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Leaders in Consumer Packaged Goods marketing and top scientists collaborate on the creation of a digital food freshness sensor and marketing platform that can be affixed to packaged perishable foods to indicate to shoppers at supermarkets the product's true expiration date and provide relevant marketing promotions that help close the sale - ultimately reducing food waste.
The Current Model of Expiration Dates Leads to Tremendous Waste
The freshness of packaged perishable products, such as fish or meat, can be impacted by the various conditions encountered on the journey from the packaging facility to the supermarket refrigerator. For instance, the freshness of a product declines more rapidly when left for a prolonged period on a hot loading dock versus a different package that was continuously refrigerated throughout its journey to the store.
The current model for preprinted expiration dates on such products are predetermined using conservative calculations that assume less than optimum conditions prevail within the supply chain. The conservative nature of preprinted expiration dates are designed to protect public health, yet consequently, result in a lot of perfectly good food being thrown away.
In fact, globally approximately 1.3 billion tons of perfectly good food is tossed into the garbage. That's more than enough food to take care of the 821 million people who suffer from hunger worldwide.
A team of scientists at the Imperial College of London have created a very low cost and highly effective methodology to measure the freshness of food within sealed packages. Their simple and elegant approach sets up the highly perishable sector of the food industry to offer a digital 'Freshness Sensor' on every package, ultimately eliminating unnecessary food waste.
How Customers Engage with the 'Freshness Sensors'
A simple TAP of a consumer's NFC1 enabled phone (no apps required) on the package's 'Freshness Sensor' instantly provides a digital readout of the products actual freshness, which is determined by measuring the gases found within each sealed package (versus the conservative preprinted estimated expiration date that consumers currently rely on).
Freshness As A Marketing Platform
The digital freshness readout becomes the gateway to the digital interaction between the consumer and the brand, at critical moments such as when the consumer's finalizing their decision whether or not to purchase the product.
TPG Rewards' has built a Freshness Marketing Platform for the Sensors, to help Brands close the sale with the consumer. When consumers TAP the product 'Freshness Sensor', in addition to receiving the actual expiration date, the platform presents intelligent marketing experiences such as coupons and recipes that are algorithmically curated based on the product's remaining life. For example, consumers receive a higher valued digital coupon the closer the product is to the actual expiration date, and recipes are delivered in accordance with the weather or time of day where the consumer is located.
About TPG Rewards
TPG Rewards is a marketing technology company that develops loyalty and promotional programs for some of the largest Consumer Packaged Goods companies in the world. TPG is unique in the industry as it pioneered and developed since 2014 NFC chip technology into a proprietary TAP Mobile Engagement platform to assist its clients with both "collateral compliance" and "consumer marketing" programs. The platform is known as the most robust and successful NFC marketing platform in the World and a recent execution was awarded the 2019 IoT Awards.
Website: tpgrewards.com