Farewell, fakta - The rebranding of coop 365discount

Hansen, Søren Sommer

4. term

Information Studies (Human Centered Informatics), Master

2023

2023-11-06

55 pages

In 2022 Coop Denmark rebranded their “Fakta” supermarket chain to “Coop 365discount”, which, besides a change in colour-scheme and several marketing initiatives, included a thorough restructuring of their supermarket chain to focus on discount and a new green identity. Having identified an initial problem field, and not finding sufficiently similar case studies for the Danish retail market, we chose to adopt an explorative approach. To this end, we interviewed 365’s chief strategist, along with 40 customers at several 365 locations, in Zealand and Jutland, respectively. Following a thematic-analysis, we examined the implementation through the lens of Actor-Network Theory (ANT), with a special focus on the communicative change aspects of the rebranding. Through our thematic analysis, we found that customers generally accepted the rebranding effort by 365, but did not accept 365’s framing as neither affordable nor sustainable. Moreover, we identified a major concern among users: insufficient inventory. In our discussion we addressed these issues and applied our theoretical ANT lens. We concluded that 365 should initiate a new problematisation phase to avoid continuous course correction of their price perception and positioning, and we developed a new Obligatory Passage Point to this end. We reflected on the implications of our study and identified further avenues for future research. Finally we suggested how such research could be carried out, with an onset in Information Studies, including prototyping designs, to mitigate potential risks to user loyalty we identified during our research. Lastly, we commented on alternative theoretical angles that could be implemented with inspiration from Communication Studies and Charles Sanders Peirce’s concepts of Decisigns and co-localisation.

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