ANYONE who has ever dealt with product content will know the pain of having to manually capture nutritional data from product packaging.
It can be a tedious task prone to error where there is no room for mistakes as consumers can make important – and sometimes health-critical – decisions based on this information. That’s why we have worked hard to perfect a method on Productify.ai to make this task painless, accurate and scalable. (Try it for free here)
Taking a typically rough pack image such as this below, our platform will return structured data in seconds in a form which can easily be ingested into enterprise systems as structured data. Our custom nutrient codes create a consistent data standard when naming conventions vary from pack to pack.
Productify.ai’s nutritional table data extraction is available both through our web platform and via our API.
This transformation of unstructured data into content that can be used is vitally important even though few retailers or brands are exploiting the opportunities that this presents.
Accurate nutritional data provided in the context of a product page in eCommerce allows consumers to make informed choices about their food purchases and dietary decisions. This is important for consumers having to make choices out of specific health concerns or considerations.
For consumers managing hypertension or cholesterol challenges, for example, being able to determine key nutritional data like sodium, saturated fat or other important markers becomes possible once this product data is turned into something that can be practically used on a sales platform.
Retailers who offer this content as a matter of course have an advantage over competitors and are likely to more trusted by health-conscious consumers.
Interestingly, a 2019 study published in the Journal of the Academy of Marketing Science found that “nutrition information of food products is considered to be a credence attribute” in online sales.
The researchers from the Harbin Institute of Technology in China found that nutritional data had a significant impact on sales in an online environment where it was often a negligible consideration for consumers in the offline space.
Their study found the presence of nutrition information is associated with approximately 35.9% higher sales, all else being equal.
The study found that consumers pay attention to nutrition information and consider it a helpful cue in making online purchasing decisions. Eye-tracking experiments showed participants looked at nutrition information areas and those who looked longer were more likely to choose products with nutrition labels.
Nutrition information is especially impactful for sellers with high reputations and the effect of nutrition information on sales is greater for healthy foods compared to unhealthy foods.
The researchers found that contrary to concerns about information overload, providing relevant nutrition information does not frustrate consumers but rather helps their decisions.
Yet even with insights like this few retailers are grasping the opportunities that this content unlocks for them.
For example, retailers can offer customers personalised nutritional scores for products based on individual dietary preferences and health goals. For example, Carrefour partnered with food intelligence business Innit to provide custom nutritional scores on their French e-commerce site, Carrefour.fr, for over 40,000 food products. This collaboration aims to offer customers information to help them make informed choices.
There is an opportunity to create interactive digital nutrition labels to allow customers to explore detailed nutritional information, ingredient sourcing, and health benefits of products, making the shopping experience more engaging and informative.
Consumers might be offered tools that enable them to compare the nutritional profiles of similar products side-by-side and which can aid in making healthier choices, providing a clear and straightforward comparison of key nutritional elements.
Advanced filtering options based on nutritional data can help customers easily find products that fit specific diets, such as low-carb, high-protein, or vegan.
Accurate nutritional data also unlocks the potential to generate recipe and meal plan suggestions for consumers offering opportunities for building trust as well as larger basket sizes at checkout.
Other possibilities include nutritional goal tracking and gamification concepts and deeper personalisation of offers.
But it all starts with Productify.ai’s ability to accurately extract nutritional data from product packaging and present it in a structured format.
Get in touch with us for a free, no-obligation demo.
