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Consumer and Innovation Trends in Ready Meals
1. Consumer and Innovation
Trends in Ready Meals 2013
Frozen, chilled, canned and dried ready meals
Category Series. Published December 2013
Consumer Insight
3. Easy & Affordable
Key themes
Private label
The quality of private label products continues to improve, which
is proving highly appealing to value-conscious consumers.
Indeed, private labels are excelling on more than price, bringing
products to the market that are satisfying indulgence and health
demands and effectively replicating branded innovation.
Convenience
Everyday time pressures, stresses, and work-life balance
problems that contemporary consumers experience inevitably
force them to look for easy and quick-to-prepare meals so that
they do not have to spend most of their leisure time cooking.
Innovative packaging formats that facilitate quick preparation and
consumption are poised for growth in the future.
Simplicity
Simplifying the shopping process is key to attract time-bound
consumers. Ready meal manufacturers should capitalize on
food-alcohol pairings to boost purchase.
Source: Datamonitor analysis
3
Mega-trend relevance in ready meals
Easy &
Affordable
Individualism
& Expression
Health &
Wellness
Comfort &
Uncertainty
Evolving
Landscapes
Sensory &
Indulgence
Smart &
Connected
Sustainability
& Ethics
Overview Private label Convenience Simplicity
4. Moving foodservice brands into the retail market
Many foodservice operators have been sensitive to changes in
consumer behavior and are licensing their brands to
manufacturers to produce their branded products for the retail
market to open up new revenue streams. In the ultra-
competitive retail market, foodservice branding can help to
create a point of differentiation. This can make the consumer
feel that they are getting a foodservice experience in their
home.
Branded foodservices products now appear in the retail
ready meal space
With the rise in consumers preparing dishes at home,
foodservice operators are moving their brands into the ready
meal space as highlighted in the examples on the right. For
example, Italian food chain Pizza Express offers a range of
products including mains that retail between £4.50 and £6 and
highlights how a foodservice brand can be a powerful counter
to the commoditizing and devaluing effect of own label on the
ready meal category.
Source: Datamonitor's Product Launch Analytics
Carluccio's Ragu di
Cinghiale
UK
4
Divisions between foodservice and grocery retail are increasingly blurred
Comfort & Uncertainty
IHOP at Home – flatbread
breakfast sandwich
US
Pizza Express – American
Hot
UK
Overview Cocooning Trust & Transparency Localism
Itsu Noodle Pot Thai Spicy
Flavor
UK
5. Health & Wellness
Ready meals suffer from ingrained negative perceptions
Frozen ready meals in particular face a challenge to alter
perceptions
In relation to frozen ready meals, a significant proportion of
consumers (often wrongly) believe that freezing food
compromises its nutritional quality. This is supported by
consumer data from a survey conducted on behalf of the Policy
Studies Institute in March 2010, which highlighted that almost
one in five UK consumers believe that frozen vegetables do not
count towards daily recommended intake. These perceptions
represent a significant barrier to growth in the frozen food
category.
Increasing skepticism about processed foods
While ready meals are increasingly becoming an essential part of
many consumers' lives, consumers do not want to give up eating
healthy foods and are therefore continuing to look for processed
products that do not significantly differ from their fresh
equivalents in terms of nutritional levels. The challenge for the
ready meals industry is winning over skeptical consumers to the
idea that health and convenience, which is often seen as
mutually exclusive, can be effectively combined, and that ready
meal products have health advantages (such as the preservation
of nutrients).
Source: Datamonitor’s Consumer Survey May/June 2011
5
Global: Consumers who are extremely or somewhat
concerned about the impact of processed foods on their
health, 2011
Global: Consumers who either strongly or tend to believe
that freezing food compromises nutritional quality, 2011
Brazil 57%
Russia 44%
Global 35%
US 24%
China 64%
UK 18%
Overview Natural Positive Nutrition Weight Management Low salt
6. Sensory & Indulgence
Potential for new product innovations is spurred by consumers' willingness to try new foods
Foreign cultures drive diversity in food innovation
Exposure to other cultures heavily influences consumers' taste in
food. Highlighting this, over four in 10 consumers (43%) globally
expressed this view in 2011, compared to only 20% who did not
believe that their taste had changed due to exposure to other
cultures. With consumers worldwide expressing a willingness to
experiment with new cuisines, ready meal manufacturers would
benefit from this shrinking-world scenario by marketing local
ingredients from one region as a premium product in a different
part of the world, where the same ingredients would be
considered "exotic."
Consumers are open to experimentation
Globally, two thirds of consumers express an active interest in
trying out different foods or making new things to eat¹. The
majority of consumers are open to new and exotic flavors,
although the appeal diminishes with age. Opportunities thus exist
to develop more exotic and experimental product flavors in the
ready meals category to appeal to consumer desire to try new
things.
Source: [1] Datamonitor’s Consumer Survey May/June 2011; Datamonitor's Consumer Survey May/June 20136
Global: consumers that agree with the statement: "My
taste in food has changed as a result of exposure to foods
from other cultures," 2011
Agree
Neither agree
nor disagree
Disagree
43%
37%
20%
Overview Taste Freshness Experimentation
Global: consumers who consider a food or drink product
with a “new or exotic flavor” appealing, 2013
7. Smart & Connected
New consumer connections
The consumer landscape has been
fundamentally impacted by the advent and
growing adoption of digital technologies.
Consumers are no longer passively
interacting with brands on static webpages;
Internet utilization has facilitated new and
novel ways of connecting with fellow
consumers and discussing brands. As a
result, consumers now have the ability and
confidence to communicate with
companies, obtain product information, and
share their brand experiences in more
unique and engaging ways.
Proactive versus reactive
The challenge for industry players is to
strike a balance between reaching out to
consumers online (thereby strategically
crafting brand communication) and allowing
brand conversations to take place
organically between consumers (messages
that cannot be controlled but are far more
credible than brand-led communication).
Digital technologies are transforming relationships between brands and consumers
Source: Datamonitor's analysis7
• Share product
experiences
• Recommend
products
• Share group
deals
• Social gifting
• Post video
review blog
• Share viral
campaign
Brands
Consumers
Consumers
• Virtual
supermarkets
• Banner ads
• Texts from
brands
or companies
• Gamification
• "Like" a brand on
Facebook
• Browse company website
• "Check into" a business
• Crowd-sourced branded content
• QR codes on packaging
Overview Online engagement Smart engagement
New brand conversations taking place in today's digital consumer
landscape