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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