Online Community of Trader Joe's Devotees Provides a Glimpse into Buying Behavior of the Web 2.0 Consumer

    /24-7PressRelease/ - WESTBOROUGH, MA, May 14, 2008 - Birds of a feather flock together—especially at www.traderjoesfan.com, an online destination for cultured consumers of value-priced gourmet food products that operates with consent but not sponsorship of the popular Trader Joe's grocery chain.

The fast-growing online community is the brainchild of web designer and software engineer Jovanna Brooks, who originally created the site in her spare time for a small group of friends that are as passionate about Trader Joe's as she is.

Brooks quickly learned that her group of friends wasn't alone when the site eclipsed 30,000 unique monthly visitors—entirely through word of mouth—and continues to grow with new recipes, product reviews and posts every day.

RSS feeds and a popular email newsletter have rapidly accelerated participation and attracted the attention of innovative marketers looking to reach a sophisticated consumer that is highly responsive to digital promotion and has tremendous power to create instant demand for products that captivate their attention.

"The success of traderjoesfan.com is a classic case of viral marketing driven by user-generated content," says Brooks from her Westborough, MA office. "The members of this social community are more interactive than several other larger networks that I participate in because we all shop at Trader Joe's at least once a week and have grown to trust the collective voice of our Web-based community. We carry our online experience into the store and that gives us the confidence to try new products and create interesting recipes that we wouldn't have had access to without the network."

Brooks maintains a dynamic relationship with the traderjoesfan.com community, whose growing interest in wine and beer will lead to new sections at the site—and new opportunities for marketers. In addition, expanded forums on cooking, entertaining, personal health and diet are planned. "The interests of our community cross a wide spectrum of areas, as one would expect from a consumer population that is predominately urban and upper middle class", Brooks adds.

"The traderjoesfan.com community shares a collective pursuit of quality and value," Brooks notes. "That pursuit has manifested itself around our Trader Joe's experience and the fact that we genuinely love and respect the TJ's brand. As shown by our growing interest in wine, the level of sophistication is not limited to traditional grocery products. We are a unique breed of Web 2.0 consumer that gets the bulk of our daily news online and are frequent e-commerce consumers. Once we get a thumbs-up from the trusted voice of the network, we will buy and share the experience."

The prospect for continued rapid growth of traderjoesfan.com is impressive, given the trend of visitor traffic and interest from the marketing industry. Brooks has already designed several innovative promotional programs that she believes will generate a new dimension of interest and interaction from the community and likely double its subscriber base.

"Trust is everything in a community like tradersjoesfan.com," she adds. "Other products and services can earn our loyalty if they deliver like Trader Joe's and help make our lives a little bit easier and more fun. That's really why we log in to the community every day and respond to posts the minute they hit our inbox. We actually are birds of a feather—and we all shop together."

www.traderjoesfan.com is an online community of Trader Joe's shoppers that exchanges reviews, recipes and comments about food and wine. www.traderjoesfan.com is not affiliated with the Trader Joe's company in any way. To contact Trader Joe's directly, please visit www.traderjoes.com. For additional information on www.traderjoesfan.com visit http://www.traderjoesfan.com/contact/ or call (508) 275-9237.

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