How a chatbot delivers deep insights on food for Woolworths

Woolworths, the South African retailer, used a bot to conduct qual research on its customers’ food habits and motivations revealing insights that have adapted its comms and NPD.

Woolworths, the South African retailer, built a persona-based Facebook chatbot to understand the food habits of South Africans. In contrast to a food diary, this method aimed to access a more naturally-worded and accurately reported picture of food consumption in order to better inform both NPD and communication strategies.

“How do we begin to know what the true motivations and drivers of consumers are?” asked Charlene Van Zyl, Head of Customer at Woolworths, speaking at IIeX Europe, (Amsterdam, February 2020). Earlier examples of consumer diary keeping had thrown up several key problems:

  • People answer far more rationally than they behave...

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