Hiii!

My name is Ann-Sofie and I'm studying tourism management at Novia University of Applied Sciences. It's my third year now so this was actually my last course in school, HORRAY! I took part in INNO58 mostly because I enjoy working with development. I'm a person who likes to see change and therefore results :-)

For now my life is pretty much about studies but when I have time off I enjoy spending it with my family, which consists of my boyfriend Petri and our crazy greyhound puppy Yoda. If I would have more time I would work out more and continue with my painting hobby.

At the moment I still feel exhausted after our intensive working days in Kunsteniemi. In a good way though because I'm really pleased with the work we did. I highly recommend this course to others, although it felt kind of confusing in the beginning. But I guess you could say this course demands a lot of the student but gives back a lot as well.

To our group and our client I'd like to say THANK YOU, for simply being so awesome! I hope to keep in touch :)

Think globally, act locally!

As we didn’t present us in the beginning of the course, we decided to do it now. So my name is Elli and I’m a student from Handelshögskolan vid Åbo Akademi. My major is international marketing and minor is accounting. As my studies are very theory based, I was very eager to attend a more practical course.

When we started this project I hadn’t much knowledge of local food. The demand of local food is increasing. Consumers want fresh and local food, they want to know what the origin, of the products that they put in their mouth is. That’s why in my opinion our task was extremely interesting. What people don’t understand is that it is important to consider the health of our entire planet but at the same time take action in our own communities and cities. Think globally, act locally.

Hey there!

My name is Jonas and I was the only boy in the LoFo group, and here is a short presentation about me. Some 28 (soon 29) years ago i was born in the small town of Hanko. After living there all my life, working and enjoying life, I decided to change all that and move to Turku to study at Novia.

I am currently studying my second year at Novia, and (hopefully) someday i'll be a Bachelor of Business Administration. My free time usually revolve around any shape and form of music. Playing guitar is one of the best forms of relaxing for me. I also like very much to travel backpacker-style, but when you are studying, you are usually a bit short on the financial side, so I haven't been on as may trips lately as I would like to. :)

Today we had our last Inno meeting, were we gave feedback to the coaches and discussed the whole Inno project. It has been an amazing thing to be part of this project, the group was great and everyone really worked together on the project :) I feel that i've learned a lot from this project and I am deifinitely coming back for the autumn session of Inno

// Jonas

 





Hey!

We forgot to do our presentation about ourselves at the start, so we decided to do it now in the end. Better late than never! J

So, my name is Assi and I am one of the team members of Lofo-inno. I am 27 years old and I am a student from Turku University of Applied Sciences where I study my first year in Hospitality Management. If I do have some little time after studying and working I usually spend my time training our hyper-active dog. You could say that food is my passion and I love to plan different kinds of parties.

During these last months we had a couple of working days and meetings with our group and our contact person and a lot of independent work. Last Monday we went to Kunstenniemi for the final set. This whole project was a huge challenge for me because I am that kind person that needs exact assignments and deadlines. So the innovation was a new and exciting method for me to learn. During this project I wasn´t on my comfort zone, but now I have faced one big challenge for me and even got through it! Hooray  for me! J

Our task was difficult because our subject had such a wide range and we had a huge challenge to accomplish it. Our team was as great as I could have ever imagined it to be not to mention all the brilliant things they have taught me during this course! I believe we all agreed that we really managed to success in our task and future vision, and hopefully our client liked it too!

So, this amazing week has to come nearly the end, see you all tomorrow!

-Assi

ARE YOU READY? WE ARE ;)

Tomorrow you will get to see what we have come up with within 48 hours of awesome innovation and brainstorming!

See you soon!

Assi, Jonas, Elli, Ann-Sofie

Update from Kunstenniemi

This morning we developed a value preposition for our current project using the NABC format.  Our task was to focus on:

                                             N - Need

                                             A - Approach

                                             B - Benefit

                                             C - Competition

                          

WHY EAT LOCAL FOOD?

                                                 
                                                   Michael Pollan: Why eat local food?

-Elli

                                                      LET THE HARD WORK BEGIN!
                                                                  48h in Kunstenniemi

Innovate or die

Meeting with the client

So yesterday we had our meeting with the client. We all thought it went really well and we feel like we actually can make something out of this. Until yesterday we felt a little confused about the task but now we have the perfect tools to start working! :) We will divide our work into 3 parts:

1. Local food producers; we will do an action plan for the client how they could reach at least 10 new producers. The client has nothing but great opportunities to offer the producers but it still seems kind of challenging to find new producers to the network. We will discuss new approaches, the social media etc.

2. A vision of the future distribution; we've already had a look into the situation of local food in 2025. Now we will discuss how the distribution could work in the future and what role the groceriestores would have in the future.

3. Knowledge; one of the most discussed topics in our group has been the knowledge of local food. We will discuss how we could make it more known and therefore raise sales, educate the staff in groceriestores etc. We will also be doing something creative in this part of our work but I think we'll tell you more about that when the actual product is done ;)

On monday we're off to Kunsteniemi where we will have the intensive days of work. We have a lot to do but we're ready to take the challenge! :)

Over and out!
Ann-Sofie

Workshop in Novia

Hello!

Today we had our second workshop day, but this time we were in Novia University of Applied Sciences. We had no idea what the workshop would bring us, and althought it was a bit confusing at times, it was really fun :)

We had to imagine Local food in 2025 and write a short story about it. We  wrote our story from a customers point of view. It was also nice and fun to listen to the other groups and their stories about the future :)

It was a really fun assignment and during it we had some major "heureka!" moments about what we still have to do before Kunstenniemi.



This was a short version of our day ;)



Over and out

- Jonas

The Store

This is my first time writing in this blog (or any blog for that matter),

and my job was to focus on stores, so I read a book called Kauppa – Toiminnan suunnittelusta markkinointiin. Roughly translated it means The Store – From planning the operation to marketing, and as the title says, it covered most of the things you should think about when planning a store and its operations.

Havumäki, Heidi. Jaranka, Eila. 2006. Kauppa - Toiminnan suunnittelusta markkinointiin.

It was a really interesting book to read and I learned a lot from it. 

Changes in demographic has led to that there has to be many different kinds of stores for the customers: stores with a big selection and low prices for the families, the small corner shops that are open late and that sells ready meals for the single people. The increased competition and the customer’s price knowledge have led to that the shops and shop chains have had to increase their efficiency.  The increased efficiency has led to that more shops has joined a network of shop chains, and fewer and fewer independent shops are around

.

Most of the customers choose their store for everyday shopping based on its location. Mostly on weekends customers go further away to buy their groceries, and at the same time they also buy more. There have however been changes in consumer behavior over the last couple of years. People tend to shop less frequent per week, but shop more when they do go shopping.

Most of the stores in Finland today belong to a multiple store chain. Shops that belong to a big store chain usually all look alike; all the products it the stores are in the same place. This benefits the stores in many ways, but in my opinion it also have some downsides. Stores that belong to a big store chain seldom get to choose their products themselves – they have to sell what the store chains have in their selection. This isn’t so great for a shopkeeper who would want to sell more locally produced food.

Peace,

- Jonas

It's all about customer relations - the rest is technique

My task was to concentrate on customer relationship management and find out what it all really is about. I read a book about customer relationship management, the book was amazingly easy to read and understand. 

It is easier to strengthen than change

What is CRM all about?

Customer relationship management is an ideology and a management question. It really is all about the customers, who else would buy your products or use your services? That's why it's extremely important to retain the relation with customers. Customer relationships is a strategy for managing a company’s interactions  with current and future customers.

The aim is to:                        

·      Understand the customers

·      Retain customers throught better customer experience

·      Attract new customers

·      Win new clients and contracts increase profitably

It all starts when the customer is conscious of a trademark - hopefully the customer ends up buying the product over and over again - and in addition tells about the product to his/her friends. Word of mouth.

The aim of customer relations is to gain a better understanding of who your customers customers are, what they  buy and how loyal they really are. CRM is also the knowledge of how to segmentate your customer base and how you exploit your customer groups. The difficulty is to find all this information about you customer, you need to know what you’re selling and to who. 

It's not about doing everything right from the beginning -  as long as everything doesn't go wrong.

The important part is to understand the importance of customer relations. The knowledge of the customers . This affects the company’s  profit –and loss.  The most important part is not what the customers say, it's more important to know what they do. It's about how the consumers behave, what they buy and what they want to buy. 

How do you choose your customers? 

You don't have to adapt individually to each and every customer, the important thing is to find the customer group. It is the most effective way and it builds 

If you are all the time chasing new customers, you're running away from your old customers.

Loyalty is a term with many  different dimensions. Functional loyalty is about what kind of emotional experiences the customer. 

So what do we need to remember about customer relationship marketing; attract new customers, retain the customers, understand the customer, find long-term & profitable customers, create customer loyalty and measure the results!

RM-BOKEN, Martina Lundgren

Marianne Kaplan AB, 2008

//Elli