How Supermarkets can Help their Customers to Become and Stay Healthy

Abstract

Preventing or decreasing chronic health conditions by healthy eating is increasingly seen as a shared responsibility. Defining what is healthy is person-specific, depending amongst others on a person’s health and responses to food. Supermarkets, which are considered highly influential in shaping the diet of customers, are starting to serve customers based on their health needs. This study explores how supermarkets can tailor their service provision to the dietary needs of individual customers and what business and design implications this involves. Through a service design approach involving participants with elevated blood glucose levels, thoughts and emotions during the process of dietary change were translated into a customer journey that reveals multiple opportunities for service delivery to support healthy eating. The customer journey can be used by supermarkets to shed new light on their positioning and customer segments. The study also provides inspiration for how supermarkets and other organizations can support customers with specific health needs to eat healthy via group-based and personalised services.