Hot Food Trends: Part 4 – Mission Accomplished
No one knows with certainty what the hottest food trends
will be over the next several years, but The Hartman Group has focused on the
“why behind the buy” to look at four that may have a significant impact on the
business. RetailWire explores each in this series of Discussions.
It’s been a long-held belief in retailing circles that consumers go to food stores looking for a set of products. To help stimulate that activity and build market basket size, retailers have used a variety of tactics, such as sales and special offers, to accomplish their goals.
While there is no doubt that some success has been attained with this approach, Jarrett Paschal, Ph. D., said recent research demonstrates consumers look to “accomplish tasks on specific shopping occasions by engaging in a compelling set of experiences.”
Of great importance to retailers, writes Dr. Paschal, is that “the channels chosen to accomplish those tasks, as well as the goals and tasks themselves, are decided at home and are frequently subject to the household debate. Likewise, those channels and occasions dramatically shape subsequent shopping behavior.”
For example, Dr. Paschal maintains that after a full day’s work, shoppers popping into a store for what’s needed for that night’s dinner are not really interested in the promotions being run. What they are looking for is “quick access to ‘fresh’ versions of certain products that are critical to mealtime preparation.”
In practical terms, according to Dr. Paschal, stores can take advantage of this shopping behavior, for example, by deploying mobile displays with “meal-relevant solutions, such as fresh-baked breads, cheeses, water, wine, etc.”
Discussion Question: Do you agree with Jarret Paschal’s
assertion “the channels chosen to accomplish those (shopping occasion) tasks,
as well as the goals and tasks themselves, are decided at home” and that “those
channels and occasions dramatically shape subsequent shopping behavior”?
Take Our Instant Poll
Loading ...
Join the Discussion!
6 Comments on "Hot Food Trends: Part 4 – Mission Accomplished"
You must be logged in to post a comment.
You must be logged in to post a comment.
It becomes a difficult decision for the retailer to satisfy the wants of two distinct customer needs.
A high percentage of customers still shop in bulk, which means that they expect to find products in traditional areas. On the other hand, we have consumers shopping for convenience and ideally would like occasion merchandising strategies, in order to find their entire basket shop in close proximity.
In reality, we start to have a combination of the two above, which can sometimes only introduce confusion in the aisle. It seems some retailers are now looking to use the edge of store area to locate “total meal solutions,” whilst allowing centre-store to hold the staple grocery, more traditional category layout. This simply leads to a battle of space.
I wait with great interest to see how this moves forward, as new retailers introduce concept stores and new banners, such as Bloom, Tesco etc…
Many shoppers don’t like display rearrangement. They’re used to finding frozen pizza in one particular place within their store and they get annoyed when the frozen pizza is moved to another location. It’s a waste of time to search for what you want, and many people don’t see the logic of adjacencies (which related products should sit near each other).
Additionally, many people enjoy their food habits, and aren’t that adventurous about trying new things constantly. Yes, they might plan ahead as to which supermarket they’ll visit, and yes, they want to get in and out quickly when they’re time-pressed and hungry. I’m not sure what the breakthrough news is.