Today’s consumers want to know more about how their food is made, where the ingredients come from and the culture behind a product or company – a trend that was accelerated by the COVID-19 global pandemic.
“Transparency throughout the supply chain will dominate in 2021, with consumers searching for brands that can build trust, provide authentic and credible products, and create shopper confidence in the current and post-COVID climate,” Lu Ann Williams, the Director of Insights and Innovation at Innova Market Insights said during the November 11 Top 10 Trends for 2021 webinar.
According to the Innova Consumer Survey 2020, 6 in 10 global consumers are interested in learning more about where foods came from.
An umbrella trend
Many other emerging trends, including a preference for sustainable, clean label and animal welfare-friendly products, layer into transparency.
“This is a trend that brings in sustainability. It brings in clean label,” Williams explained. “It’s really an umbrella trend that gets bigger and bigger so that we now see that brands really do have to up their game when it comes to transparency.”
How marketers can use this trend
Marketers can use this trend to shape their communication about animal welfare, clean label and sustainability. Consumers really want to learn about how their food is produced.
Other ways to capitalize on this trend is using new packaging technologies, such as invisible barcodes. Blockchain technology is another clear way to show consumers the path of a food product from farm to fork. The simplest way to explain blockchain is to think of a series of linked data that is securely linked to one another. Once data has been saved to the blockchain, it cannot be altered without changing all the other records within the set.
“It becomes a part of trust, but it also becomes a part of engagement. If you do have a meaningful story, then you can use it to connect with consumers in a new and different way,” Williams said.
View our continuing coverage of the coronavirus/COVID-19 pandemic.
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