Listening - Subscription Boxes

My daughter and I used to get a monthly subscription box that contained various foods from different countries SnackCrate. 

It was exciting to see the foods that people eat from other countries. Weird sweet chewy sticks from Jerusalem and crunchy treats from China. This little gem was in The Netherland's box -- Daelmans Stroopwafels -- and they are now being sold at Target. I wonder if they became popular in the US because of their appearance in the SnackCrate box? 

We loved our monthly boxes -- until the day we received the box from the United States. We opened the box expecting to see brands that were common and known to us, but instead we got a box of snacks we had never even heard of. We cancelled the subscription. We are either not very versed in the food of our country or we were being misled somehow. 

I have watched several youtube videos showing people from all over the country opening SnackCrate boxes. This video shows a mom and daughter who also opened a USA box and the first comment from Entwistle Family Blogs is exactly how we felt when opening the USA box:

I have only ever heard of the red vines and I live in the USA. I don't feel like this is a good representation of US snacks!

The US box not depicting the actual food from the US is the only complaint I have really come across on social media. I am sure this is mostly an awareness comment for most subscribers. Each box comes from a small location and that location might be on the east coast where I have not been lately to do any snacking. 

The subscription box industry has really taken off because of social media. This is a market that really did not exist in such a large quantity prior to social media. Dollar Shave Club, Birchbox, Ipsy -- these companies pioneered the subscription box market in the beginning. Now, you can get whatever you want in a subscription box from slime to religion to food to beauty.  There are endless options. 

SnackCrate's value proposition is the ability to get food globally to fit into their box. The owner seems to spend a considerable amount of time working with many different countries to find the next best box. 

Over the last three months, there have been four complaints with the Better Business Bureau of being charged a monthly subscription fee even after a customer has cancelled.  It seems that SnackCrate needs to fix something or someone internally to be sure customers who cancel are not being charged for items they are not receiving. Hopefully this is not the beginning of the downfall of SnackCrate. If I was the manager, I would be looking into fixing the person or computer system that was causing these errors in cancellation. The negative reviews that customers will give the company will not be worth just evaluating what is causing the error. 

As far as marketing is concerned for SnackCrate, they are using social media as their platform. I have found that there are an extensive amount of videos on YouTube showing people opening boxes and tasting all the unique products. The YouTube platform has made this company thrive. Just a general search on Google brings me mostly to YouTube videos. Their presence on Facebook is there but is limited and does not remain very active. The do have a regular unveiling of each box on their instagram account @snackcrate. 

From this assignment, I learned that social media brought about an entire new business that had never even been thought of before. Subscription boxes prior to social media where items such as CDs and books by mail. We now have a huge variety of boxes and a ton of options to make money. 

     -- Week 2 Marketing Blog on Social Listening