NewForesight supported the Demand Generation Alliance this and last year in stakeholder facilitation, understanding the industry gap, outlining a pitch deck and the detailed blueprint.
What is the Demand Generation Alliance?
The Demand Generation Alliance (DGA) is a multi-stakeholder collaboration focused on deploying social and cultural actions that shape consumer preferences for nutritious and sustainable foods.
DGA believes that changing consumer preferences is necessary to drive demand for nutritious and sustainable food. Consumer food preferences are socially-constructed and culturally-bound and are beyond the direct influence of any one single actor, and collaboration is necessary. The DGA brings together stakeholders from different sectors who are active (or seek to be active) in addressing society-wide factors. DGA’s operating model has three pillars: build knowledge, strengthen collaborations and enable actions.
Why is it important?
Consumers currently do not choose their foods based on critical factors such as nutrition and sustainability. There are three levels of factors that influence consumer demand for foods: individual level, food environment, and enabling environment. i) Individual level: Factors that influence consumer choice directly at an individual level. It includes factors such as personal preferences, knowledge about food, and income levels; ii) Factors that influence consumer choice directly because of the food environment. It influences the way information and choices are presented to the consumer. It includes factors such as access to nutritious & sustainable foods, product quality, promotion, and price of the products; iii) Factors that influence the consumer choice directly or indirectly by creating an enabling environment. This includes political, informational, socio-cultural, and financial factors. A lot can be done at each of these levels to drive demand for nutritious and sustainable foods.
“Consumers are not making choices based on nutrition and health, and poor diet is now the number one risk factor for death and disability worldwide”
Influencing Food Systems for healthy diets report, FAO
What gap is the DGA bridging?
Research indicated that most existing interventions focus on the food environment and individual level. Whereas the enabling environment offers the most potential due to its potential impact at other levels. An even wider gap resides in the socio-cultural domain of the enabling environment. This is the gap, that the DGA aims to bridge.
How did NewForesight support the DGA?
NewForesight collaborated closely with the Global Alliance for Improved Nutrition and the lead group (The Global Business School Network, WBCSD – World Business Council for Sustainable Development (FReSH Project), The Consumer Goods Forum, World Food Programme, EAT, and Thunderbird School of Global Management ) of the DGA to facilitate the multi-stakeholder collaboration. NewForesight worked with the co-chairs and lead group to identify the need gaps in the sector, strengths of the stakeholders and develop collaterals that can be leveraged to create alignment and buy-in amongst stakeholders. NewForesight supported the DGA with outlining their initial concept, co-created the pitch deck, and created a high-level blueprint to operationalize their vision.
Want to know more about our work on Food Systems? Get in touch with our Managing Director Laure Heilbron.