Some consumers are heavy users of a particular product. Some are passionate about a product. The sweet spot is superconsumers: those who are heavy users and highly involved. These are the most profitable and insightful consumers.
IDDBA commissioned The Cambridge Group to begin exploring superconsumer opportunities in bakery, cheese, dairy and deli. The goal of the project was to help IDDBA members sharpen their marketing, sales and innovation and create category growth by converting more shoppers into superconsumers.
To focus on how grocery can re-capture a fair share of the household food spend—as these days more is spent on food at restaurants than grocery—IDDBA dug into specific categories, including bagels.
IDDBA interviewed bagel superconsumers, those who made purchases at foodservice and grocery, to understand their motivations. Using these insights, the organization devised ways to increase in-store spend and trips and tested these concepts via a Nielsen Homescan survey and focus groups to provide new consumer-focused strategies.
What did IDDBA learn from superconsumer purchase behavior?
Superconsumers have many types of bagel “missions,” or objectives, which fall in to four categories: Convenience Matters Most, Food/Experience Matters Most, On the Go, and Not on the Go.
Most bagel missions occur at breakfast rather than lunch, but bagels are eaten at home, in the car or at work. Superconsumers are open to purchasing more at grocery, but key quality and convenience gaps must be addressed to be competitive.
Superconsumers would ideally like grocery to make the dough and bake the bagel and to offer a variety of spreads located next to the bagel display. They also prefer to select their own assortment and for an in-store bakery to have its own cash register.
What’s the impact of a bagel superconsumer?
Bagel superconsumers are 10 percent of households who drive 22 percent of grocery bagel sales and 27 percent of foodservice bagel sales. About 63 percent of all U.S. households consume bagels, 7.8 million of which are superconsumers.
By implementing the first of IDDBA’s three recommendation waves, the organization estimates that in-store sales could increase by $50-$100M and trips by 5 percent.
How can this help grow the industry?
“Now that we understand the motivations behind a purchase, we know how to give bagel superconsumers more of what they want,” says IDDBA. “By implementing the consumer-focused concepts that were developed, tested and brought to life in our research, grocery can increase superconsumer spend and the spend of potential superconsumers—the 20 percent of households who really like bagels, but spend less.”
These retail concepts are designed to maximize the opportunity with consumers already in the store, but they also can increase the number of weekly trips and basket size to help grocery capture its fair share of the food dollar.
The full report on donut superconsumers is available to IDDBA members here.
