Cutting Through Consumer Biases

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

Consumer research is filled with intriguing insights into consumer behavior, yet any attempts to deduce how a business ought to behave from what consumers report must be carefully considered. It is not surprising that quality, cleanliness and price guide consumer decisions. If you add in some sort of reference to assortment and location, you get the five elements that have won every consumer survey on a selection of shopping venues that seems to have ever been conducted.

The real question is what to make of these declarations. Cleanliness, for example, is right up there as a determinant of where consumers choose to shop — yet does that mean retailers ought to hire dozens of mop boys to be scrubbing all day? Probably not. More likely, all the popular supermarket chains are acceptably clean in general, just as they offer acceptable quality, acceptable prices, and acceptable assortment. Those that are not reasonably close are not even considered. Obviously, there are niche players that cater to certain income groups or ethnic groups but, for the mass market, these widely desired traits — all traits long known to retailers as important — function as the ante, the price of entry if you will, for playing in this game.

This is where the power of specialty foods, including specialty produce, can kick in. If all the players are offering acceptable stores, one may choose one store over another because it always has that special salad dressing or sells those unusual melons or a favored brand.

Often with consumer research, it is not the most popular items that are the point of differentiation; often it is some trait that is very important to a small group. Selling Kosher or Halal foods is a perfect example. These items will show up way down the list of important reasons for selecting one store over another, yet in a world where all the stores are pretty clean, the offering of wide selections of Kosher or Halal food is likely to actually be the determinant of which store gets the business of those requiring such certified foods for religious reasons.

A decision to offer quality to consumers seems like a no-brainer, but then one realizes the difficulty within the fresh produce category of persuading consumers that there is a quality difference. Obviously, there is appearance, but wilted greens, moldy berries and gnats flying nearby are typically a function of a flawed store-level operation. No major chain buys rotten produce.

Taste differs, but for the most part, consumers don’t know about the taste until they buy the product and take it home.

There is a whole infrastructure of food safety behind many products. But, for the most part, the industry frowns on promoting food safety so consumers know little about it.

Some companies are trumpeting sustainability and it matters to some consumers, but that seems to be a rather specialized niche.

This is really where branding comes in and we find consumers have definite preferences for certain brands. Surprisingly, they even pay attention to certain trade brands and look for them, because they have had good experience with them through the years.

In the end, though, most consumers shop with their eyes, and “quality” thus comes to mean “good-looking.” This is problematic for the produce industry because the largest strawberry is not necessarily the sweetest; the reddest apple, not necessarily the crispest.

Alternatively, sometimes consumers shop with their predispositions leading the way and so they may assume — wrongly — that something at a local farmers market is necessarily fresher, safer or tastier than something produced by a grower shipping regionally, nationally or internationally.

The challenge for produce producers and retailers alike is to educate consumers to appreciate delicious fruits and vegetables, even though they may not win a beauty contest or may not conform to the biases of consumers. This is difficult for the industry, as producers have, with few exceptions, left marketing to retailers and retailers have generally seen their place as offering things for sale, not changing consumer attitudes. It is the province of the chef to select a product to offer based on freshness and flavor; retailers tend to offer almost everything.

Yet in this day of pursuing value, part of the value quotient may include being more selective. Retailers have partially caught on to this and many are trimming their assortment. All too often though, this is to enhance leverage against suppliers, rather than being focused on offering consumers the best.

Much like consumers thinking the obviously beautiful is always the best, the trade sometimes makes the same error in how they participate in conventions. Yes, shaking hands with a big buyer is an obvious good, but so much money and time are invested in developing fantastic educational programs, which too many don’t make a priority of attending. Long-term, the beauty of learning and connecting in the educational program will stay with you long after that handshake is forgotten.