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Tesco Snapshot |
| Feature Name: | Helpful Little Swaps |
| Platforms: | Web & Mobile Web |
| Applications: | • Nudge customers as they shop
• Food curation through micro-site |
| Features: | • Recommends like-for-like ‘healthier’ swaps at similar price point |
| Results: | • Launched with the main aim of driving healthier purchases, initial testing has seen the Healthy Swaps recommender (MVP) exhibit comparable ‘Add To Basket’ rates as their existing top performing recommender unit – ‘Usually bought Next’. |
Client: Tesco
Challenges: Obesity rates have more than trebled in the last 30 years within the UK. With 1 in 4 now obese, and over half of the UK adult population forecasted to be obese by 2050.
Further, 7 out of 10 families say supermarkets should do more to help people make healthier choices. As the UK’s leading supermarket, Tesco implemented ‘The Little Helps Plan’ as a long-term response to this problem in driving forward the nation’s health and providing a healthier place to shop… ‘small actions that can add up to make a big difference’.
In order to be successful the ‘Little Helps Plan’ would need to address the largest material issues around healthy eating within their customer base
- Reduce the confusion and lack of ‘know-how’ around how to eat healthy.
- Eliminate the perception that healthier foods/drinks are more expensive
- Inspire & make it simple to progress towards a healthier lifestyle
Additionally, scientific evidence & trials conducted by the CGF concluded nudge behaviour was one of the most effective ways to drive health behaviour changes.
How Spoon Guru Helped: To encourage customers to easily discover and try healthier alternatives, Tesco partnered with Spoon Guru to roll out Smart Swaps. The Smart Swaps recommender (made available on Tesco.com – desktop + mobile) aimed to improve diets by encouraging low effort nudges in behaviour. Smart Swaps eased confusion for customers by showing similar but healthier alternatives to the product they were currently viewing. Further, all available swaps were accurate, easily visible (part of the normal shopper journey), allowed for easy comparison and selection, and most importantly were at the same cost or cheaper. Tesco customers now are able to easily find and purchase their favourite foods every week while being a little healthier.
Results, Return on Investment and Future Plans: By partnering with Spoon Guru, Tesco are now able to provide a utility that enables the easy discovery and trial of healthier product alternatives while at the same time showing their customers eating healthy can be affordable for everyone, regardless of budget. A great move for Tesco demonstrating that they are putting customer needs at the heart of the online shopping experience.
“During integration phase of Spoon Guru’s Healthy Little Swaps API to Tesco’s Global Recommendations Services API, Spoon Guru team have shown the highest level of professionalism while complying fully with the Tesco’s strict API latency and functional requirements at a high standard and delivering the full API handshake and service launch at minimum development costs on Tesco side with no delays. This is one of the smoothest service integrations we have ever had with a trusted third party”
– Saied Albedi, Tesco
