- Consumer trends driving changes to meal occasions
- Snacking
- Reasons for snacking
- What makes a snack healthy?
- Purchase drivers for healthy snacks

Consumer trends driving changes to meal occasions

The UK population is changing and demographic and lifestyle changes are having a major impact on what consumers want from the food and grocery industry. Three of the key societal changes are:

• An increase in single person households
• Increased number of women in work
• Increased employment level

This has led to increasingly fragmented meal occasions, such as:

• Decline in traditional meal times due to less time for shopping and cooking
• Less formal dining occasions
• Increase in snacking and grazing behaviour
   

Snacking

The results from IGD's 'Healthy Snacking' report found that the most common snack foods are fruit, which 57% of shoppers claim to snack on regularly.

Common Snack Foods

Source: IGD Consumer Research, 2005

This is supplemented however with other snacking products, and 44% of shoppers snack on crisps and nuts, 37% snack on cakes and biscuits and 26% snack on chocolate.

Our research found that women generally snack more in all product categories, especially in chocolate, vegetables and dairy products.

Men are dominant snackers in only a handful of areas, namely toast, burgers and kebabs, suggesting different snacking motivations by gender.
 

Reasons for snacking

• 50% of shoppers snack because they are hungry
• 23% of shoppers snack because they have missed a meal
• 25% of shoppers snack because they want a treat
• 22% of shoppers snack because they are bored

This illustrates the impact of modern busy lifestyles on eating patterns, as nearly one quarter of people snack as a meal substitute, but also how food is often used to address negative emotions through treating.
 

What makes a snack healthy

Shoppers are increasingly aware of the relationship between diet and health, and therefore are receptive to food advertising, particularly when focusing on added health benefits.

Shoppers in our research appear to have a logical understanding of what makes a product healthy and therefore can define what a healthy snack is:

• 58% of shoppers believe that good nutritional value makes a snack healthy
• 38% of shoppers believe that snacks preparation method makes a snack healthy
• 20% of shoppers believe that portion control makes a snack healthy
   

Purchase drivers for healthy snacks

While shoppers understand the relationship between what they eat and their health, the challenge remains to change their snacking behaviour.

• 40% of shoppers would buy healthy snacks if they liked the taste of them
• 35% of shoppers would buy healthy snacks for nutritional purposes
• 24% of shoppers would buy healthy snacks if they were cheaper