GNT "Consumer Journey" Identifies Coloring Foods Opportunities

08 Dec 2015 --- “We eat with our eyes” is an oft-used saying. In fact, the appearance of food and drinks has a significant influence on consumers’ purchase decision. When shopping for groceries, especially the color of a product catches the eye of a consumer and is the first factor that influences the buying decision. At the same time, today’s consumers are keen to buy natural food and beverages that are free from artificial additives such as colorants. A recent global study conducted by market research institute TNS, on behalf of GNT Group, shows that 67 percent of people worldwide wish for their products to be easy to understand.

GNT Group, the global market leader in the field of coloring foods, showcased its latest color-intensive fruit, vegetable and plant concentrates at FiE 2015. They are made exclusively from natural and edible raw materials by solely using gentle physical methods such as pressing, crushing and filtering, fully meeting the needs of todays’ critical and health-conscious consumers. What is very important is that this approach is very understandable for the consumer, it’s how they expect it to be done! 

The company’s EXBERRY Coloring Foods are fully compliant with the new “EU Guidance Notes on the classification of food extracts with coloring properties,” which came into final effect on November 29, 2015. Now that the regulation has come into effect, all coloring products that do not fulfil the criteria for Coloring Foods will be classified as food additives which require regulatory permission and have to be designated by the name of the category “color,” followed by their specific name or E number on the label.

GNT commissioned TNS, the research agency, to undertake a global study of over 5,000 consumers, to really understand consumer what they think about food. This study was conducted in various regions: the US and Brazil [Americas]; China, Indonesia and Thailand [Asia-Pacific]; the UK, Germany, France, Spain and Poland [Europe]. The global study was conducted across four categories: Soft Drinks, Ice Cream, Sugar Confectionery and Yogurt. “Consumers were asked, what they put into their fridges, what do they buy and what is their motivation? Other questions included: What food do they consider ‘natural,’ is there such a thing as a ‘natural’ food, or is all processed food unnatural? The questions eventually came down to what would you expect the components of your ‘natural’ food to be?,” Paul Collins, Managing Director of GNT UK, explains to FoodIngredientsFirst. 

The study was conducted at the end of 2014 and published in early 2015. But in recent months, GNT has been busy in extrapolating the most important data, which was presented at FiE 2015. “What we have done is take the data from the research, which is consumer sentiment, based on real consumer qualitative and quantitative data; and turned that into a consumer journey,” Collins notes. The supplier highlighted four key questions that consumers ask when it comes to the origin of their foods.

Step 1: “What is it?”
Consumers are confronted by a supermarket shelf with a wide array of products, such as beverages. On those products, there are many front-of-pack messages, which are all different and inconsistent. “For example, you could have ‘free from artificial colors and flavors,’ ‘natural,’ ‘no colors,’ ‘natural color.’ But when you read the back of the pack, you may begin to wonder just how ‘natural’ is this color? So the reality of what the consumer faces is unorganized and inconsistent messaging on what is in the product that they are to select from,” Collins explains. In quantitative consumer research, the respondents were given a list of 30-40 product attributes and asked which ones they would rank as the top 5. Across all regions, the number 1 request from consumers was: “easy to understand,” with 67% of global respondents asking for this. “45% of respondents do not trust a natural claim. And if you think about it at a consumer level, this makes perfect sense, as there is no organization, there are mixed messages and there are things which are not ‘natural.’ So you basically reap what you sow,” he adds. Coloring food is the basis of a new proposition, where it is easy to explain what the ingredient is made from i.e. fruit & vegetables.

Step 2: “Where does it come from?
For a consumer, and particularly a Millennial demographic, which is hungrier for information, the next question goes beyond what it is, to where it comes from. This takes you into the supply chain, in terms of agriculture, sustainability, traceability and authenticity and whether it fits within their values for the environment, and overcomes concerns about pesticide residues. “From our perspective, we are growing the raw materials, and to take care of sustainability and the environment, 80% of the volume of fruits & vegetables that we grow is from within a 200km radius of our factory. We are processing in bulk, with no packaging or plastic and then we are processing this into a concentrate. This gives us complete supply chain control,” Collins notes. 

Step 3: “How to do you create it?”
The next question is how to transform this fruit & vegetable into something that will color a beverage e.g. “carrot concentrate.” For Collins, even though GNT’s processing is conducted on a huge scale, the basics can still be condensed down to a few culinary principles, which are easy to understand for consumers. “We wash the carrots, trim them, blanch them, cook them, press them, filter them and then concentrate them. This is what you do in your kitchen, with consumers understanding how to reduce a sauce, in order to make it more viscous or colorful,” says Collins. He noted that when you put this proposition in front of a consumer, with no prior knowledge of food science or industry, this is still how they think that a natural color should be made. 

Step 4: When will I know that you are using it?
The final step is about making it clear to the consumer when this ingredient is being used. For this, GNT created the concept for a front-of-pack icon of “colored with fruits & vegetables.” “Our proposition is to move away from negative claims, which tell people what the product doesn’t contain, to instead inform them about what it does contain. The point for the consumer, is that the food & drink that they have in front of them is easy to understand and communicated in a positive way,” he notes. With Millennial consumers particularly interested in the story behind a product, this concept could be further utilized by adding a QR code to the pack, so that it could effectively take them back to the farm and see the whole supply chain. “So in the case of a bottle colored with carrot, you could hypothetically show the consumer the farmer that grew the carrots, in order to build a real comprehensive story. This is how we see the future for coloring foods; when you have something that is easy to understand, you can establish trust,” he says. 

Finally, based on the data from 5,000 respondents, consumers could be segmented into five basic segments: Conscious Health Seekers, Caring Parent/Role Models, Busy Health Seekers, Budget & Basics and Convenience Seekers. But Collins claimed that all five groups were interested in the coloring food concept. “The point of segmenting is how to communicate to them, as the Caring Parent will shop in a different way to a Budget & Basics consumer,” he notes. By interrogating the data, it was clear in all markets, however, that there was a significant increase in brand preference by using the front of pack claim: “colored with fruit & vegetables.” “So not only do they like and understand it, they prefer it,” says Collins. In Asia, this was particularly the case, where consumers take this claim as a signal of safety. 

With clear label and “real” foods forming key trends in food product development, coloring foods hold strong potential in addressing the demands of diverse consumer segments. 

By Robin Wyers