SPONSORED CONTENT
By Dave Lundahl, CEO, InsightsNow
It’s easy to follow what consumers have been doing but difficult to predict what they will do. A classic approach to predicting behavior is to attribute behavioral change to a shift in need states. However, in a world disrupted by COVID-19, this Maslovian needs state model is too simplistic. It does not sufficiently predict behavior for marketers and innovators to plan their response in the face of market disruption.
For the past four years, we have been tracking a segment of consumers called Clean Label Enthusiasts®. This group increased during that time from 12% to 34% of all U.S. primary household shoppers. In addition to their clean-label buying behaviors, a unique characteristic of this segment is a higher than typical distrust for large corporations as well as government institutions who set regulations for how products are manufactured, advertised and labeled. They are the consumers behind the growth of the natural products industry, which promotes products with ingredients that are organic, natural and sustainable. Our question going into COVID-19 was whether this segment’s motivators would change and whether these shoppers might seek different price-value trade-offs.
The answer is becoming clear. The COVID-19 disruption has accelerated rather than inhibited global demand for natural and natural-positioned products. Why? Because the media broadcasting through various channels about COVID-19 continually reinforces the basic tenet that large corporations and government institutions cannot be trusted.
Before the COVID-19 pandemic, 53% of Clean Label Enthusiasts distrusted the U.S. food system. Recently, the U.S. FDA issued a temporary guidance to help food manufacturers more easily make “like” ingredient changes without a label change in order to quickly address supply chain challenges. This regulatory change – while welcome by food manufacturers – is further eroding trust among consumers already on high alert about health and safety concerns. The short-term economic gains for food brand owners may not be worth the long-term consequences. These ongoing changes to regulations continue to disrupt consumers and make it difficult to use Maslovian needs states to predict behavior changes. A stronger, more predictive approach emerged when we applied a behavioral framework called the Emotions Insights Wheel™.
Using this framework, we projected back in March what we believed would be short- and long-term consumer behavioral changes due to COVID-19 and we have been tracking Clean Label Enthusiasts’ behaviors and motivators since then. This model predicted an initial rise in functional motivators for purchases of consumer packaged goods to address health and safety fears. We saw this play out in the hoarding of toilet paper and clearing of retail shelves of disinfectants.
We are now seeing a rise in predicted psychological motivators where people are seeking products to help them feel better and change their moods. We are also seeing a rise in sensorial motivators that drive purchases of products to re-experience what has been recently lost due to the restrictions of the pandemic. Further, we are seeing family time emerge as a key social moment motivating product purchases. Predicting motivators has been helpful to marketers and innovators seeking to stock store shelves with the products consumers currently seek.
Today, more than ever before, marketing researchers are needed to get to the heart of “why.” To help our internal or external customers plan for the future, we must go beyond the Maslovian needs state model and embrace behavioral science. If you wish to learn more about our predictions and recommendations for your brand or product, check out our COVID-19 Tracker of Clean Label Enthusiasts®.
Want to learn more? Visit www.gotostage.com/channel/q-report.