‘Are You Beach Body Ready?’ this quote painted accrosss Protein world’s billboard’s created rather a lot of outrage in the summer of 2015 – For being sexist and fat shaming. The backlash this controversial advert created an uproar in sales for Protein World, banking an  extra £2 million in sales (Heilpern, 2016). The company provides fitness-food supplements to consumers interested in a ‘regime’ or ‘diet’ based around protein products. Their website is a platform for consumers to go directly to the company, and have these products delivered. Some high-street retailers such as Superdrug do sell their products on the shelves, but the main source of sales is through their website. https://www.proteinworld.com/

Protein World’s website is bold, creative and colourful. Particularly at the moment as Halloween is round the corner, they’re capturing their audience with offers to be snapped up before Halloween comes and goes. They’ve clearly fitted a theme of ‘Halloween’ here on their main page, not only is this a cute touch with visuals, but it indicates to consumers that this is a deal which would have a Halloween date based expiration. Thus prompting the cusomters to purchase now, rather than just browsing today and purchasing another time.

Their website is very engaging from the get-go, once consumers scroll beyond this current offer on their homepage, they are captivated by the aesthically pleasing photogrpahs of fitness experts who are ambassadors for Protein World. Not only are some of these faces famous, which draws the consumer in, but they provide fitness advice within this blog they have along with each photo.

The marketing here is very clever. Firstly on the left they have used a famous face to capitavte the reader. Even without the potential consumer reading into the post on the left, they can recognise that this famous face is in shape due to their specific products and will therefore want to browse into products, potentially leading to more sales from this first post. Secondly, they have used the word ‘Need’ in this post, they empathise with the reader, making them feel as though it is specific to them. Of course they need to know about weight loss, and especially as the weather changes its never easy to lose weight, and of course they need protein world to tell them why and more importantly at the bottom of the second posting how important their protein intake is for weight loss.

Protein World could improve their website by customizing the website to consumers. As part of the OCHN framework, dynamically personalising a website for a given users interaction, based on previous consumer behaviour is likely to improve consumer interaction on the website. It creates an positive intrinsic feeling for the customer – that they’re interests have been considered.

The OCHN Framework to website design is complied of two key goals. Firstly, a website should meet online consumers’ expectations for minimal levels of each interface category. Secondly they must fit the consumers nature of their task, either hedonic or utilitarian. (Valacich, Parboteeah and Wells, 2007)

Hedonic goods are seen as desirable products, for luxury purposes, which allow the consumer to feel pleasure or enjoyment from such purchases. Utilitarian goods are products which meet consumer’s needs and ar purchased for their practical uses. Protein world products are definitely hedonic, but with their clever marketing and specifically language used on their website, they convice the consumer their products are necessities for their ‘Beach Body Ready’ life.

 

Heilpern, W. (2016). Protein World sparked protests with its billboards — now it’s launching TV ads. [online] Business Insider. Available at: http://uk.businessinsider.com/protein-world-is-launching-tv-ads-2016-1 [Accessed 25 Oct. 2017].

Valacich, J., Parboteeah, D. and Wells, J. (2007). The online consumer’s hierarchy of needs. Communications of the ACM, 50(9), pp.84-90.