Imagine a situation for me, if you will. Your sales have just dropped by 25%.
Brand tracking looks fine.
Retail stores looks fine.
There is no suggestion that anything has changed in your consumer data.
What on earth has happened?
Is your data flawed? Maybe it was a short-term blip? Perhaps you would wait to see if there is a trend. But what if the trend continued? For a year? What if the annual U&A report still showed consumption hadn’t dipped, but sell through at retail was stubbornly lower than it used to be?
This article suggests that up to 25% of food bought is thrown away. If shoppers suddenly decided to only buy what was consumed, the strange scenario above would become real. Looking at sell-out data would give a contradictory story to any consumer data.
Clearly not all categories are the same, so that would suggest that some categories are lower than 25% and some are significantly higher. Some categories must be heavily over-exposed to non-consumption. How much of your brands sales are actually never consumed? Do you know? It’s not something that is usually included in a U&A study. But as a brand, if a big chunk of your sales are actually waste, then that may create a vulnerability – as times get harder, shoppers might get more savvy and reduce their purchases.
But the point of this blog is not really accounting for, or being aware of food waste. The point is that looking at the consumer alone doesn’t give the whole story. Nor does looking at sales data, or shopper data for that matter. There is a link between consumption and shopping in all categories, but it is not always the same.
Consumption occasion first
In some categories the consumption occasion leads. Fresh foods, or sauces used in meal solutions are often purchased against a specific consumption need (tonight’s dinner for the family, for example).
Shopper Driven
Fresh “stock items” like juices or cheese may be more shopper driven (the shopper buys and there is a good chance that some or all of the product will get consumed. Categories such as confectionery have a highly causal relationship led often by the behavior of the shopper – the more that gets bought, the more gets eaten (chocolate in our fridge at home has a shelf life of mere hours, typically!).
The consumer and the shopper need to be considered as separate entities, but it is not possible to fully understand one without the other. A consumer not using your brand may do so simply because no-one has bought it. A rise in consumption could be driven completely by a change in shopping behavior. The consumer’s attitude to the brand may be completely unchanged, but they have consumed more simply because it was there in the home. Likewise shoppers buy what they believe will be consumed. If consumption doesn’t take place there is almost certainly a feedback loop (however delayed it might be) which will to some extent undermine future sales (I’m not buying that again, no-one really enjoyed it/finished it/we ended up throwing it away).
Understanding the relationship between consumption and purchase is critical to the success of consumer AND shopper marketing. How well integrated are the functions in your business, and if not, how much might it be costing you?
