Green pizza: Social media, the environment, and fast food convenience

I posted a while back about the complexities of our self-worship of the consumer god.  Looking into our deific motivations a bit more for some recent research, this consumer god is a pretty complex creature.  Just have a look at the diagram below* for some of the explanations that we have come up with to explain and “simplify” the purchasing process…

For those of us involved in influencing the consumer god, we can look at the diagram and ask “What is the one thing we need to change to get you to do something different?”  More so, what if I want to achieve a change towards one area, say, for example, environmental purchases?  About a decade back, they were saying the “green consumer” represented 5% of the market, and that most brands could thrive on around 1% to 2% of the market.  So what did we do?  We slapped a green label on everything so now consumers have no clue what it means to buy green, and suppliers have no idea what represents a green consumer.  Good job, guys.

We do, however, know that impulse and convenience purchases are easy.  It’s all based on an insidious addiction cycle, like so:

1. It is proven that happy people buy more, so suppliers pre-load you with good feelings;
2. Convenience purchases make you immediately satisfied;
3. However, your dissatisfaction increases after your purchase, especially when you are forced to compromise environmental, nutritional and other concerns for the benefit of convenience.
4. With your newfound buyers regret firmly in hand, go to step 1.

This cycle results in habit, and habit trumps attitude, motivation, peer pressure, and… well, everything.

We also know that misery loves company. Convenience purchases, particularly those of the fast food variety, are more prone to be subject to influences of a group.  More important than the meaning of life is the response to the mystery of “Where are we going for lunch?”

Two other points to consider include: 1) convenience purchases are more apt to be transacted online, and 2) brand loyalty increases with socialisation.  Practically, the more face-time you have with a brand during the transaction process, the more you have a chance to like that brand. As such, low-contact convenience purchases, particularly those that move online, risk losing brand loyalty.

So what are we to do then for companies trying to persuade group mentality and attract convenience purchases through online transactions without lowering brand contact time?  What if I also wanted to target those ambiguous socially-conscious buyers by tapping into existing online communities?  At the risk of being cliché and labelled as a try-hard guru or evangelist, I will put forward social media as a potential answer.

To explore my point, I had a look recently at the big three Australian pizza companies of Domino’s, Eagle Boys and Pizza Hut, looking at their social media engagement with Twitter and Facebook compared to the number of stores.  I also stumbled across Pizza Fusion in the US that is setting itself apart by making the environmental differentiator with a motto of “Saving the Earth, one pizza at a time”.  The community engagement per store is interesting.

The numbers above appear to indicate that Pizza Fusion’s environmental position results in the establishment of a strong online community.  Domino’s Facebook fan count could be seen to reflect a similar social sentiment based on a recent campaign distributed through social media channels to donate $0.50 per fan to Mission Australia’s efforts to combat homelessness.  It would appear that these examples support the correlation between convenience, community, and brand loyalty, although it could just mean that if you tweet, they will come.

A final point in response is that it is important for the gestures to be functional rather than just symbolic.  The use of social media to engage on levels of environmental sustainability or to benefit the community is only of value if you are speaking about something you are actually doing. For all the hype of social media, it is still important for businesses to say what they do, and do what they say.

* Combined models for: Persuasion (Hoyland); Subjective Expected Utility (Savage); Cognitive Dissonance Theory (Festinger); Self-perception theory (Bem); Symbolic interactionism (Blumer, Mead); Norm Activation Theory (Schwartz); Expectancy-value theory (Ajzen, Fishbein); Theory of Interpersonal Behavior (Triandis); Theory of reasoned Action (Ajzen & Fishbein); Elaboration Likelihood Model (Petty, Cacioppo); Symbolic self-completion (Wicklund, Gollwitzer); Structuration (Giddens); Theory of planned behaviour (Ajzen); Motivation-Ability-Opportunity Model (Batra, Ray); Attitude Behaviour-Context Theory (Stern, Oskamp); Self-discrepancy theory (Higgins); Cultural Theory (Thompson, Ellis, Wildavsky); Focus Theory of Normative Conduct (Cialdini, Reno, Kallgren); Value-belief-norm theory (Stern)