How does the design of TooGoodToGo influence users’ behavior?
By: Yuan Gong
Tags: UX Research, User Experience, Consumer Behavior, Design, Theory

From TooGoodToGo

TooGoodToGo is a service that aims to reduce food waste by selling leftover food from cafes and restaurants at low prices to consumers. It connects stores with unsold food and customers who would like to buy high-quality food at a reduced price. The concept of the service is promising but whether it would succeed also depends on how the service is communicated and delivered, which would influence consumers’ behavior.

To dive deeper into the interplay of consumer behavior and the attributes that the service possesses, two topics of consumer behavior theory, consumer’s attitude formation, and decision-making process are analyzed. Based on the results of the analysis, recommendations are given to improve the current service.

This report starts with the introduction of the consumer journey followed by the analysis of consumer’s attitude formation, including how selected attributes of the service influence the consumer’s attitude. In the next article, the analysis is based on consumer decision-making stages and evaluation of TooGoodToGo market strategy, in terms of letting consumers make desired decisions at the right moment. Lastly, recommendations are given in line with the analysis results to improve the current service.

Consumer journey

The typical consumer journey (figure 1) begins with consumers encountering the marketing materials such as on its website, which triggers their interest to download the app and learn further. When the perceived attributes of the service can fulfill consumers’ needs, the purchasing behavior would be performed. Consumers then pick up the food at the store and finally evaluate the experience with the store on the app.

Figure 1: The user journey of using TooGoodToGo service

Consumer attitude formation

Attitude is defined as a learned tendency to respond to an object in a consistently favorable or unfavorable way (Onkvisit, S. and Shaw, J., 1994). Therefore, analyzing consumer’s attitude formation helps designers learn how consumers perceive the attitude and improve the service accordingly.

Attitude formation (Figure 2) begins with the consumers’ urge to fulfill their needs (practical and emotional) since satisfying needs is the driving force of all human activities, which motivate them to process the information of the service (Desmet, P. and Fokkinga, S., 2020). When consumers are exposed to and process the service information, their attitude toward the service is gradually formed.

Figure 2: Attitude formation model Blythe, J. (2013) and MacInnis, D. J., & Jaworski, B. J. (1989).

Getting to know the service

The possible means of consumers encountering TooGoodToGo are from social media or its website. The advertising messages on the channels are consistent, repeating the impact that consumers can create through using the service — “Save eat help the planet”. Consumers learn the message and associate TooGoodToGo with reducing food waste, therefore form a salient belief about the service. Given that creating positive impacts on the world is one of the fundamental needs of humans (Desmet, P. and Fokkinga, S., 2018), this association of TooGoodToGo and ‘against food waste’ obtains the consumer’s attention to process further information of the service.

The fact that about 1/3 of all the food is wasted (Figure 3) is pointed out to support the importance of the issue and to trigger a guilty feeling of the consumers, therefore, elicit their awareness of the food-waste issue(Evans, M., Jamal, A., and Foxall, G., 2010). Consequently, consumers’ interest in the service has is increasing.

Figure 3: A screenshot of the website of TooGoodToGo: The information about the value of the service.

To help consumers strengthen the understanding of the message, a series of numbers are provided, including the number of users and stores involved in this action, and meals are saved through the action, making the contribution of the service more persuasive and linking consumers’ actions to its consequences (Figure 3). TooGoodToGo selected green as the brand color which is in all their communication channels and also the app, helping consumers to learn and remember the idea of this service also in unconscious ways (Evans, M., Jamal, A., and Foxall, G.,2010).

Being exposed to the information of the services, enough opportunities are provided to the consumers to process the service information, but the understanding of the brand information is also influenced by consumers’ ability (Blythe, J.,2013) to process the information. Although TooGoodToGo put much effort into explaining the impact of the service, the value of reducing food waste might still be too abstract to some consumers due to the delayed effect of sustainable behavior. The consequence cannot be seen in the short term. Therefore, some consumers might be indifferent to the issue, resulting in ineffective communication of the brand’s main value. To identify the problem, TooGoodToGo took an effort on making the value tangible by sending an email after each purchase (figure 4), explaining the impact of the purchase in numbers, however, this measure has no effect on consumers who still hesitate to try the service.

If the consumers cannot be attracted by fulfilling their emotional needs, creating an impact on the world, they can satisfy their practical needs by obtaining high-quality food with almost 1/3 of the original price and form a positive attitude towards the service. This attribute helps TooGoodToGo own more attention from potential consumers.

Figure 4: email received after purchasing, explaining impact in numbers

Interacting with the application

With the positive attitude towards the service being formed, consumers download the app to give it a try. The acquisition of new users is achieved. Although attitude is fairly stable (Evans, M., Jamal, A., and Foxall, G., 2010), deriving from consumer needs and beliefs, it still can be changing or reinforcing when interacting with the app. One of the main behaviors performed in the app is purchasing the food in the form of a magic bag. The two attributes of the magic bags are influential in the process of changing attitude, namely ‘unknown content of the bag’ and ‘the Scarcity of the bag’.

Unknown content of magic bags

The surplus food is sold in the form of magic bags meaning that the consumers do not know the exact food filled in the bag. Even bags from one store, the magic bag can be different. Although it is due to practical reasons that the amount of different leftovers are different, this attribute can fulfill consumer’s need for stimulation, another fundamental need of humans (Desmet, P. and Fokkinga, S., 2018). What would be in the magic bag is a surprise to consumers. Therefore, the curiosity to discover the content motivates them to purchase the magic bag. By forming the name of unsold food as the Magic bag, TooGoodToGo changed consumers’ perception of attributes from the feeling of ‘lack of control’ to ‘fulfill curiosity.’

Scarcity of magic bags

The magic bags are not always available. The surplus food is put online randomly. When consumers see there are bags left in their favorite store, they might feel lucky then purchase the bag directly without too much consideration on whether the food would suit their needs.

The two attributes are manipulated properly, changing from potentially undesirable attributes to the attributes that can help at least some consumers form a stronger favorable attitude towards the service.7

Picking up the magic bag at the store

The rest of the experience of this service is offline. Consumers’ attitude is affected by not only the quality of the food obtained, as well as a series of situational variables such as the weather of the pick-up time slot.

The quality of the food

If the quality of the food is desirable, not only the prior formed positive attitude of the service would be reinforced but also the positive attitude towards the store would perhaps be generated. The consumer would be more likely to continuously use TooGoodToGo, and might become a customer of the store in the future, which is another incentive for stores to be a partner of TooGoodToGo, except the reason of getting some money back.

The constrained pick-up time

The time slot for consumers to pick up the magic bag at the store is very specific and constrained. Imagining consumers purchased a magic bag that is a bit far from them. If it is raining, they still have to be on time. Experiencing such kinds of difficulties in the pick-up phase would result in a negative attitude towards the entire service and would reduce the possibility that consumers would like to use the service again (Evans, M., Jamal, A., and Foxall, G., 2010).

Consuming the food

The food might become a burden to the consumer in the consuming phase. A large amount of food might not be able to be consumed for people who live alone. Or the consumer is unfamiliar with some ingredients and they do not know how to deal with them. In these cases, the food could still be wasted. Therefore, the results would trigger the process of re-evaluating the service. The level of the impotence of some attributes which were previously considered high, such as ‘unknown content of the bag’ and ‘large amount of food at a low price’ is reduced and even become unimportant at all. The customer’s attitude is changed due to the change of evaluation of the existing belief (figure 5).

Figure 5: the cycle of attitude and behavior Blythe, J. (2013)

Recommendations for the redesign

Three recommendations are given based on the analysis results of attitude formation. The main insights from the attitude formation are:

1. The delay effect of ‘against food waste’ to the environment, some consumers might be indifferent to the market message. 2. The constrained pick-up time is a turn-off to consumers. 3. Secondary food waste could happen in the consuming phase.

The insights are translated into three recommendations below:

1. Gamification as a way to illustrate the consumers’ impact

The delay effect of ‘against food waste’ can be addressed by designing a gamified system that each time when consumers purchase the magic bag, there would be an energy ball generated, which stands for the amount of CO2 reduced through the purchasing behavior. The virtual CO2 then can be spent on growing trees within the system. Therefore, the impact of the consumer is more tangible, which motivates them to purchase again.

2. Self-service cabinet for picking up

The limitation of the constrained pick up time can be addressed by placing self-service cabinets (figure 12) near to the partner’s stores, which is convenient for the staff of the store to put the food inside. It provides flexibility for consumers to pick up the food. When the consumer purchased the magic bag online, one section of the cabinet would be reserved and waiting for the consumer to pick it up at any time convenient within the day. On the other hand, people who pass by the cabinets can also purchase directly without using the app, which is a new way to promote the service.

Figure 12: Self-service cabinet

3. Encouraging recipes sharing

To solve the secondary food waste in the consuming phase. TooGoodToGo can encourage consumers to share recipes made by food from magic bags on social media. Therefore, more users would be inspired by how others make use of the food and want to be creative themselves. If certain levels of effort and creativity are involved, the consumers would feel a sense of accomplishment and would be more attached to the dishes created by the food, therefore less likely to waste it again (Norton, M. I., Mochon, D., & Ariely, D., 2012).

In the following article, the decision-making process of consumers when using the service of TooGoodToGo is discussed.

References

Blythe, J. (2013), Chapter 7: Attitude formation and change. In: Consumer Behavior, 2nd edition, London: Sage Publications.

Desmet, P., & Fokkinga, S. (2020). Beyond Maslow’s Pyramid: Introducing a Typology of Thirteen Fundamental Needs for Human-Centered Design. Multimodal Technologies and Interaction, 4(3), 38.

Desmet, P., & Fokkinga, S. (2020). Beyond Maslow’s Pyramid: Introducing a Typology of Thirteen Fundamental Needs for Human-Centered Design. Multimodal Technologies and Interaction, 4(3), 38.

Evans, M., Jamal, A., and Foxall, G. (2010), Chapter 3: Consumer response to marketing actions 2: Learning and attitudes. In: Consumer Behavior, 2nd edition, West Sussex: John Wiley & Sons Ltd.

Kranzbühler, A. M., Zerres, A., Kleijnen, M. H., & Verlegh, P. W. (2020). Beyond valence: a meta-analysis of discrete emotions in firm-customer encounters. Journal of the Academy of Marketing Science, 1–21.

MacInnis, D. J., & Jaworski, B. J. (1989). Information processing from advertisements: Toward an integrative framework. Journal of marketing, 53(4), 1–23.

Norton, M. I., Mochon, D., & Ariely, D. (2012). The IKEA effect: When labor leads to love. Journal of consumer psychology, 22(3), 453–460.