Let Them ‘Seek’ Produce!

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

So what can the produce industry learn from this Cargill study?

First, the various efforts to use cartoon characters to sell fresh produce have never gained much traction. Why is this so? Well, one reason may be found in this Cargill study. Consumers look for food appealing to the whole family, rather than looking to maintain separate pantries and create separate menus for children and the rest of the clan.

Second, produce marketers should take heart. This study, which was done not of produce but of many traditional snack categories, finds that parents are not happy with the healthfulness of these foods, which means they should be open to alternatives — although those alternatives still have to meet many criteria, including tastiness, convenience, and economy.

Third, when marketing an item, this study finds it is better to accentuate the positive rather than eliminate the negative. In other words, market an item as high in fiber, rich in a vitamin, or “fresh,” rather than promoting the item as fat-free or low in sugar.

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It is a challenge to know precisely what to make of this study. For example, the idea of a perspective in which shoppers are focused on items that appeal to the whole family would seem to marginalize specialty items. But the fact that 89 percent of parents say they are asking children to broaden their palates, and 69 percent of parents are asking their children to try an adult food, implies that parents will buy what they enjoy and try to “sell it” to their children — theoretically encouraging sales of specialty items.

 Tangible opportunities can be explored with this behavior. The study claims that parents want to buy healthier cookies, but find the choices to be unsatisfactory, so there is a big shortfall in satisfaction on these purchases. The question for the produce industry is to ask whether we can get into the heads of these parents and get them to broaden their snack options so they skip the cookie aisle entirely and buy produce items as a snack instead.

This is an area for better research and one has to suspect that Fresh will struggle. So often, cookies, chips and other snacks are bought without a usage occasion in mind — things you just put in the pantry for some moment when using them seems right. Some friends come over unexpectedly so you make coffee and put out some cookies. It snows so you make the kids and their friends hot chocolate served with vanilla wafers, etc.

Perhaps some fresh and frozen fruit could be used in this way. Whip up smoothies for the neighbors? And surely some of the use of produce is predictable, such as replacing cookies in a lunch box with an apple or a couple Clementines. The study starts the mind rolling on an area for more in-depth research — how to move people into produce from other snack categories.

On the marketing end, this whole idea of “seeking” seems powerful. The notion that consumers are seeking positive attributes in their foods rather than wanting to focus on downer stuff — less fat, less sugar, less salt — plays into much this columnist has written about regarding the necessity of avoiding marketing produce as a medicine. The idea of consumers as “seekers” might be a happy compromise. The industry can still market based on health but in a positive manner.

What actually drives purchase decisions is a well-studied mystery. Many of these types of products mentioned in the Cargill study are impulse items. A good promotion or a new flavor can lead to different outcomes than what would have been predicted by any survey of consumers.

It is also problematic that all these product categories are on consumer shopping lists even though we all know perfectly well that more healthful alternatives are available. It likely means that the produce industry has to do more than emphasize healthfulness.

When low carb diets were the rage, many hamburger chains started offering burgers on lettuce leaves to meet consumer demand for low carb options. So something —  be it vanity, medical issues, a search for healthfulness — led lots of consumers to change their diets to pursue the goals they had set for themselves. The challenge is to help consumers set goals of the sort that keep them out of the cookie aisle altogether. Then the consumers will be looking for other snack items, and produce has a fair chance of picking up a lot of business.

Consumers establish the life they intend to lead long before they walk in the store. If their life goal isn’t aligned with the world of produce, these consumers will spend their shopping trips seeking healthy cookies and frozen pizza. They will always be disappointed, which means there is always an opportunity for the produce industry to try again next time.