Week 4 Part A: Sprouts and Cream of the Crop

Cream of the Crop is a natural food market featuring quality produce, clean label groceries and vitamins. It has only one store location in Oceanside. It is a family owned and operated company that has been in business for over 25 years. Target customers are the residents in the age group of 24 to 55 from South Oceanside and the neighboring district of North Carlsbad. The demographic includes mainly young families, millennials and generation X with higher household incomes. The psychographic of the target customer is the health and eco conscious population of this region. Active outdoors and sports oriented people. People engaged in yoga, meditation and other holistic movements. People that are community-oriented.

Sprouts is a natural food and farmers market. Their first store was opened in Arizona in 2002. Today they have grown to more than 370 stores and over 31,000 team members. Similar to other natural food grocers, Sprouts’ target customers are their store neighbors’ residents in the age group of 24 to 55. The demographic includes mainly married females at higher income levels. The psychographic of the target customer are individuals with strong diet or health concerns, who are looking for fresh, minimally preserved, or otherwise processed products made with local, environmentally friendly ingredients.

The websites of the two companies have in common the same type of products and tend to bring the same visitors, given the similarity of their target customers. However, from a web design and functionality perspective, their websites are very different.  

Sprouts website has a well thought structure and is quite functional. It provides a nice homepage where visitors feel welcomed. Simple and easy navigation. Clear menus, with high quality images and product descriptions. Easy access to deals and special offers. Online order menus, with store location, shopping lists, pick up or home delivery options. It provides a lot of content on making healthy decisions, creating an opportunity for affordable organic and fresh food, helping customers adopt a healthy nutritional diet. Their About page builds trust with customers and tells the company’s story.

The Sprout logo uses font in the color green. Their site also has the color green in different shades, interchanging with white in the background of most sections. The color green has strong associations with nature and brings to mind plants, grass and trees. Green is often described as a refreshing and tranquil color.

In summary, Sprouts is a large grocery company with the financial resources required to establish an online presence.

Cream of the Crop, on the other hand, is a small family business. Its website is simple and in my opinion, serves to provide its customers with basic information such as address, operating hours and email/phone contacts. Their website needs some substantial improvement in all functional aspects to become an online sales platform. The main and central section of their landing homepage has the text going off the space, making it hard to read and a negative first impression. I like the name and the brand of this store. I think it has the potential to reach its target audience, but there is some major work to build a better online presence.