Lauri Toivonen
SOK
Also available as audio
Centralized creative capability, not committee-driven ideation, is critical to retail innovation—SOK built a dedicated hub to generate ideas rather than distributing strategy across distributed teams, recognizing that breakthrough concepts rarely emerge from consensus-based processes.
Data's value lies not in collection or AI hype, but in transparent customer interfaces that let shoppers see their own behavior and spending patterns; this shifts competitive advantage from retailer insight to customer agency, which drives loyalty and category shift.
In point-of-point competition (convenience retail), perceived poor fit to customer needs can be reversed by adding a direct listening mechanism between brand and shopper—the interface itself, not just the product, addresses local competitive pressure.
Conversation 6
They own their data. But what we can do with the data is provide better services and solutions to the clients and customers. We wanted to create this service which is basically showing your own cart and your own behavior — how do you shop? And that was a phenomenal success for our company too, because now it's totally transparent for me as a consumer — how do I spend my money with this company? What is my purchase behavior? And I can then adjust accordingly if I see that, okay, I want to save money here, or maybe I should move more of my money to veggies than other stuff for...
Lauri Toivonen, Creative Ways to Reach Grocery Customers with Finland's Largest Retailer at SOK
Lauri Toivonen
OFFBounds Source · 6· SOK
