HOUSTON — The evolving consumer and an increasing e-commerce landscape are just some of the challenges facing wholesale bakers, snack manufacturers and the food industry as a whole. While supermarket perimeters such as in-store delis are experiencing growth, according to market research firm Nielsen, new opportunities may be created for other categories including bakery.
In an effort to spur creative solutions that drive sales, the International Dairy-Deli-Bakery Association (IDDBA) partnered with Nielsen to conduct research that examined connections across the entire store.
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| Sherry Frey, Nielsen senior vice-president |
“We wanted to identify those natural connections to create linkages to sell more products,” said Sherry Frey, Nielsen senior vice-president, at IDDBA’s seminar and expo, held June 5-7 in Houston.
Too often, Ms. Frey said, supermarkets — or even their suppliers — think about the store in terms of specific categories or products.
“That’s not at all the way a shopper uses the store,” she said. “They think about it in terms of an ecosystem.”
According to Nielsen research, two-thirds of all grocery trips include both center store and perimeter categories, creating a host of untapped potential.
“If we don’t look at this with a total store connectivity lens, we are actually setting ourselves up for long-term failure,” she said.
From the Nielsen research, Ms. Frey cited specific shopper occasions — each pertaining to a style of entertaining — that created opportunities for connectivity. For example, “Fresh and Fancy” entertaining directly involves in-store deli dips and spreads, specialty cheese and deli meats, it also creates secondary opportunities that tie in with in-store bakery bread. “No Work” entertaining involves in-store bakery products such as cookies, brownies and dessert bars and cakes, but Nielsen also discovered correlation with deli entrees and deli prepared chicken for this occasion.
“The idea here of looking at connections or understanding consumer behavior, this isn’t new,” Ms. Frey said. “But this was the first time we really looked at the whole store — the research included all fixed weight and random weight — so there’s finally a holistic view of what’s happening in terms of connections and performance.”
