Bord Bia report reveals consumer attitudes to inflation and sustainability

In last week’s edition, we discussed the effect inflation is having on consumer desire to purchase more sustainable products. While pinching pennies, spending more on a product or taking a risk trying something new isn’t something most consumers are comfortable with. Of course, this doesn’t mean we should abandon the pursuit of sustainable products - recent research from Mintel indicates that, by 2026, sustainability could be one of the main drivers for consumers.

Inflationary Report

Released in January 2023, Bord Bia’s Inflationary Impact report goes into a bit more detail with regards to consumer behaviour in recent times. What started off as their “Feeling the Pinch” reports (which looked at pandemic behaviour in 2020 and 2021), their Inflationary Impact report looks at consumer behaviour through the lens of the cost of living crisis combined with our post-COVID lifestyles.

Grace Binchy is Bord Bia’s trends and insights specialist and was heavily involved in the creation of these reports. She tells Irish Country Living that their roots go even further back than pre-pandemic times, to the recession of 2008.

“Really, it was a body of work we started in 2008 when client companies were really struggling,” she explains. “The research ran for a series of four to five years; just following consumers as they were going through the different phases that the recession brought. Coming into COVID, we had a lot of companies asking: ‘Would you run that study again?’

“So, we rooted it in how consumers were shopping and engaging with brands - and the implications [the pandemic] had on their relationship with food,” she continues. “Little did we know that by September, 2021 we would still be in such a challenged situation. This study was pre-Ukraine, so there was no energy crisis at that point. Everything changed dramatically going into that New Year [2022], and there’s been an awful lot of uncertainty for consumers.”

Methodology

For their Inflationary Impact report, Bord Bia surveyed over 10,000 consumers located across five different markets (Ireland, the United Kingdom, France, Germany and the United States) and also conducted auto-ethnographies. These are forms of research which connect personal experiences to wider socio-political contexts.

“It’s important to say that there are two consumer stories emerging,” Grace says. “You have over 50% of people coming from this study who would describe themselves as ‘financially comfortable’, but you have close to a third of people who are struggling, and we need to be mindful of that when we look at these numbers. One universal thing from the report is the story of essentials – these have become the norm for everyone. Over 56% of people in Ireland are saying that only buying ‘essentials’ is now what’s important to them.

people are looking for more practical ways to eat and live sustainably.

“You have people being forced to buy less, so they’re trying to do more with less, and then you have a whole cohort of people who are [financially] comfortable, but they’re compromising – they can still buy the same amount of items, but they are being selective. Do they buy a brand, or an own label? All cohorts are being very conscientious and behaving in a considered way.”

Frugal Sustainability

How can we apply this “new normal” to sustainability efforts? Grace says it is true, consumers appear to be buying fewer perceived sustainable products at the moment, but that doesn’t mean they have forgotten about sustainability altogether. The report brings up the concept of “frugal sustainability”, which shows how people are looking for more practical ways to eat and live sustainably.

“They’re buying products which last longer; which have a longer shelf life,” Grace explains. “They’re looking at sustainability through a slightly different lens. Food waste is something people are really championing. If we go back to our early COVID work, we see that food waste is one thing people suddenly became aware of and were conscientious about managing. Consumers are inclined to grasp the thing they can see or understand, and food waste is one of those things.”

Grace also says, however, that around the time they published their first Feeling the Pinch report (2020), the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) also released stats saying that, when it comes to food waste, Ireland is actually producing a lot more than other markets in Europe per household.

“Consumers are looking to work with leftovers a lot more, now and looking at ways to make their food go further,” she adds. “Pre-COVID, the idea of meal prepping was very much the language of younger people who were into exercise and planning meals for the week. Now, meal prepping and bulk cooking has been embraced by almost everybody.”

Strategic shopping

As consumers look for the best deals among retailers - food brands also need to be strategic in their attempts to stand out.

Dining in

We are not eating out as much as we did in pre-COVID times, but we are experimenting more in the kitchen – and we are entertaining others in our homes more than we previously did. Brands can help recreate the “specialness of going out or the indulgence of takeaway at home.”

Strong shelf-life

Consumers want the foods they buy to go further, and brands have an opportunity to demonstrate their products have a strong shelf-life.

Messaging

Brands should focus on messaging around sustainability which will benefit consumers personally (for example, including a variety of recipes or explaining how to best use leftovers).

5 optimising value

As consumers explore lower cost options, brands have the opportunity to optimise value in other ways – for example, if making ready-made meals; focus on health and nutrition. For confectionary, focus on flavour and indulgence. It’s really important to understand the sector you’re in before choosing the right approach.

Quality over quantity

“Food quality is really important for people,” Grace says. “We gave [those surveyed for the report] a priority list of 17 things to think about when choosing food, and quality was their number one priority. People have really engaged in food in the past years and they know what quality is – if they can afford it, they will buy it. When it comes to brands, we saw that - across all markets - 60-70% of people are staying with the brands they know. One difference between these challenging times and the last recession is that own label products have improved so much. One of our key findings, depending on the sector, is that if you want people to keep buying your brand, you need to find the way to engage with them.” bordbia.ie

Next week

We speak with Teagasc researchers and the AgroBridges EIP to talk about how we can grow consumer relationships with primary producers.

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