Marcos Fava Neves

The global food consumer

By Marcos Fava Neves ( chinadaily.com.cn)
Updated: 2010-04-06 09:40

The food and beverage companies are nowadays facing important challenges that result from changes in the final consumer preferences. The goal of this article is to bring some changes in the desires of the food consumer, showing to companies some attributes that can be useful in the new products developing process and in their communication activities (messages for advertising, sales promotion). In a creative way, I will point out using the A to Z trends…

Authenticity and Ageing: Be authentic, recognizing mistakes and with honesty and respecting the consumer (in recalls). Much additional care dedicated to the ageing consumer.

Beauty: Companies need to care about the appearance of the food, work hard at the sales place, and use beautiful packages, since more than 70% of the decisions are made at the point of sale.

Convenience and Citizenship: Products need easy handling and practical packages. The distribution channels must be chosen for the fast and easy purchase and a need of social actions creating a closer contact with the local community.

Diversity: Consumers want a range of alternatives within the brand for each market segment, attract with colored, different, funny and mainly educative products.

Exotic and Environment: Meals from different origins (countries, regions of the country) with exotic characteristics. This is linked to the desire of fun during the meals. There is also a valorization of the environment, creating opportunities for actions of sustainability, and products with stamp of environmental preservation

Functional Foods: Add to the products functional characteristics as weight reducers and energizers, and also medical characteristics, working together with medicine and health researchers. "The food will be the medicine".

Guarantee: Companies must honor the commitments with the consumer.

Harmony and Healthy: Consumers want equilibrium of the communication, price, products and distribution channels actions of a company. Think in products with lower level of sugar or cholesterol and healthy products. There is an opportunity here for products of the fitness line.

Innovation and Individualization: Intensify the launch of innovative products and ideas really representing new solutions. There is also a trend towards individual products, smaller packages, to consumers that live alone.

Jobs: Products that can generate jobs, with brands and stamps for small producers, or "job friendly product".

Labeling: There are several opportunities to label products, as a very important source of information.

Meal Solutions: Offer real solutions to final consumer's desires. The food-service is getting bigger. More and more people have gone out for dinner or fast-food.

Nostalgic: There is also a movement towards bringing back special moments from the past. We see an increase of old fashioned, or "retro" designed products and packages.

Organic: Products that refer to a clean environment or a controlled growth process have growing market.

Practical and Price: Practical products for the day-to-day, with quick prepare and easy to use. Price is fundamental in the decision's moment.

Quality: It is a basic requisite to operate in any market. Consumers have information and the media is pressuring companies towards quality controls.

Reliable: The origins, the sources, the way of preparation have to be reliable in the consumer's mind.

Services: There are always opportunities to offer services to consumer that really add value for the company and the consumer.

Tradition and Traceability: One company has to evaluate carefully the maintenance of its tradition in product line. Use arguments of age and time in the market transmitting trust. Register all products history, from the farm to the final consumer. Then, it's necessary to communicate this action mainly on clear packages for reading.

Uniformity: Consumer is not willing to accept variations in the product, mainly those which a company to be standardized.

Value Proposition: Add value to the food, at the lowest cost, bringing the concept of "best value" of the category.

World-Wide: Explore the global food consumer that likes to recognize the food wherever in the planet he or she is, linked to the open and global communications platform.

Xenophobia: Present in some countries, linked to the question of the valorization of the domestic jobs and domestic production

Young: There is the forever young movement; some consumers want to be and to feel young, to live more, to live healthier.

Zzzzz (Speed): Company cannot be slow. Speed is fundamental. Search on web pages, copy if necessary, have new ideas, be alert to the new opportunities, be always ahead of competitors, surprise them and the consumers

Companies could think: what opportunities do you see in the future? What arguments, within those listed, do you have? How to use those arguments in a very positive way? Does the consumer identify and value this argument in his or her buying decision process? Which of those arguments can be adapted? In summary, I tried with this article to bring ideas, arguments, messages to enable the food and beverage companies offer products that have consequently more value and acceptance.

The author is professor of strategic planning and food chains at the School of Economics and Business, University of Sao Paulo, Brazil (www.favaneves.org) and international speaker.