England Marketing – specialists in market research, business development and marketing – recently surveyed 1,002 British consumers nationwide about their attitudes to buying produce and how these have changed in the last two years. Here, Produce Business UK details the findings, which show quality and cost are the biggest barriers to buying and eating more fruit and veg
View the report in full here.
The aim of the research was to understand the following:
- What barriers exist to purchase of fresh produce.
- Whether consumers are eating five portions of fruit and vegetables a day and how important this is to them.
- The importance of size, shape and colour in making a choice.
- Interest in pre-packed and pre-prepared fruit and vegetables.
- The extent to which consumers juice uneaten fruit and vegetables or make smoothies.
- A view on waste.
- Recognition of labels.
The key findings were:
1. Cost and quality of fresh produce appear to be the key barriers to increasing consumption.
2. The average number of portions of fresh produce eaten on a daily basis has declined a small amount since 2014 and still does not exceed three a day.
3. Whilst people think it is important to eat 5-a-day, they are not all achieving this, and a third think the government, schools and the retailers should be encouraging people.
4. Provenance is still an important factor in choosing fresh produce in the sense that people like to know where it has come from and would pay more if they knew more money went back to growers.
5. Two thirds of people are concerned about waste but this not does stop them throwing away fresh produce, uneaten.
6. There has been no increase in the number of people looking for particular labels on fresh produce and no change in those choosing organic produce.
