Key Takeaways
- Ultimately, for US consumers, the key grocery influences focus on “better for me” choices that are quality, “close to natural” with no additives and high nutrient quality. Connecting sustainability to 'healthier' is very important in this market.
- This is a less mature sustainability market, as consumers believe that their choices have limited impact on the environment compared to European consumers. Sustainability ranks relatively low as a grocery influencer and shoppers are less likely to make changes towards a more sustainable lifestyle.
- As we see elsewhere, low/ no carbon footprint, sustainable packaging and the ecosystem/ biodiversity are strongly connected to sustainability, but are not grocery influencers. Food waste and naturalness are the critical sustainability drivers.
57%
Of consumers say that they don’t pay too much attention to sustainability, significantly higher than the global average
35%
Believe that the choices they make on what they eat has a negative impact on the environment, significantly lower than the global average
87% of US consumers say that they
have made an effort to eat more healthily in the last 12 months
......level with the global average
Priority Sectors
- When it comes to choosing beef, grass-fed and quality assurance are top influences, but the use of antibiotics in this market are more important than most other markets. These alongside animal welfare claims show potential to differentiate beef. Grass-fed can tap into this desire for naturalness and high welfare.
- Dairy shares many of these priorities; quality, welfare, minimising antibiotics. However, grass-fed seems somewhat less important in this sector with more of a connection needed to be made between the animal feed and the quality of the finished product.
- Sustainable packaging comes to the fore as a premium driver when it comes to PCF and alcohol, along with safety and quality reassurance.
21%
Of US beef buyers are willing to pay a premium for beef that is grass-fed, more than any other sustainability attribute
Prioritisation Graphs
The graphs display which sustainability attributes consumers find most appealing and are most willing to pay a premium for in the priority categories. The horizontal axis is based on the overall appeal of this sustainability measure in this sector, the vertical axis shows the extent to which people would be willing to pay more for this benefit.
Hover over each datapoint for more information and navigate to other categories by clicking the right or left arrow on the navigation bar below each graph.
