Health Food Survey: Few Brands Stand Out With Consumers

According to a study from Nielsen, consumers around the world are becoming more mindful of the foods they purchase, putting a specific emphasis on clean eating. That means there’s increased opportunity for health food brands to market their products to consumers. But just how many shoppers put an extra emphasis on healthy food items? And what are some of the top brands in this space? We asked 1,000 respondents about their thoughts on health food shopping and the different options that are available.

Health Food

In Ask Your Target Market’s latest online survey, 25% of respondents said that they’ve bought many different health or fitness related items within the past year. And 43% said they’ve made at least one health related purchase in the past year. And of those healthy consumers, 80% said that they’ve purchased healthy food items.

Future Buyers

Looking forward, 79% of respondents said that they are at least somewhat likely to purchase health food items within the next year. Some of the most popular health food brands mentioned by respondents include Kashi, Amy’s, Nature Valley and Lean Cuisine. But a significant amount of health food buyers didn’t seem to have any favorite brands.

Consumer Profile

According to Personality Radar, those who are interested in buying health food items are likely to be affluent, trendy consumers who are willing to pay a bit more for upgraded items or those that they consider to be of high quality. They also tend to have other interests like travel, entertaining and technology.

Key Takeaways

When considering the consumers who tend to buy healthy food items, it seems that one of the major determining factors is that people see health foods as an upgrade from the standard food items they can purchase. Those consumers also tend to be interested in new trends, so targeting them via new media could be a beneficial strategy. For example, health food brands could create recipe boards in Pinterest to call attention to some of the unique ways people can use their products. They could also utilize mobile apps or online newsletters for this same type of concept. In addition, there are a significant amount of health food buyers who don’t have specific brands in mind when they shop. So calling attention to specific items in the actual store could actually be even more important than outside marketing efforts. You can view the complete survey results in the widget below and be sure to click “Open Full Report” to take advantage of all the chart and filter options.Photo Credit: Food by Army Medicine under CC BY 2.0What do you want to know? If you need some consumer insights on a particular topic, let us know in the comments below and we’ll consider it for an upcoming survey post.

Results were collected on March 8 via AYTM’s online survey panel.