Consumers Want Nutrition Info, Not Politics

In the wake of the March 5th House vote to move forward with HR 4167—the federal bill proposing to uniform, yet undermine, state food safety and labeling laws—manufacturers and retailers just might want to consider saying “so what.”

As Gladson’s CEO explained, “Consumers appear to be relying more and more on the ingredient and nutritional information contained on product packages as they make their weekly shopping decisions. Unfortunately, reading the back of the label is time consuming and those labels can be quite confusing if the reader is not very clear on what low-fat means for their personal diet.  The average grocery shopping trip results in the purchase of 60+ items, and reading all those labels can add a lot of time to an already time consuming weekly task.   The consumer wants clear and concise information made easily and conveniently accessible at the point of purchase, and the label is not the answer."

"In the online grocery shopping arena we see about a third of consumer visits including an examination of product label details as they look for low-salt, or for trans-fats, allergens or other ingredients that may cause their family members problems.  That figure is up from less than 10% of the consumer visits looking for this type of information only five years ago.  There is no reason to believe that consumers shopping in grocery stores are not looking for the same detail, with the same regularity.  The ingredients and nutritional portion of the food product label is in many ways as important as the brand name, and is certainly becoming synonymous with that brand name.” 

Gladson’s CEO continued, “Rather than arguing whether a state version of a label is safer for a consumer than the federal version of that same label, retailers and manufacturers might be better off trying to figure out better ways of communicating healthy foods to their consumers.  A much more prescriptive program to help consumers to identify target foods than product labels was conducted as part of a study in the late 1980’s by the Pawtucket Heart Health Program.  Rather than rely on the consumer taking the time to examine each product this program identified a group of products that were tasty, and contained less fat, cholesterol and sodium.  Brand specific labels with such identifiers were placed next to the item price tags on the selected items.  Over a four year program, the shoppers who could correctly identify the products with the special labeling in the test supermarkets, increased from 11% to 24% of all shoppers.   From those shoppers the number of shoppers influenced to purchase the “healthy” labeled products increased from 36% to 54%!  These types of programs help the consumers help themselves to eat healthier, while at the same time making shopping at the grocery store sponsoring such helpful shelf labeling, more convenient.”

Interested in saying “so what” to HR 4167?  Contact Gladson to explore this concept in further detail. 

Analytic Software Training by Gladson Interactive

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Schooled in IRI Apollo, Spaceman by ACNielsen, and JDA Space Planning, our Analysts start by sending a course syllabus for you to redline.  Add and delete topics as you choose; then, return it to our Analysts for a fully customized course.  Our Analysts also ask for copies of your planogram files for use as training examples.  Using your planogram files ensures your specific categories are reviewed, rather than the “samples” provided with the software.  Finally, we further perfect our courses by grouping according to skill level—no twiddling your thumbs waiting for novices to catch up, or feeling like you’re on a mogul slope bouncing from topic to topic.   

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