Food Consumer Insights and Market Research for Future

In 2019, the global market for food and beverages was valued at about $5,943.6 billion. It is due to a 5.7% CAGR (compound annual growth rate) since 2015. The growth is expected to increase to a 6.1% CAGR, reaching a valuation of $7,525.7 billion by 2023. This figure may grow to $8,638.2 billion by 2025 and about $11,979.9 billion by 2030.

Importance of Food Consumer Market Research

• You can outperform your competitors with demand-side data that is updated, accurate and dynamic.
• You will understand the factors that affect the market, for instance the  global pandemic, its evolution and impact.
• You can identify areas of growth to invest in.
• The data helps in decision-making based on forecast and historic data as well as the restraints and drivers of the market.
• It equips you for creating regional or national strategies based on local data and analyses.
• You can stay on top of the newest customer research, behavior, and findings.
• You can deliver benchmark performance against your competitors.
• You are better at developing strategies based on likely developments.

Consumer Insights in the Food and Beverage Market

Social intelligence can help derive consumer and market insights for F&B brands in several ways. Brand recall and awareness are fundamental for business success in any industry. The food market is not different. Social intelligence makes up a significant portion of the mix during brand tracking. It also follows a unique approach to collect the customer’s opinion and measure market share through the right mix of quantitative and qualitative methodology. Food market research allows you to see finer details and understand how much noise you have generated in the market. You can also understand your position better at an individual level. 

Also Read: Data Analytics in Food and Beverage Industry

Monitoring Trends

The F&B industry is among one of the most change-prone industries. It means when micro-trends, local trends, and customer behavior trends change, the F&B industry is hit the hardest. For instance, the world might be moving on to chia seeds and quinoa, but you are still talking about cauliflower rice. It shows the world that you are not updated on market trends or what customers are looking for. 

The Economist reports that F&B industry giants find it increasingly challenging to keep pace with evolving consumer trends. Consumers are increasingly looking for products and brands that have cultural identities and value systems matching their own. All past assumptions are now being challenged and slowly written off. Changing food consumer trends and evolving tastes have made it both essential and harder to predict and monitor consumer food trends. Conversations around these trends begin online. If your brand is present in these conversations and spots these conversations early, it can help you lead this trend or conversation. 

Google has created a report around food trends based on searches on the internet. It has highlighted multiple trends. However, one issue is that this report uses multiple Google data sources that aren’t available for public use. 

The national restaurant association surveyed 1600 chefs to understand new trends. While these surveys are highly valued, the key issue here was the limited dataset. Additionally, customized surveys cost a lot.

Discovering Food and Beverage Insights From Consumer’s Perspective

There are other ways to discover new market trends. Plus, if you want to leverage customer pain points, you need to first understand what beverage or food consumers need and what they are talking about.

1. Monitoring negative feedback: You can monitor the negative feedback from consumers. When you see a negative incident or situation occur, you must be on top of it fast or someone else will be. Several social intelligence tools give smart alerts and early warnings to help you monitor possible threats you weren’t aware of. 

3. Health-conscious consumers: One of the largest change drivers in the F&B industry is the rising awareness of health and well-being. The global rise in obesity, concerns over genetically modified organisms (GMOs), animal welfare, organic food, fair trade, and worker rights have started conversations about food practices that are not exploitative or harmful.

2. Monitoring conversations around allergies: In a survey recently conducted by the FSA in the UK, 23% of people with allergies generally complain on social media about food businesses they encountered that didn’t offer allergy warnings or information. 
Leveraging f&b data analytics to discover new food and beverage insights is the future of the F&B industry. Make sure you have the right business support to get the most updated insights.