Consumer Trends in the Prepared Meals Market in the UK

Synopsis

This report provides the results for the Prepared Meals market in the UK from Canadean’s unique, highly detailed and proprietary survey of consumers’ Consumer Packaged Goods (CPG) consumption habits, and forms part of an overall series covering all CPG product markets.Its coverage includes, but is not limited to, consumption behaviors, the extent to which consumer trends influence their consumption and the value of the market these trends influence, brand and private label choices as well as retailer choices. Much of this information can also be analyzed by specific consumer group, providing hard and fast data on consumers and markets at the product category level.

Summary

Why was the report written?
Marketers in the Prepared Meals market face a major challenge. Understanding market size and segmentation is valuable, but the keys to effective targeting is knowing just how valuable specific consumer groups are, and being able to quantify the impact of consumer trends.This report solves these problems by providing integrated survey-based data on consumer trends, consumer groups and market data which show exactly the size of consumer groups, how much of the Prepared Meals market they account for and which consumer trends drive their behavior.

What is the current market landscape and what is changing?
The weak state of the UK economy has led consumers to review their consumption of most CPG products, particularly for non-essential food products such as Prepared Meals. Since the global financial crisis of 2008–2009 the retail market has been characterized by an increased amount of discount and own-brand products. However, as consumer confidence increases proportionally to economic recovery, which appears to be in its nascent stages, consumer trends will be directly affected. This makes early identification of the consumer groups and trends driving market behavior essential.

What are the key drivers behind recent market changes?
Consumers’ uptake of products and the influence of consumer trends are fundamental causes of change in markets – making knowing what these trends are and the extent of their influence crucial.The survey-based data provided in this report examines over 20 consumer trends that affect the market and examines the share of sales across 26 consumer groups – providing through the data a detailed insight into exactly who the consumer is and just how much impact the latest consumer trends are having.

What makes this report unique and essential to read?
The data provided is unique in the market as it tracks consumer behavior through to its actual value impact on a product market. This provides readers with a unique data analysis of the market allowing marketing tactics and strategy to be updated in line with the very latest consumer behaviors.

Scope

Consumer survey data for the following specific categories: the Meal Kits, Pizza and Ready Meals markets.

Detailed consumer segmentation based on survey data covering over 26 consumer groups, 20 consumer trends and consumption frequency for each product category.

Volume shares in 2011 for brands and private label sales tracked by the survey.

Unique retailer choice and switching data as tracked by the survey are provided at the product category level for 2011.

Reasons To Buy

Unique proprietary data that sizes and segments consumers, tracks their behavior and shows the impact of this on their markets

Results also cover over 20 consumer trends, showing exactly to what extent these trends have a direct influence on a market. As this impact assessment is based not only on how many consumers act on these trends, but also how often they act on this it provides unique insight into the “size of the prize” when targeting these consumer trends in each category covered.

Key Highlights

While Older Consumers are the most valuable age group in the Prepared Meals market in the UK with a 24% value share, this is achieved through sheer weight of numbers as they account for 29% of the population. While marketers may wish to target the largest consumer group in the country, they should beware their below average consumption.

Pizza is consumed disproportionately by Urban dwellers. They have a 72% value share of the category, despite accounting for 69% of the population. Marketers of Pizza therefore need to be aware of the specific trends particularly affecting Urban consumers.

Branded products dominate the Meal Kits category, accounting for 88% of the volume of products distributed, whereas private label products have healthy penetration of 35% in Pizzas and 55% in Ready Meals. The Ready Meals market is particularly fragmented, indicating that this is where private label penetration may grow the most.

The top 2 retailers in the UK dominate the Prepared Meals market with a 51.3% volume share of the market. This makes strong relationships with these two retailers essential for any new entrants to the market.