Branding Incorporates Many Traits

By Jim Prevor, Editor-in-Chief, Produce Business

When confronted with a graph such as the one presented on page 10, one is confronted with valuable information, but the question is what retailers can make of this information. That an attribute such as quality should rank high “when deciding what produce items to purchase” is not surprising, yet it is not clear what action should be taken as a result of learning this information.

In the first place, because the quality is so widely recognized as an important motivator of consumer actions, all successful retailers almost by definition provide at least “adequate” quality. How could it be otherwise? If a chain consistently provided terrible quality, the chain would go out of business. So in this sense, quality may be the ante necessary to play in the game, leaving lesser-ranked items as the key differentiating factors for retailers to consider.

Second, quality is a relative characteristic. The question posed was related to deciding “what item to purchase,” not where to shop. So the vision is that the shoppers ensconced in Wal-Mart or Whole Foods look to the quality of the item — not necessarily that the shopper would switch stores because a different store had higher quality.

Third, quality is not an independent variable. Typically, as quality goes up, so does price, the No. 2 item in the graph. The graph does not assess how consumers would value a trade-off between quality and price.

Fourth, what is quality anyway? A nice firm tomato is perfect for slicing for sandwiches, but a softer one would be better for making salsa.

Fifth, although consumers might say these things in response to a survey, it is hard to know how they would actually act on such concerns. For example “food safety” ranks in the top four criteria consumers say they use in selecting which items to purchase. Well, perhaps during an outbreak, consumers might avoid an item, but how, precisely, would consumers decide whether to buy a pear or a peach based on food safety concerns? A radish or a rutabaga?

We remember when Produce Business ran a series of focus groups and some consumers claimed they avoided pesticides on their purchases. When asked how they did so, one woman explained that the Surgeon General says what pesticides are on each item! It seems highly likely that consumers may claim to use food safety as a criterion but, in actuality, have no way to do so.

Sixth, the claim that health and nutrition influence consumer purchases is certainly true. All produce, however, has some redeeming health or nutrition characteristic, and shoppers buying for a diverse diet really have no reason to exclude one item or another. This author once did some demos on artichokes in retail stores and heard from some consumers that they were hesitant to buy artichokes because they loved to eat them with butter and they knew the butter was high in fat and calories. So, perhaps, this might indicate that artichoke producers should focus on teaching consumers about alternative ways to enjoy artichokes. By and large, though, there is no known correlation between the healthful attributes of produce and its rank in sales popularity.

Equally, when one looks at an issue such as branding, Steve Lutz concisely lays out the major issues. Yet in research, the answer you get depends almost entirely on the question you ask and, perhaps, thinking about a brand name as an attribute that one would use in “deciding what produce item to purchase” is not quite the same thing as asking if consumers prefer branded to unbranded produce.

When you go down the graph you notice the attributes divide into three segments. There are attributes that consumers can easily discern: Price; where it is grown (with today’s COOL law); convenience; and the name on the item. There are also attributes consumers can’t really determine by simply observing the item: Food safety and environmental issues. Then there is quality and health/nutrition, which can be partially observed or known in advance and partially can’t be seen or known in advance.

Branding, in and of itself, may be a tool that builds confidence in some of these attributes that are difficult or impossible for consumers to ascertain for themselves. In other words, a consumer may not be able to tell that an item is grown to high food safety standards, but the consumer may feel that a branded producer has a lot to lose, and so, takes better care.

Sometimes, a brand can come to mean something specific, so consumers concerned with environmental issues may seek out, for example, an organic brand.

Steve’s analysis is astute when he identifies the Achilles heel of produce branding as being inconsistent quality, and the Achilles heel of branded produce promotion as far from universal availability. Yet, branded produce endures with great names consumers all know and, much to the chagrin of all consumer researchers, these names influence consumers on an emotional level that consumers themselves can’t always articulate.