Week 11: Amazon Whisperer

1). My revenue drivers are the convenience of having groceries and fresh produce that fits the needs of certain unmet sectors, specifically those with dietary restrictions such as gluten free, vegan, lactose intolerant, kosher, and diabetic, in an on campus market at a reduced price. Having a store on campus with convenient hours, low prices, and foods not offered at tradition grocery stores are the key resources that make us different.

2). Just as gluten free has become a recent trend in many upscale bakeries, such as cupcake shops, I think the focus in the future could be expanding to be accommodate many different dietary restrictions. Eventually science and technology could potentially create ingredients that both tastes good and are able to be digested by those with certain limitations. For example, creating a wheat substitute that can be digested for those with celiac disease or a sugar that diabetics could process. Genetically modified foods are currently being developed, so I don’t think it’s an impossible task to be developed in the near future.

3). If advances in science ever got us to that point, this would be extremely beneficial because a market such as this could expand and sell other types of foods with these new ingredients. It could also expand the customer base because if it tasted as good as the regular ingredient and was sold at a similar price, others may buy it too. For example, if a man was married to a diabetic, he could buy this sugar and eat it himself as well because he is already buying it for his wife and it tastes just as good.

4). The product I described above does not currently exist yet. It is an ideal model to hopefully be invented in the near future, so I had to loosely interpret this to just be something similar on Amazon. I chose a gluten free flour that is commonly used in baking since we were talking about similar ingredients above. Pamela's Products Gluten Free Artisan Flour Blend currently ranks 4.7 stars on Amazon with 466 customer reviews.

               

5). The customer reviews are very high for this product, averaging at 4.7 stars out of almost 500 reviews. For the negative comments, the principal complaint is that baked goods are sometimes too dense and flavorless compared to similar flours. Similar complaints stated that it is chalky-tasting and can be too crumbly. As far as the positive reviews, 68% gave it 5 stars, so definitely a majority. They like that the flour can be used in almost any recipe and it turns out consistent every time. Many of the reviews even say that they use it as a substitute for regular flour and prefer it.

6). It is flour so there is not much to change for the design. I like the packaging and the reviews are mostly positive, so I would agree that they are doing something right. If I were to change something, their pancake mix has a perfect 5 star rating, so I might adapt some of the successes from other more successful products and see how they could potentially improve this one. I am by no means an expert baker, but if anything, I would thin out the flour slightly too to make it more refined based on customer reviews.

7). For a store that specializes in groceries for those with dietary restrictions, this product would fit perfectly. Someone who is gluten free and wants to bake some muffins could run in, pick up all of their ingredients at our market, and go home to bake without worrying about checking the labels 100 times to see if it’s safe or not. This flour would be a great addition to sell in our market because it further diversifies our product line.