Veo is an online marketplace whose aim is to disrupt the ‘make-take-waste’ extractive industrial manufacturing process by offering an alternative for retail option championing sustainability and conscious consumerism.
Veo first started in 2016 but officially launches its website in Quarter 1 of 2021 when its range of products will increase from 8,000 to approximately 80,000.
Our Associate Research Consultants, an interdisciplinary team of PhD researchers from academic institutions across the UK, are supporting the development of a framework to measure the ‘earth-friendliness’ of their products. The framework will enable Veo to identify, quantify and track the positive and negative impacts of their products and sales as a whole; compare the impact of buying from Veo with other online marketplaces; share this information with customers, facilitating informed consumer choices; position marketing and communications with the media, investors, vendors, and partners; and effectively report on their performance, for example B Corp monitoring on social and environmental performance.
1. Provide Veo with evidence-based knowledge and understanding to develop a future evaluation framework to measure the ‘earth-friendliness’ of its products.
2. Identify measures of ‘earth-friendliness’ and prioritise them for inclusion in the framework based on relevance and importance to potential customers.
3. Review Veo’s current approaches to the collection and analysis of product impact and other existing frameworks to appraise the options and create the optimal solution.
4. Produce a research report and business report for Veo setting out the approach, findings, recommendations and handing over the impact evaluation framework.
1. Conduct a literature review, document analysis and internet search to identify and appraise existing impact evaluation frameworks; develop case studies highlighting competitor performance in this area; and understand the relevance and feasibility of the various criteria and measures.
2. Design and deliver a survey, building upon the initial background research above, to understand the average consumer’s views on sustainable ‘earth-friendly’ alternative products, stores and marketplaces. Recruitment techniques include a combination of the identification of relevant mailing lists, snowball sampling and ‘pay per participant’ services to achieve a larger and more diverse demographic.
3. Design focus groups based on the survey findings and conduct two focus groups with a subset of the survey participants to explore topics and future options in more depth, generating richer, more specific data.
4. Collate, analyse and interpret all the data to inform robust, evidence-based recommendations and present these in a report to Veo.
This project provided Veo with a detailed research report supported by robust and evidence-based conclusions and recommendations. The research, analysis and recommendations will deliver new knowledge and capability to Veo. The insight into existing frameworks, best practice and competitor behaviour in this area; comparative evaluation of Veo’s current approaches; in-depth understanding of what is important to their average customer and associated consumer preferences will facilitate strong and informed strategic and tactical decision-making at this important stage in Veo’s growth.
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