IXperience: when FAMILIAR becomes STRANGE again

The branding strategies of nutri-functional products show how health and wellness companies transform foods into culturally meaningful products and experiences, thereby doing much more than making profitable specialties. In educating and offering consumers new lifestyles, they change established systems of consumption (i.e. rituals) and influence people’s imaginations towards health and wellness.

The concepts and theories underlying experience with food and its underlying multi-dimensional (physical, social, cognitive, affective, biological and sensorial) are complex and too often company’s product development and marketing strategies are often driven by 1 or 2 assumptions about customers and their needs. Multisensory stimulation is integral to experiential consumption and a gap persists between recognising its importance and the research techniques used to study the effects of such stimulation on consumption experiences. Embodied experiences are potent, hence the introduction of a new term, “IXperience”, well suited to describe the importance of functional nutrition, good food, medical food or “food as medicine”.?

With this new concept in mind, we need to reframe the problem as a phenomenon and start gathering the data, carry out a thorough analysis and interpretation to build brand identity and update business intelligence. My aim is to challenge the status-quo and help you to conceptualize how food consumption, accomplished in an environment pre-configured by ordinary practices, can be reinvented through Innovation-as-a-Service to elevate customer experience and benefit your team and your business. In order to understand FMCG consumption, as well as its emergence, performance, and complexities, we must take into account the cultural and cognitive mechanisms aspects involved, not just the practical or material perspective of formulating or manufacturing good quality products.?

Focusing on creating value for the consumers is a source to innovation and a way for firms to achieve competitive advantage. However, we can no longer depend on R&D as the single source of innovation. Companies that are good at combining different types of innovation can create what economists call “temporary monopolies” that tend to dominate a market space for a period of five to ten years. Expanding innovation from pure product development to other forms of innovation demands a different mindset and skillset. As demand for specialty products and lifestyle brands grow, how can we ensure that innovation pipelines and product portfolios are more robust, integrated and business remains sustainable and resilient? Please reach out to [email protected] to share your thoughts, collaborate and discuss what success would look like for you.