Only 9% of consumers actively seek out organic product claims; with organic being ranked 27th of 34 commonly ‘looked for’ product claims by UK shoppers.
Research to coincide with the Soil Association Organic Fortnight (3 to 17 September) shows that organic as a food product claim is ‘looked for’ by only 9% of consumers.
As producers fight back after the recession-influenced fall in sales of organic products, organic food manufacturers are advised to look beyond a simple organic message and exploit other product claims which are proven to resonate much more strongly with the British public.
“Consumers are telling us that organic as a ‘brand’ is not much of a turn on,” says Mat Lintern, managing director of MMR Research Worldwide, the food and drink research specialist that ran the survey of more than 1,000 UK consumers this summer.
“Yet, they find claims such as ‘healthy’, ‘natural’ and ‘free of artificial colours, flavours and preservatives’ – benefits clearly associated with organic food – up to five times as appealing.
“This is consistent with findings from our other research that a large proportion of today’s consumers seek to avoid foods containing so-called ‘nasties’.
“They look for confirmation signals on labeling and other marketing material that food is as natural or ‘not tampered with’ as possible. The implication for organic food brands is to introduce more of the benefits of organic into their messaging, instead of relying on organic alone.”
The most motivating product claims found by the survey were ‘healthy’ and ‘low fat’ with 43% of consumers stating they actively seek out those claims when shopping for food.
This is followed by ‘low in sugar’ (36%), ‘low in salt’ (34%) and ‘low in calorie’ (31%) claims.
Interestingly, 25% of consumers look for ‘locally produced’ products (it was the 11th most appealing product claim) and 19% – more than double the positive response to organic – cited ‘fair trade’ as a looked for claim.
Other ‘losers’ in the list include ‘antioxidants’ (9%) and ‘pro-biotic’ and ‘pre-biotic’ claims (8% and 5% respectively).
Another interesting finding from the survey is the decline in the perception of the growing popularity of buying organic produce.
Whereas in June 2008, 64% of consumers felt that organic produce was growing in popularity, that number had dropped by over 20 percentage points to just 43% by June 2010. In the same survey, 25% thought organic produce was “on its way out.”
This research is compiled by the MMR Pulse programme, a food and drink trend-tracking information resource. A number of the UK’s major food and drinks manufacturers subscribe to the annual programme, which includes bi-monthly quantitative studies of 1,000 UK shoppers.
Source: MMR
