{"id":291,"date":"2010-04-26T15:45:21","date_gmt":"2010-04-26T15:45:21","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.renando.com\/blog\/?p=291"},"modified":"2021-01-15T21:54:14","modified_gmt":"2021-01-15T21:54:14","slug":"green-pizza-social-media-the-environment-and-fast-food-convenience","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/sidewaysthoughts.com\/blog\/2010\/04\/green-pizza-social-media-the-environment-and-fast-food-convenience\/","title":{"rendered":"Green pizza: Social media, the environment, and fast food convenience"},"content":{"rendered":"

I posted a while back about the complexities of our self-worship of the consumer god<\/a>.\u00a0 Looking into our deific motivations a bit more for some recent research, this consumer god is a pretty complex creature<\/strong>.\u00a0 Just have a look at the diagram below* for some of the explanations that we have come up with to explain and \u201csimplify\u201d the purchasing process…<\/p>\n

\"Consumer<\/p>\n

For those of us involved in influencing the consumer god, we can look at the diagram and ask \u201cWhat is the one thing we need to change to get you to do something different?<\/em>\u201d\u00a0 More so, what if I want to achieve a change towards one area, say, for example, environmental purchases<\/strong>?\u00a0 About a decade back, they were saying the \u201cgreen consumer\u201d represented 5% of the market, and that most brands could thrive on around 1% to 2% of the market.\u00a0 So what did we do?\u00a0 We slapped a green label on everything so now consumers have no clue what it means to buy green<\/a>, and suppliers have no idea what represents a green consumer<\/a><\/strong>.\u00a0 Good job, guys.<\/p>\n

We do, however, know that impulse and convenience purchases are easy<\/strong>.\u00a0 It\u2019s all based on an insidious addiction cycle, like so:<\/p>\n

    \n
  1. It is proven that happy people buy more, so suppliers pre-load you with good feelings;<\/li>\n
  2. Convenience purchases make you immediately satisfied;<\/li>\n
  3. However, your dissatisfaction increases after your purchase, especially when you are forced to compromise environmental, nutritional and other concerns for the benefit of convenience.<\/li>\n
  4. With your newfound buyers regret firmly in hand, go to step 1.<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

    This cycle results in habit, and habit trumps attitude, motivation, peer pressure, and… well, everything.<\/p>\n

    We also know that misery loves company.<\/strong> Convenience purchases, particularly those of the fast food variety, are more prone to be subject to influences of a group.\u00a0 More important than the meaning of life is the response to the mystery of \u201cWhere are we going for lunch?<\/em>\u201d<\/p>\n

    Two other points to consider<\/strong> include: 1)<\/strong> convenience purchases are more apt to be transacted online, and 2)<\/strong> brand loyalty increases with socialisation.\u00a0 Practically, the more face-time you have with a brand during the transaction process, the more you have a chance to like that brand. As such, low-contact convenience purchases, particularly those that move online, risk losing brand loyalty.<\/p>\n

    So what are we to do then for companies trying to persuade group mentality<\/strong> and attract convenience purchases through online transactions<\/strong> without lowering brand contact time?\u00a0 What if I also wanted to target those ambiguous socially-conscious buyers<\/strong> by tapping into existing online communities?\u00a0 At the risk of being clich\u00e9 and labelled as a try-hard guru or evangelist, I will put forward social media as a potential answer<\/strong>.<\/p>\n

    To explore my point, I had a look recently at the big three Australian pizza companies of Domino\u2019s<\/a><\/strong>, Eagle Boys<\/strong> <\/a>and Pizza Hut<\/a><\/strong>, looking at their social media engagement with Twitter and Facebook compared to the number of stores.\u00a0 I also stumbled across Pizza Fusion<\/strong> <\/a>in the US that is setting itself apart by making the environmental differentiator with a motto of \u201cSaving the Earth, one pizza at a time\u201d.\u00a0 The community engagement per store is interesting.<\/p>\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n
    Company<\/strong><\/td>\nTweets
    \n(Q1-2010)<\/strong><\/td>\n    		Twitter Followers
    \n(14 April 2010)<\/strong><\/td>\n    		Facebook Fans
    \n(14 April 2010)<\/strong><\/td>\n    		Reported domestic store count<\/strong><\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
    Domino’s (AU)<\/strong><\/td>\n187<\/td>\n2,979<\/td>\n23,416<\/td>\n>518<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
    Eagle Boys (AU)<\/strong><\/td>\n7<\/td>\n439<\/td>\n1,518<\/td>\n>281<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
    Pizza Hut\u00a0(AU)<\/strong><\/td>\nNA<\/td>\nNA<\/td>\nNA<\/td>\n>300<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
    Pizza Fusion (US)<\/strong><\/td>\n573<\/td>\n2,901<\/td>\n3,373<\/td>\n17<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/tbody>\n<\/table>\n

    The numbers above appear to indicate that Pizza Fusion\u2019s environmental position results in the establishment of a strong online community.\u00a0 Domino\u2019s Facebook fan count could be seen to reflect a similar social sentiment based on a recent campaign distributed through social media channels to donate $0.50 per fan to Mission Australia\u2019s efforts to combat homelessness<\/a>.\u00a0 It would appear that these examples support the correlation between convenience, community, and brand loyalty, although it could just mean that if you tweet, they will come.<\/p>\n

    A final point in response is that it is important for the gestures to be functional rather than just symbolic.\u00a0 The use of social media to engage on levels of environmental sustainability or to benefit the community is only of value if you are speaking about something you are actually doing. For all the hype of social media, it is still important for businesses to say what they do, and do what they say.<\/p>\n

    * Combined models for: Persuasion (Hoyland); Subjective Expected Utility (Savage); Cognitive Dissonance Theory (Festinger); Self-perception theory (Bem); Symbolic interactionism (Blumer, Mead); Norm Activation Theory (Schwartz); Expectancy-value theory (Ajzen, Fishbein); Theory of Interpersonal Behavior (Triandis); Theory of reasoned Action (Ajzen & Fishbein); Elaboration Likelihood Model (Petty, Cacioppo); Symbolic self-completion (Wicklund, Gollwitzer); Structuration (Giddens); Theory of planned behaviour (Ajzen); Motivation-Ability-Opportunity Model (Batra, Ray); Attitude Behaviour-Context Theory (Stern, Oskamp); Self-discrepancy theory (Higgins); Cultural Theory (Thompson, Ellis, Wildavsky); Focus Theory of Normative Conduct (Cialdini, Reno, Kallgren); Value-belief-norm theory (Stern)<\/h6>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

    I posted a while back about the complexities of our self-worship of the consumer god.\u00a0 Looking into our deific motivations a bit more for some… Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":5638,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_s2mail":"","cybocfi_hide_featured_image":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[186],"tags":[34,46,64,120],"ecosystem_role":[],"class_list":["post-291","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-about-society","tag-consumerism","tag-environmental-sustainability","tag-green-consumer","tag-social-media","bwp-masonry-item","bwp-col-3"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sidewaysthoughts.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/291","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sidewaysthoughts.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sidewaysthoughts.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sidewaysthoughts.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sidewaysthoughts.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=291"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/sidewaysthoughts.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/291\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7626,"href":"https:\/\/sidewaysthoughts.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/291\/revisions\/7626"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sidewaysthoughts.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/5638"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sidewaysthoughts.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=291"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sidewaysthoughts.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=291"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sidewaysthoughts.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=291"},{"taxonomy":"ecosystem_role","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sidewaysthoughts.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/ecosystem_role?post=291"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}