“Sixty per cent of consumers fall asleep with phone”

Current consumer trends are important to all companies, including the fresh produce sector. It is good to know how consumers think. Why do they buy fruits and vegetables? Nowadays, people are busy buying time, and are looking for ‘greener’ food. The ‘buying-time’ principle is about outsourcing parts of our lives. People want to pay for convenience. These days, they often go on ‘daycations,’ one-day holidays to, for example, a nice hotel. Daphne Kasriel-Alexander of Euromonitor talked about this during the Freshfel/Europatat meeting at the start of June.

“People are looking for machines that save time, especially at home. Juicero anticipates this well. This is a new machine that makes fresh juices. You do not have to stand in the kitchen for hours, cutting and washing vegetables. Now you can order the flavours you want through the app, and all you have to do is put these in the machine to get a juice fresher than fresh. And you do not have to clean it either, all you have to do is remove the Juicero bag and place a new one.” The price of the Juicero is around 800 euro, and the bags of fruits and vegetables are 10 euro per bag. “There are more examples to save time in the consumers’ kitchen. Another concept is the Bimby Robot: a machine than can make almost anything, and all you have to do is press a few buttons. Bimby does the rest.”

“The number of older people is increasing sharply. They have plenty of money to spend and can afford luxury and premium products. There is another important group, younger change makers, the mysterious millennials. They are looking for a better world, and activism is in. ‘Experience,’ ‘Lifestyle’ and ‘Green’ are keywords for this group. You could therefore use these to market your products.” Besides these two groups there is another important group with money to spend, the ‘spending singles.’ “Modern singles are also looking for authenticity. With lesser responsibilities and often a bigger budget, they are the ideal target audience for subscription boxes, luxury products and unique experiences.”

Eating greener is very now. “Of course, this is directly related to the fresh produce sector. People are looking for healthy, natural and local products. Farmers’ markets are everywhere, even in hotels and airports. Fast food chains are also joining this health trend. Additionally, the influence of foodvloggers is very large. A convenient tool to check which fruits and vegetables are in season is the Local Foods Wheel: www.localfoodswheel.com."

Consumers are looking beyond their physical health. They also want to feel mentally healthy. Self-help books and Mindfulness books are doing well, as are relaxing apps. Cleaning up needless things in the home is also a part of this, ‘Living More With Less.’

Today’s consumer is always connected, but not everyone is enthusiastic about this anymore. An increasingly growing group also sees the disadvantages of being connected. Research shows that approximately 60 per cent of consumers falls asleep with their phone in their hand. Yet there is also a group that is looking for offline-time and moments of calm. There is even an app to not be connected for a bit: Osss.