recommendations, Amazon provides a list of "best of" products in the green category.
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* trendcentral articles are designed to be trend reports, not endorsements * The Intelligence Group is a trend-forecasting and marketing Consultancy focused on Gen X, Gen Y and Tweens. For more information on our services, or to subscribe to our syndicated studies, The Cassandra Report, Tween Intelligence, Latino Intelligence, and Mom Intelligence, contact Liz Gray at 212-277-5244 or via email at egray@intelg.com.
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