In January, Better Homes and Gardens released the winners of its 2013 Best New Product Awards. The winning products were chosen by more than 77,500 consumers who participated in a nationwide online survey, the American Shopper Study, conducted by Toronto research firm BrandSpark International in partnership with Better Homes and Gardens.

You can see a full list of the winners at www.bhg.com/bestnewproductawards and learn more about the study itself at http://bestnewproductawards.biz. But as I perused the results, I was more interested in the overview of the current mind-set of the American shopper provided by responses to a host of non-product-related questions asked as part of the BrandSpark International/Better Homes and Gardens American Shopper Study. Some sample findings, as taken from the press materials:

Food and nutrition

  • A majority of Americans (81 percent) continue to pay attention to food labels.
  • Italian food is the most widely-enjoyed food, eaten by 91 percent of Americans, followed by Mexican food (enjoyed by 82 percent) and Chinese (76 percent). These are also the same top three ethnic food types for Hispanic shoppers.

Beauty

  • When purchasing beauty products, one in two shoppers consider it extremely important to find products that are well-priced and proven effective. 
  • Other important considerations for shoppers include: ease of use, trust in the brand and that the product is gentle on their skin. A desire for gentle products is also a driver behind which ingredients shoppers avoid most in skin care: ammonia, peroxides and alcohol.

Store brands vs. brand names

  • More than nine in 10 shoppers have purchased private-label products in the past year.
  • Private-label purchase is strong in food categories: more than six in 10 shoppers have purchased private-label dairy products, dry food and frozen vegetables. 
  • Products in the personal-care categories have stronger brand loyalty: four in 10 shoppers will never purchase a private-label/store brand product in categories including make-up and hair care. 
  • Shoppers still see value in trusted name brands and 72 percent prefer to find brand-name products on sale than to purchase private-label.

Environment

  • While only four in 10 shoppers are willing to pay more for environmentally-friendly products, more than eight in 10 appreciate when the manufacturer bears the burden of production and offers an environmental benefit without increased cost. 
  • More than ever, manufacturers need to make sure that their environmental claims will stand up under scrutiny: Shoppers are increasingly skeptical, with three in five believing that environmentally-friendly claims are often exaggerated or misleading.

Mobile shopping habits

  • Smartphones’ role in retail is growing, with over half of shoppers interested in using their phone to download or scan coupons.
  • 30 percent of shoppers ages 18-34 said they store their shopping list on their phone regularly or occasionally - a number bound to increase as the functionality of related apps and their ability to interact with promotion-driven marketing media improves.

Still very important

A surprising finding, in this age where digital is supposedly king, was that traditional media and channels are still very important sources of ideas on what to buy: 67 percent of shoppers reference circulars to get ideas on what to purchase on their shopping trips, making them the leading external sources of ideas. Meanwhile, almost 30 percent get ideas from recipe books and newspaper articles and approximately one in five cited both TV and magazine ads as sources of purchase ideas.