Produce Preferences are Not Homogeneous

Much market research two decades ago tended to focus on consumer willingness to pay for food safety attributes. Food safety continues to be an essential consumer concern, but more common themes in the marketing literature of the past five years include measuring the consumer's willingness to pay for produce that is organic, non-GMO, or perceived as local.

Consumer willingness to pay for certain attributes of produce is far from constant across all consumers. That's nothing new; market research has long demonstrated that food consumer willingness to pay depends on who the consumer is. Twenty-five years ago, a much-cited report articulated that consumer attitudes toward food safety and quality (and, we logically conclude, the willingness-to-pay for quality attributes) depended on the demographic and socioeconomic characteristics of consumers.[1] Simply put, not all consumers were willing to pay more for certain food attributes. One interesting study in the late 1990s compared consumers in Atlanta, GA, and Berlin, Germany.[2] To no one's surprise, the German consumers surveyed at that time appeared more willing to pay for certain safety and quality assurance attributes than consumers in Atlanta.

What does this historical perspective mean for today's produce taste and texture preferences? Simply this: today's produce consumers are still not the same-neither in Atlanta and Berlin, nor in Portland and Peoria. Produce tastes, preferences, and the willingness to pay for those preferences, will vary among consumers. We must know our consumers, and information technology is allowing us to know them better and better.

Just as researchers two decades ago quantified relative to food safety, consumer social and economic demographics still appear to be main determinants for consumer willingness to pay. As a book reviewer recently wrote in The Wall Street Journal "...it is not only price that keeps people from buying [produce] but eating habits and taste preferences."[3] And eating habits and taste preferences can vary wildly between different consumer demographics.

Taste and Texture Trump Local

Recent publicly-funded research has tended to focus on consumer willingness to pay for locally grown products and other factors more generally defined as "social." However, social characteristics are not as important as taste and texture, even to consumers highly valuing "social" aspects of their produce purchases. This was quantified by an analysis of a large U.S. consumer data set by Colorado State University researchers in 2006.[4] Their study found that superior quality (including taste and texture categories), as well as safety and competitive prices of products, were more important across the whole consumer spectrum. More specifically, the study found that produce "intrinsic characteristics" accounted for the most variability in the consumer sample. "Intrinsic characteristics" included vitamin content, produce color, firmness and texture, and taste. The researchers found that intrinsic qualities were almost twice as likely to explain consumer preferences for particular products as were nutrition and production location.

Interestingly, this research focused on consumers purchasing produce at direct market outlets such as farmers markets and farm stands. Such consumers, one would surmise, would be more likely to pay for "local" produce and produce grown according to particular production practices. Yet the 2006 analysis indicated that the intrinsic qualities of the produce itself were every bit as important to the consumer, if not more important, than where and how the produce was grown.

What does it mean? Apparently, no matter where or how produce is grown, how it literally tastes and feels in the mouth is vital for consumer satisfaction. Consumer research, academic and otherwise, suggests that taste and texture are still far more important than some qualities recently generating more popular press (such as "local"). This principle could be seen at work, for example, in the growth of the snacking tomato category during the past decade. Greenhouse-grown cherry and grape tomatoes deliver classic tomato taste in the off-season-and taste remains what our customers want.

How Much Are Taste and Texture Worth?

Don't we wish we could tell you in dollar terms how much more your customers would be willing to pay for a certain percentage increase in brix! We are not quite there yet, though we see emerging technologies-particularly smart phone and social media applications-making such analysis more feasible. As one expert recently wrote, our industry is becoming more about targeting specific kinds of customers in specific stores with the right product and price at the right time.[5] Social media and point-of-purchase smart phone apps present tantalizing opportunities for gathering consumer responses about taste and texture characteristics of the produce they have just purchased. The potential for brand building around specific consumer preferences, down to the store-level, is astonishing.

But produce still must taste great to our customers. That means knowing our customers well: not only our buyers, but the consumers who put the produce into their mouths and onto their tables. What that product tastes and feels like in the mouth of the consumer, and how that compares to what that particular consumer likes and wants in fresh produce, will remain vitally important. Our consumers are not all the same, and they have various tastes and preferences. Identifying those tastes and preferences, and supplying product more and more specific to those tastes, appears more and more important to the industry.