Salina ChanRainey JerniganEric KatzTazmun NaharRoss Simons

Whole Foods Market is one of America’s leading supermarkets specializing in natural

and organic products. Through the company’s commitment to localized suppliers, Whole Foods

is able to provide consumers with fresh, health-conscious foods. With the recent social trend

towards health-conscious eating habits, Whole Foods is becoming increasingly popular as a store

and a lifestyle.

Whole Foods’ mantra, “Whole Foods, Whole People, Whole Planet” promotes the well-being

of the company, those who work for Whole Foods, and the successful utilization of the Earth’s

natural resources in order to achieve company profit and growth. Following these three basic

principles, Whole Foods has also cultivated seven company objectives:

1. Selling the Highest Quality Natural and Organic Products Available

2. Satisfying and Delighting Our Customers

3. Supporting Team Member Happiness and Excellence

4. Creating Wealth Through Profits & Growth

5. Caring about our Communities & Our Environment

6. Creating ongoing win-win partnerships with our suppliers

7. Promoting the health of our stakeholders through healthy eating education.

As a company committed to healthy living and eating, Whole Foods promotes not only a

set of products, but a way of living. Their already extensive use of social media feeds into the

lifestyle image Whole Foods promotes through their products and promotions. Considered a

pioneer in their commitment to the use of social media, Whole Foods has already gained a strong

following on Facebook, Twitter, Flickr, and Youtube. Not to mention, there is a regularly

updated company blog and iPhone mobile application as well as an official website,

www.wholefoodsmarket.com. While Whole Foods has many Web 2.0 outlets, each is aimed to

highlight a different aspect of their company.

According to Bill Tolany, Head of Integrated Media at Whole Foods, social media has

grown to become considered marketing and communications. With this in mind, he has outlined

four goals for social media at Whole Foods. First, he wants Whole Foods to “be where the

customers are” (“Just Because”). He wants customers to be able to reach Whole Foods with little

effort thus, Whole Foods is on almost every popular social media medium. This then aligns with

the second goal of increasing the quantity and quality of customer interactions. Another goal is to

be able to measure the number of times that Whole Foods is mentioned on the net. There is no

way to measure how many times an individual shops at Whole Foods so measuring how much

they talk about Whole Foods is the next best strategy. The last goal that Tolany has for social

media is “to help improve customers’ lives in some way” (“Just Because”). Our goal for

integrating social media at Whole Foods is to help make the customers’ shopping experience

easier and more efficient thus,  improving their lives.

There are many things that Whole Foods is already doing well on the social media front.

Whole Foods is doing well promoting their current use of social media; at the top of the Whole

Foods company website, www.wholefoodsmarket.com, there is a “Talk to Us” section (See

Exhibit 1A) that lists four different mediums (Facebook, Twitter, Flickr, and the Whole People

Blog). Another strategy that has been working really well for them is having niche Facebook and

Twitter accounts (See Exhibits 1B, 1C, 1D, 1E). With the Twitter accounts, they have some

specialized ones according to their company’s specialty items,  such as @WFMCheese,

@WFMWineGuys, as well as a Twitter account promoting specialized recipes aligned with their

company’s values, @WholeRecipes. Having these niche accounts allows them to do targeted

marketing for their promotional events. Also,Whole Foods has a Flickr (See Exhibit 1F) account

dedicated to capturing these promotional events for all to view and comment on. On another

note, the Whole People blog (See Exhibit 1G), advertised at the top of their website, adds

personality to company. The regular updates shed light onto the company culture, and make their

customer feel closer to the people they are purchasing from. Due to their impressive, routine

updates and intriguing blog posts, the Whole People Blog has gained a large following.

Not only can social media be used to promote Whole Foods as a whole, but it can also be

used to address their issues and opportunities.One opportunity we discovered is to improving

brand image. Another is to clarify false, preconceived notions that consumers might have about

the Whole Foods brand, (for example, Whole Foods gaining higher profits from sales than the

industry standard). Lastly, Whole Foods could use social media to inform people of current

company proceedings, which can also tie into improving the brand image.

Through our analysis of Whole Food’s current use of social media, we have devised four

campaigns to address the aforementioned opportunities for Whole Foods. First, we’d like address

the mobile application market. Next, we have developed a campaign surrounded around a

community crop swapping program. Third, we would like to create a cooking community that

ties into the ideals set by the Whole Foods company and their lifestyle guidelines. Fourth, a

campaign dedicated to informing consumers about what Whole Foods does already and will do

in the future.

          Whole Foods currently has a well-developed iPhone mobile application. This app is very

user-friendly and aesthetically pleasing. The buttons and features are clear to the average

technology user. Also, these features are geared toward the typical shopper at Whole Foods. One

aspect of the app is “locations” where the user can locate the nearest Whole Foods. This feature,

using GPS, determines where the user currently is, and then finds Whole Foods locations closest

to them and displays them on a map (See Exhibit 2A). Another good feature that they have is the

“On Hand” section. This allows the user to enter three ingredients that they have in their pantry,

which then allows the app to suggest recipes that include said ingredients (See Exhibit 2B). This

promotes healthy cooking and resourcefulness, which are values of the company. The application

also has a recipe finder where the user can type in an item, for example,  “pumpkin,” and get

recipes from the Whole Foods kitchen (See Exhibit 2C). There is also a  “shopping list” feature

where the customer can write items they need from the store, and check off purchased items as

they shop(See Exhibit 2D). While the app has a base of quality features, there are several

additions we feel would improve the value of this mobile application.

        Currently, the application has a “recipe search”, but does not have an item search. We

feel that it is important for Whole Foods to add this feature. This would allow a customer to look

up the item they are looking for, for example,“granola bar,” and see all of the granola bars that

Whole Foods offers. Embedded in the app will be automatic coupon alerts that will notify

customers of deals based on the products they scan or search for. When they search “granola

bar”, a window could pop up and say “2 for 1 on Chewy Granola Bars”. Once they find the item

in the search box, and find any coupons available, they can add the item to their “shopping list”

(See Exhibit 3A). This is another way for Whole Foods to reach out to their customers. They can

also track who is using the app by measuring who uses the coupons from the app (they would

have a specific code), and generate metrics about how often the application is used.

        Briefly mentioned before, the “shopping list” section is already included in this

application, but we feel a barcode scanner could add benefits to the consumer. This way,

customers can scan their loyalty card as well as scan items to check them off of their shopping

list (see Exhibit 3B).  Having a loyalty card scannable by your iPhone,  customers would be able

to see the rewards they get before they buy. This is because when the user scans his or her card, a

window will pop up saying how many “points” they have, which coupons they can use, and their

most bought items.  Knowing what the customer buys the most will let Whole Foods target them

by giving them coupons and advertisements. Perhaps more importantly, a barcode scanner

feature paired with a loyalty card will allow Whole Foods to track the purchasing habits of their

customers. Having a loyalty program implemented via a loyalty card will allow Whole Foods to

track the most frequent and largest spending customers; by having this card scannable through

the mobile app, this new card and program will not be a burden to the consumer.

        To feature Whole Foods’ value of eating locally and healthfully, we have decided to add

a feature to the appthat can tell the user what items may be in season in their area. This will be

addressed by our “What’s in season?” section. The user can put in their zip code, or allow GPS

to track their area, and then select the current season. The application will then make a list of

everything that is in season in their area, at that particular time of year. The user can then click

on a particular item, and add it to their shopping list (see Exhibit 3C).

Users of the Whole Foods app are likely already customers of Whole Foods itself.

However, most people who do not shop at Whole Foods think that it is too expensive. We want

to show users that organic and healthy items can be purchased on a budget. Therefore, we will

add an “On a budget?” section. The user can type in how much money they have available to

spend, and the application will come up with a combination of things that they can buy (See

Exhibit 3D). By incorporating previous purchasing habits (via the loyalty card), this section will

be able to generate recommendations relevant to the users buying preferences. This improvement

will show users that you can shop on a budget at Whole Foods, and improve the brand image

from that of an expensive organic store.

        Our additions to the existing Whole Foods mobile app will give users new features that

will benefit their shopping experience, give Whole Foods a new way to track customers, and

promote the brand image. Although we feel that updating the iPhone App will help usage a lot,

we know this will not be enough. They have not even tapped into the other parts of the smart

phone market, and we feel that expanding their application to other phones will greatly increase

the likelihood of success for the Whole Foods application..

Now that the suggested improvements to the iPhone mobile application have been

delineated, we can analyze the additional mobile app markets Whole Foods should consider. The

iPhone worldwide smart-phone sales to end user in 2009 were 14.4% of the market.

Comparatively, the blackberry, produced by RIM, had 19.9% of the market and the Android,

produced by Google, had 3.9% of the market (see Exhibit 4). The four firm market concentration

ratio of worldwide smartphone sales shows that Nokia phones (not currently “smart”),

Blackberry’s, Apples and Androids are collectively an oligopoly with “low” concentration levels

between 40% and 50% amongst the top four players.

While Blackberry is the second largest oligopoly player (and the largest smart phone

player) in the market, Android is the favorable star and new entrant into the market. The Android

platform is a free smart phone technology platform that Google is distributing. It is expected to

capture significant market share over the next three to five years. For these reasons, it makes

sense for Whole Foods to expand their mobile application into the Blackberry and Android

markets.

Furthermore, an overview of the smart phone operating systems and application stores as

of March 2010 reveals that Apple has over 185,000 apps. Comparatively, Android has 30,000

apps and Blackberry has 6,000 apps. Whole Foods has already become a top-rated app in the

Apple App Store. If Whole Foods expands into the Blackberry and Android markets, they will be

able to more easily position themselves as one of the top Food apps, if not a top app overall (only

6,000 other competitors with Blackberry and 30,000 other competitors with Android). From a

broad point of view, expansion will allow Whole Foods to tap an additional 25% of the global

smart phone users.

While it makes sense for Whole Foods to expand into the Blackberry and Android mobile

application  markets, there are several factors that must be considered. The first factor is the what

information Whole Foods will be able to monitor. The online downloading of apps makes it

extremely easy for any application provider to track their success. Whole Foods can easily track

the total app downloads for each phone type, the average user ratings, the total number of

ratings, and user complaints and satisfaction rating responses. Perhaps most importantly,

however, Whole Foods will be able to track the purchasing habits of their buyers (by linking the

phone app to a customer loyalty card). This opens up a massive realm for location based

marketing and advertising services that Whole Foods can get a head start on.

The second set of factors to consider are implementation criteria. To gain widespread

user-ship of the Blackberry and Android apps, Whole Foods should hold an exclusive employee

launch party at each Whole Foods location. The party would serve to educate all employees

about the new app, encourage employees with the appropriate smart phones to download the app,

and give employees the exclusive right to share the app (at least initially) with their friends and

family. This exclusivity connected with the app will generate user interest.  Gradually, Whole

Foods can make the app publicly available and easily download-able (after gaining traction with

the employee app sharing initiative).

The third and crucial aspect to consider for the app expansion is the challenges that will

be faced. After reading through over 150 user ratings of the iPhone Whole Foods app, there were

two general problems that users reported. First, the app crashed often and updates were not

available to solve the problem. This means that Whole Foods will have to invest additional

capital into an update that will solve crash-related problems.The second problem reported was

that the recipes available largely excluded the dairy-free, vegan, and gluten-free communities. To

overcome this challenge, Whole Foods must focus its efforts on creating a platform to allow

users to easily submit their own recipes and have other users rate the recipes. Over time, this will

allow for the best user-created recipes to rise to the top and will ultimately increase the variety

and total number of recipes available. Crowd-sourcing recipes from the existing Whole Foods

app user base is critical to the future success of the app.

Not only have we developed a campaign to improve their existing mobile app, we have

also devised a way to integrate all users into a virtual community based on their cooking

interests. Our idea to implement a cooking community will be preceded by a cooking show

contest. The cooking community is a community of user-generated cooking shows (meals, tip

videos, etc). To introduce the cooking show contest, we will first discuss the issues that would

arise from the cooking community. The first issue that arises is how to get quality

submissions to the community, especially for a time-intensive video such as a cooking show.

Second, it can take a long time to build up a group of users of the community. Third, the

community (ratings, hierarchy of videos, favorite users, etc.) can take a long time to develop.

Fourth, what outlets will be necessary to successfully promote the community.

This cooking contest would elegantly bypass all of these challenges by providing

incentives to those who submit high quality submissions, which could then be rated, organized,

and ready to be placed into the community after the conclusion of the contest. To begin, we will

discuss the logistics of the cooking show contest. All submissions will be subject to a number of

guidelines (See Exhibit 5 -  includes a flyer):

1. Most ingredients (except for breads, pastas) must be fresh, and not pre-made, out of a can

and/or bought (ready-made) from Whole Foods.

2. Every meal has to be under $15 and be able to feed two people. Proof of purchase required

3. The videos must be edited down to 10 minutes, but the shorter the better.

4. At the beginning of the video, you must say your favorite thing about Whole Foods.

We realize that, in order to to obtain quality submissions, we must provide unique and

fulfilling incentives. With the significantly lower costs of a social media marketing campaign,

we plan to use that extra money to provide better incentives than most contests do. The grand

prize winner will receive a $5,000 shopping card to Whole Foods and will get their ingredients

made into a $15 pre-packaged meal complete with written recipe instructions and marketed as

the winning meal within Whole Foods stores. The winner will receive a percentage of  the profit

off of every one of these packages sold (10-20%) for the 3 months following it’s inclusion in

stores. The second place winner would win $3,000 worth of Whole Foods goods and have the

opportunity to cook the meal in the hot food sections of the stores. Whole Foods has certain days

out of the year where they pledge 5% of their revenue to charity. On these days, the second prize

winner would be allowed to cook their meal, getting paid the industry standard for a cook. This

would also hopefully create an activity that would draw more consumers to the store and thus

create higher revenue and higher donations. The third place winner will receive a $2,000

shopping card to Whole Foods and a reserved parking space at their local Whole Foods. In

addition, every person who submits a video will receive a coupon of 20% off $50 spent at Whole

Foods. The idea behind these really unique prizes is that they will create steam for the contest by

themselves and hopefully garner unsolicited media attention, becoming viral by intriguing

viewers. After the contest, there will be regular contests (bi-weekly or monthly) in which the 3

top-rated new submissions of the past 2 months prior will receive a $500 shopping card to Whole

foods. Another great aspect of our prizes is that they provide great monetary profit to Whole

Foods, through the shopping cards. This program will help build an active community behind

Whole Foods and Whole Foods disciples.

There are several additional benefits to a cooking community video-submission

campaign.  Whole foods does a lot of awesome things, but they do not market their

accomplishments. One of our members said that they had not previously shopped at Whole

Foods due to their prices, but after hearing about everything they do, the team member said they

would be more likely to overlook price to help the Whole Foods cause. Because of this, we

realize that increasing knowledge of the Whole Foods core values will broaden their customer

base, and increase sales. Consumers buy for what they believe in, not solely what product a

company is pushing. Within each video, there would be short advertisements (10 seconds or so,

much like you see in any online video). These mini-commercials would be Whole Foods

advertisements that inform customers about what Whole Foods is doing behind the scenes, rather

than promoting a new product. They would be based around the theme “Did You Know?” and

would convey a short fact about Whole Foods many people may not know. (Refer to exhibit 7

for examples of Did You Know?)..This would be an ongoing initiative that would be included in

every video in the contest. We see the cooking community as a perfect opportunity to really

influence perceived value, brand loyalty, and to facilitate brand disciples which will thus

increase customer base.

Our final strategy is to create a new community that ties in closely with our cooking

community. With this idea, we wanted to create something that was extremely unique while also

promoting Whole Foods Market, Inc. values. After careful evaluation, we decided that

sustainability, buying locally grown foods, and eating healthy were three of their strongest values

to promote in their brand. Our new initiative, crop.SWAP embodies all of these values.

crop.SWAP is a home gardening/swapping online community, where local gardeners can

coordinate swapping their produce for those of other small gardeners in their area.. In regards to

Whole Foods, crop. SWAP addresses their business values in a way that many strategies do not:

selflessly. There is little direct profit incentive because Whole Foods is not making any revenue

from this project. This community is solely aimed to increase brand and value awareness for the

Whole Foods brand.

With the stereotype (and rightly so) that Whole Foods has high prices, we see an

opportunity to change the way people view the Whole Foods brand. We decided that one

ultimate business goal is for people to not think of Whole Foods as a profit-obsessed corporation

but as a social venture. Our team believes that crop.SWAP is a great step towards transforming

perception in this regard.

Crop.SWAP,besides just being an online home gardening community, will have a

number of features. First and foremost at it's core, it will be a tool for facilitating the swapping of

crops between small home gardeners. One of the barriers to home gardening is space limitation.

For those people who want to garden, a large exterior space is not always readily available. With

limited space, a potential home gardener would only be able to plant a few types of crops (ex.

cucumbers, tomatoes, and squash). The work to garden (input) would produce limited returns

(output). Many potential gardeners may not choose to partake in home gardening because of

these restrictions. crop.SWAP seeks to move past these barriers through collaboration. If user A

only has space to grow cucumbers and tomatoes, they can go onto crop.SWAP and find user B

willing to trade apples for cucumbers. This community would essentially seek to take a large

number of farmers specializing in specific crops, and bring them all together to create a huge

community farm in which all active members have access to the output. Within the community,

there would be a search function built upon google maps. User A could search for apples and the

map would places markers on all the active swappers with apples available.

In addition to the core functions, crop.SWAP can also operate as a support community.

First, there would be a forum in which people could communicate amongst themselves.

Examples of possible posts would be "Home gardening 101", "Does anyone know of alternatives

to pesticides?", "How do you know when cucumbers are ripe?", etc. In addition, there would also

be blogs for members who want to speak about something to the community in a more long form

manner. Examples would be "10 awesome ways to use citrus", "Beware of these 8 chemicals

when buying pesticides, fertilizers, and more." All blog posts could be rated, commented on,

linked to, tagged, and used as a connection to the author.

There are some potential challenges to this plan. One of these would be promotion. We

would promote this through our Did You Know? strategy. It would also be promoted in stores

through posters. In addition, for every purchase over $20 in Whole Foods stores, the store would

give a small package of seeds for things that are easy to grow (like parsley, basil, spinach, etc.)

with a label pointing them to the community website. This package would be designed to be

crops that are easy to grow even indoors with a very low time commitment to make it easy for a

potential gardener to start and begin utilizing the community. This will hopefully snowball and

give people the "gardening bug".

One of the other issues we thought of, that was brought up in the Q&A section of our

presentation was the potential problem that consumers (non-growers) may essentially use this to

bypass buying from Whole Foods and finding local gardeners to buy from instead, which would

have a negative impact of Whole Foods business. Another issue is how to stop farmers from

utilizing the site to find consumers and taking the site out of the hands of actual home gardeners.

Our intent of this community is for it to be utilized specifically by gardeners, not farmers.

We have came up with a solution to both of these issues. We would implement a credits

system to police this. A member of the community would list their crops for trade, and each item

would be given credit. For typical crops such as a tomato, or a cucumber, the user would receive

one point. For others such as watermelon, they would receive more points as they are a higher

value crop which take more space per output. The point(s) would be allocated for each of these

items so if user A has 10 tomatoes, they would receive 10 credit points. These points are then

later used to "buy" crops from other users.

This points system would allow Whole Foods to track the "sales" and user-ship of the

members. People receiving a large amount of points would be noticed by moderators and would

be looked into further to insure that they are a gardener and not a farmer. All new members

would sign an agreement that would state that one of the conditions of user-ship in the

community is that you are a small home gardener and that accounts are subject to deletion at any

time. Also, because of the nature of requiring users to be active members to receive points, it

would insure that only gardeners would have access to the community's crops.This community

provides pure, concrete, selfless promotion of the Whole Foods values, aligning with our

intentions of a value-oriented campaign.

Before crop.SWAP could be implemented, Whole Foods needs to find gardeners. Finding

and attracting gardeners is going to be one of their hardest jobs.One way to reach current

gardeners is via their already established social media platforms such as Twitter and Facebook.

They can also advertise in gardening magazines. Furthermore, they can implement a referencing

system. For every person you refer, when they make their first 50 credits you will receive 10

credits to your mySWAP account.

Once implemented, there are many metrics Whole Foods could use to measure the

success of crop.SWAP. One obvious metric is the number of members registered on crop.SWAP.

Next is to measure how active these members are by keeping track of their interactions on the

forums. Another performance metric is to take a look at Whole Foods status on

www.socialmention.com before and after the implementation of crop.SWAP.

People will begin to see Whole Foods as a social venture, they would be more likely to

overlook price of goods, knowing that their money is doing so much good for their own health

and for the health of the world in general.

In conclusion, Whole Foods is dedicated to Whole People and a Whole Planet. Their

seven company objectives clearly identify what the company focuses on (both day to day and in

long term strategy decisions). Whole Foods is one of the best companies in the world at utilizing

social media to connect with and market to end users. Nonetheless, there are three areas for

improvement that our team has identified. The first improvement campaign addresses the iPhone

app and improvements that can be made, but also addresses mobile app expansion to include the

Blackberry and the Android phones. The second improvement campaign addresses creating a

cooking community that will be launched with a video-submission contest boasting attractive

prizes. The third improvement campaign addresses creating a farming community through

crop.SWAP to improve the Whole Foods “profit-hungry” brand image. Ultimately, we believe

that by implementing the aforementioned suggestions, Whole Foods will be able to remain a

dominant player in the grocery foods market.

AppendixExhibit 1:

A

B

C

D

E

F

G

Exhibit 2:A B

C D

Exhibit 3:

A

B

Search

pumpkinpumpkin piepumpkin seedsHaitian pumpkin souppumpkin ale

Wolaver’s Pumpkin Ale

User RatingsRate ProductAdd to

Shopping List

Shopping List Scan Barcode

C

D

What’s In Season

Winter

Summer

Fall

Spring

Fall

Acorn SquashBroccoliButternut SquashCranberriesEndiveGrapesJerusalem ArtichokeKumquatsMushroomsPumpkinRadicchioSweet PotatoesSwiss ChardTurnips

Zip Code

Exhibit 4

Worldwide Smartphone Sales Market Share 2009Iphone

BlackberryAndriodOther

On a Budget?$ Enter the amount budgeted

On a Budget?

You can buy:

- Whole Foods Market Alaskan - Salmon Burgers - Bear Naked Granola - POM Wonderful Juice

Exhibit 5

Exhibit 6Did you know that:

1. Whole Foods has a small farmer loan where we provide low interest, low fee, low paperwork loans to local farmers to help them make investments?

2. Whole Foods has an international micro financing program?3. Whole Foods gives a portion of its inventory from each store to local soup kitchens, food

pantries, and homeless shelters?4. Whole Foods has a community devoted to promoting home gardeners, eating locally, and

sustainability called cropSWAP? Go to www.cropswap.com for more info”, etc.)5. Several times a year, Whole Foods gives 5% of their day’s sales to charity 6. Whole Foods composts all food they have left at the end of the day and sell to local

farmers

7. They have the first in-store color-coded sustainable seafood rating program launched this fall

8. Whole Foods has the Whole Planet Foundation which fights poverty through micro lending in rural communities around the world

Exhibit 7

Works Cited

Apple Harvard Case Study, 2010 "Useful Social Media Blog » Blog Archive » “Just Because You Think about Your Company 24/7 Doesn’t Mean Everyone Else Does”." Home | Useful Social Media | Corporate Social Media Best Practice. Web. 01 Nov. 2010. <http://usefulsocialmedia.com/blog/uncategorized/just-because-you-think-about-your-company-247-doesn’t-mean-everyone-else-does/>.

Sinek, Simon. "Simon Sinek: How Great Leaders Inspire Action | Video on TED.com."Http://www.ted.com/talks/lang/eng/simon_sinek_how_great_leaders_inspire_action.html. 01 May 2010. Web. 01 Nov. 2010.