Bodybuilding.com uses customer data to build out personalized sports nutrition platform

31-Jan-2019 - Last updated on 28-Sep-2021 at 13:12 GMT

Data—not gravity—makes the world go round. In the sports nutrition realm, retailer bodybuilding.com says it is using the reams of data it gets from customers to build a better personalized nutrition platform.

Bill Carter, legal and global compliance officer at the retailer, spoke on the subject at the recent Sports Nutrition Summit, which took place last week in San Diego. The event was a joint effort of NutraIngredients-USA and the International Society of Sports Nutrition.

Carter said his company has been building a platform that caters to consumers’ personal needs. It’s an attempt to marry all of the high flying science and rhetoric in the sector into something that works and makes sense at the point of sale.

“This consists of taking data that our customers provide to us, most of which is voluntary, and attempting to cater to them and create a seamless consumer experience that creates retention and hopefully helps them find the products they are looking for and achieve the results they are seeking,” Carter told NutraIngredients-USA.

Personalization at point of sale

Carter said the company categorizes consumers based on their responses to a number of questions that include gathering some biometric data. Then, based on their goals, Carter said the company can tailor the kind of information and product selections (both of which it has a lot of) to that particular consumer.

This can make a consumer experience that otherwise could seem impersonal and overwhelming into something that’s friendly and supportive, Carter said.

That’s something that other companies venturing down the personalization trail have already done. Carter said bodybuilding.com has a responsibility to make sure the site works for consumers, so it is treading steadily but carefully in the direction of including more data streams into the personalization effort.

“At the same time we are following the trends in the industry with respect to wearables, blood testing, genetic testing, microbiome testing and seeing what those companies are able to produce in terms of data and whether or not that data is ready to operationalize into a commercial recommendation,” he said.