Step Up To The Plate

Driving market share is a topic where discussions are often built on understanding shopping behaviours in store, at the point of purchase.

The average UK main course evening meal features items purchased from between 2-3 retailers. Re-thinking our mindset to understand how that end occasion is being shopped for can offer a significant competitive edge in occasion based marketing.

The more central the category is to the occasion, or the more solution led (like meal kits) the core component is, the higher the spend in that retailer. For example, owning the protein on plate can lead to as much as 40p of wider incremental spend for the retailer. This represents a significant increase when the evening meal is worth on average £2.19.  Conversley the owning of less critical components, such as herbs or spices, has less than 5p incremental value.

Understanding the degree to which categories drive wider store spend can help retailers focus efforts and investment in the right place; justifying promotional activity on certain areas can help manufacturers set the scene for the role their categories play in driving whole store value.

Putting the Customer Mission First

In the context of the revenue opportunities up for grabs by driving whole meal value, it’s also important for manufacturers and retailers to consider the impact of shopper missions on how we make choices in-store, to ultimately fulfil occasions we have in the home. Different trips will have different “plate loyalty".

Where shoppers have told us they were on a “main shop” trip we see 67% of the food on an average plate was sourced from that trip. Conversely, “specific journey” missions have only 26% of the plate sourced from that same trip (74% of the plate is accounted for by other shopping trips).
 
Understanding what categories drive each of these respective missions and which categories on plate are "losing" to other missions, and indeed competitors, can provide retailers with insight into the consumer mindset on how we shop. In turn, this can help them to ensure they have the appropriate offers ranged in ways to best serve as many customer needs for that occasion, in that store and on that mission as possible.