Dog days

Our dog is a 12 year old Scottie named Murphy.  Unfortunately, Murphy had a tussle with our significantly younger and bigger King Shepherd, resulting in poor Murph spending most of the weekend and this week in the vet emergency clinic.  Good news is he survived the scuffle (barely ... a case of attempted dogslaughter by the Shepherd?) and is recovering nicely.  But he is definitely off his food.  After numerous discussions with the vet, the recommended solution?  Baby food, non-chunky, off of a spoon.


Hence my trip to the grocery store to buy 10 jars of pureed turkey, chicken, and beef for the dog.  First time visiting this aisle in 9 years.  And it was an interesting excursion from a couple perspectives.

First, that an aisle which is normally nothing more than a cut through to the dairy department is a lot busier brand-wise than I recall from the days when baby food was bought for a baby, namely mine.  The variety of foods and food combinations is quite remarkable, with clear delineation of more expensive varieties from the value options.  Yet what is even more remarkable is the lack of standout on the shelf, and overall poor quality of merchandising by the large manufacturers.  Now that could be the buyer at Kroger stopping some nice initiatives, but it felt like a part of the store which, though high profit, is relatively ignored from a shopper marketing perspective as young mom's account for a small minority of this particular store's traffic.  Any short term promotions to build trial and loyalty was almost non-existent, if you judge activity by the shelf alone.  So I went on-line, and whoa:  what a lot of stuff is available, courtesy of Gerber/Nestle, Beech Nut, and a whole host of brands.  Plenty of what marketers are terming, in annoyingly repetitive fashion, 'engagement opportunities' for the young mother with time on her hands (not) to explore these sites, laden with coupons and advice.



But that raises the question - why isn't it carried through to the point of sale, the zero moment of truth or whatever you want to call it?  Is all the seeding of prospects occurring outside the store, such that the in-store experience is purely a transactional relationship, aimed as satisfying the shopping list item?  Why is there no guidance to choosing a selection of items which provide a balanced diet to a baby or toddler, in the form of shelf strips or point of sale advice?  Or why not provide QR codes which link to the information, to help a mother get the right assortment for her child?

In short, it seems at least where baby food is concerned, that the digital revolution has been at the expense of the shopper marketing revolution, with precious little interest or effort in driving sales and information at the last few feet.

Still, at least Murphy is feeling better!!

PS:  It feels kinda weird feeding a dog baby food from a spoon.  Almost had a knee jerk reaction to put him over my shoulder to 'burp' him afterwards ...