Kansas Ag Connection - Alliance Summit to Kick Off with Consumer Focus Group

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Alliance Summit to Kick Off with Consumer Focus Group
Kansas Ag Connection - 03/28/2017

A live focus group featuring Kansas City-area consumers will kick off the 2017 Animal Agriculture Alliance Stakeholders Summit, setting the stage for the 1.5-day conference, May 3 and 4 in Kansas City, Mo.

The focus group panel, conducted by Applied Marketing Research, will focus on dining out. Panelists will be asked to share how they decide where and when to eat at restaurants, including whether issues like animal welfare and antibiotic use factor into their decisions. Summit attendees will have the unique opportunity to hear directly from their customers and ask them questions about how they find information about food and farming.

Last year's focus group on how consumers make food purchasing decisions while grocery shopping was a huge hit with the Summit audience. This year's focus on eating at restaurants will offer a new angle to the discussion. Many restaurant brands are adopting policies on animal welfare, and our Summit will give attendees the ability to hear how those policies may or may not impact consumer decisions.

The panel will be moderated by Don Phipps, owner of Applied Marketing Research - a full service marketing research firm with a 23-year track record. Phipps has conducted marketing research studies for a variety of "business to business" and "business to consumer" industries, including agriculture, beverages, pet food and packaged goods. He has worked with many Fortune 500 companies, including Coca-Cola, Toyota, John Deere, Sprint, Hill's Pet Nutrition, Pfizer and General Electric. Prior to starting Applied, Phipps worked in marketing management for Sprint, Allied Signal Aerospace (now Honeywell) and Kenwood. He holds an undergraduate degree from Boston University and an MBA from the University of Kansas.

A Welcome Reception, sponsored by Farm Credit, will take place on May 2 from 5:30 to 7 p.m.

The Alliance will also be holding a raffle to benefit College Aggies Online (CAO), our training program and scholarship competition for students interested in agriculture. CAO helps train the next generation of leaders in agriculture by challenging students to go out of their comfort zone to engage online and on campus about current and emerging issues facing agriculture. Since the Alliance launched the program in 2009, more than 5,000 students have participated and developed the skills to be lifelong advocates for the industry. The raffle will take place on May 3 in conjunction with the Chairperson's Reception at the Stakeholders Summit.

For more information about the Summit and events, contact Allyson Jones-Brimmer at ajonesbrimmer@animalagalliance.org or (703)562-1414.

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