Thursday, July 12, 2012

Marketing to a Prepper (July 2, 2012)

Website Analysis: Marketing to a Prepper
Michael D. Lavespere
July 02, 2012

Website Link:  http://www.myfoodstorage.com

Abstract
The purpose of this website analysis is to critique http://www.myfoodstorage.com in four important areas (1) Identifying the target market and consumer behavior (2) Aesthetics analysis (3) Content analysis (4) and Evaluation of the information that is presented. The identification of the target market discusses the emerging niche market of “Prepping”. The aesthetics of the website includes the design, layout, color, impact, clarity, hyperlinks, ease-of-use, and functionality.  While the content analysis discusses information pertaining to a clear company purpose, contact details, informative, usefulness, well-supported data, and up-to-date information.  The final area will discuss the positive and negative aspects of the information presented specifically to the company’s consumers with a strongly emphases on understanding the behavior and influences of preppers.   In addition, suggestions for a marketing course correction are offered.

Keywords:  Prepping, WTSHTF, Food Storage, Survivalist, Marketing to Preppers
Market Overview

Many would not argue that the fundamental goal of business is to make money; however, there are numerous theories, disciplines, and models on how to accomplish this precise goal.  When the rhetoric is condensed down to its simplest form, it is apparent that the key is to identify a need and to fill that need.  Granted, many subsets of this agenda is to do so profitably and repeatedly, but the paramount variable is to first identify a particular need that will be profitable, sustainable and build a product or services mix around those needs.  This is the art of marketing,   to identify the market segmentation with a particular need in order to build a strategy for a specific target market.  In addition, the most critical component of this art is the ability to identify consumer behavior and the influences that navigate those behaviors in this target market.
One of the most interesting target markets that have grown over the last several years is known as the “Preppers” or sometimes referred to as the “Survivalist” and companies have wasted no time in attempting to fill this niche market. According to the American Preppers Network, a prepper is someone that makes preparations for major life impacting emergencies, such as social, political, economic disorder, natural disasters, pandemics, and other apocalyptic life changing events (2010).  The level of this preparation can range from moderate to extreme stock piling of food, weapons, and underground shelters.  Once what was considered a right-wing militia group is now being considered a viable target market and has spurred the new reality shows, “Doomsday Preppers” on the National Geographic Channel and “Doomsday Bunkers” on Discovery. 
However, this subculture is not new.  Since the 1960’s, the fear of nuclear war drove individuals to build bunkers, the 1970’s had the oil crisis, the 1980’s brought in the Cold War fears, while the Y2K computer bug and the September 11th, 2001 attacks strengthen the numbers of apocalyptic fearing preppers.  Today, most preppers are concerned with economic crisis and biological terrorism to alien invasion and the Mayan Calendar.  These situational influences (past, current, or future) have received the attention of many firms who have focused their marketing strategy on the psychographic segmentation of a preppers’ lifestyle.  One of the recipes to this marketing strategy is to understand the consumer’s behavior and buying process.

Company Overview

One of the more popular websites that specializes in the “prepping” niche market is http://www.myfoodstorage.com/.  My Food Storage, founded in 2002, is headquartered in Sandy, Utah (2012).  They specialize in long term food storage, emergency food kits, survival kits, water storage, and other products essential to meet the need of a prepper.  They are exclusively an e-commerce site that accepts all major credit cards, PayPal, and Google Checkout payments. In addition, they have strong endorsements from major television networks and celebrities.

Aesthetic Analysis
The design of the website is typical of what one would expect from an e-commerce site in that it displays its products, payment methods, and prices.  The website is encrypted to accept payments securely using industry standard methods. The text size is easy to read and is consistent throughout the website.  However, for users who prefer to set their browser text size larger, users will experience no change using Internet Explorer©, Firefox©, or Chrome©. The color scheme is a modest maroon and white which match the company logo and incidentally many of their products labels.  Images of the products are of good quality and can be enlarged to see minor details on the packaging label.  The image landscape on the homepage is extremely attractive with revolving images in two prominent areas.  First, the largest area contains a three image set with an infinite looped that outlines recognition from FOX News, Newsweek, The History Channel, and other well-known television broadcasts. And secondly, the smaller image set is also on an infinite loop that contains product endorsement from Dennis Prager, Laura Ingraham, Tom Gresham, Dave Ramsey, and Mike Gallagher.  The Company logo is tastefully placed consistently throughout the website in the upper left corner imbedded in the top navigation bar and takes the user back to the home page if clicked.  The layout is also consistent throughout the website and is aided by a standard top navigation bar and a footer bar to guide the user experience.  Product descriptions are detailed with important relevant information, which is crucial for e-commerce.  Equally notable, such detailed information will reduce unnecessary calls for product descriptions into My Food Storage’s call center and encourage users to buy rapidly.
          The latest versions of Internet Explorer©, Firefox©, and Chrome© web browsers all displayed the design of the web page in the intended manner for the exception of the previously mentioned failure to adjust text size.  Multiple resolution settings were used to test the display with favorable results.  The webpage displayed superbly and right sized appropriately on a windows mobile platform.  Conversely, the grammatical and spelling integrity of the webpage falls short of acceptable.  The webpage is inundated with obvious spelling errors, oversight in punctuation, and typographical errors.  The word affiliated is misspelled, compliment as opposed to complement is used often, apostrophes are nonexistent throughout the text and in several places, and words were erroneously concatenate (2012).  For example, “My Food Storage provides gourmetemergency grab and go food kits” and “Thesefreeze dried gourmet meals are ready in minutes” (2012).  A further frustration is the ‘contact page’ and the ‘camping meals and outdoor food’ link in the footer renders a 404 Not Found error page. The website does not extract web pages in a printer friendly format through the browser and no alternative is offered by the website.  The footer contains a 2012 copyright mark implying that the website is up to date (2012).
          Although My Food Storage’s website is easy to use, simple, and provides an easy method for users to purchase their products, much work is needed to remedy the spelling errors, oversight in punctuation, typographical errors, and the broken links.  Considering that the costs of such corrections are minuscule, such oversights are inexcusable for a corporate website.  The financial cost, if present, to such oversight is not easily quantifiable.
Content Analysis
Although there is no specific mention of a mission statement, My Food Storage does an adequate job of clearly stating that they “provide Long Term Food Storage for families and individuals” (2012).  The bold picture placements of products substantiate this implied mission statement of the company.  Moreover, the ‘about us’ page claims that they “offer the best tasting food storage with the highest quality, lowest price, and a 25 year shelf life. Not to mention the fastest food storage delivery around” (2012).  The main telephone number is listed consistently in the header and the footer of all webpages and the dedicated ‘contact page’ contains an online email contact form.  Moreover, the physical address, telephone number, and email address is listed under the ‘about us’ page. 
           The content of the website is predominantly written to describe the specificity of the products offered.  For example, the amount of servings per package, the estimated monthly supply of said product, detailed nutritional facts, and the ingredients.  The flagship product—Long Term Food Storage—is offered in 240 servings packages all the way up to a 4,320 serving package bundle.   The information is further structured to quantify how many adults and children each bundled supply will feed.  A very useful food storage calculator is offered to customize a needs requirement for the user that determines the amount of food needed to reach a certain desired time period of consumption.  Most of the webpages on the website are intended to educate the user of the products that are offered; however, very little content is delivered to reinforce the social influences and situational influences that initially encouraged the consumer’s interest and thus directed them to the website.  
Critical Analysis of Information Presented
The fundamental oversight of My Food Storage’s marketing strategy is that they are attempting to compete and entice buyers exclusively on price, fast shipping, and product quality.  After further vetting, it was determined that My Food Storage is a Value Added Reseller (VAR) for the Wise Company, Inc.—a Salt Lake City, Utah corporation (2012).  As a result of competing from direct sales by Wise Company, Inc. and the numerous other VAR’s that resell the Wise product line, My Food Storage must do a better job of understanding their consumers behavior in order to build an effective marketing strategy to compete.  Competing strictly on price and quality offers no competitive advantage for My Food Storage.  A simple search discovered that other companies—who also sell the Wise product line—offer the exact same product for the same price.  In addition, My Food Storage’s competitors were similarly displaying the endorsements of FOX News, Newsweek, The History Channel, and other well-known television broadcasts.  What their competitors seem to do is that they understand the social and situational influences that feed into the psychological profile of the buyer.  As a result, they tailor their website accordingly to nurture such influences.  For example, one competitor selling the Wise product line displays “Protect your Family” in large text on their website (2012).  Another has real-time video feeds of the latest concerns in the world (2012).   These types of messages simply reinforce the already existing beliefs that the consumers have in this particular market niche.
It is self-evident that My Food Storage has failed to build an effective marketing plan because they do not understand their consumers and what motivates them to buy.  The leadership team must revamp the current strategy.  In order to do so, more information needs to be provided to the prospects on the reasons why they should buy the product.  Providing “accurate” information on past social, economic, and natural calamities and potential future events would reinforce the already embedded concerns that My Food Storage’s prospects already have.  These are strong influences and must be understood.  My Food Storage is not selling ‘Long Term Food Storage’ as they claim; they are selling security and protection.  This is most basic fundamental need of people—especially preppers!
References
My Food Storage. (2012). Long Term Food Storage. Retrieved from http://www.myfoodstorage.com/
American Preppers Network. (2010). Definition of a prepper. Retrieved from http://prepper.org/ 
PrepareWise.com. (2012).  High Quality Food Storage and Outdoor Needs.  Retrieved from http://www.preparewise.com/
Wise Company. (2012).  Affliate Program. Retrieved from http://wisefoodstorage.com/
Wise Food Choice. (2012).  Professional Grade Food Storage—Just in Case. Retrieved from http://wisefoodchoice.com/

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