E-commerce increasingly impacted chicken marketing over the last 10 years and pushed the supply chain to use digital tools to connect with poultry consumers.
The COVID-19 pandemic accelerated the e-commerce movement in poultry, as supply shortages forced consumers to buy what was available, rather than a preferred brand or cut of poultry. The pandemic’s impact on how consumers, especially millennials, shop for poultry products continued.
Additionally, poultry consumers are demanding transparency concerning how the food they eat is produced, especially with their poultry products.
Not only can an e-commerce platform help bridge the gap between farmers and consumers, but it can give producers more direct-to consumer (DTC) marketing outlets for products. This gives companies the flexibility to trial products without putting them on physical shelves. It is also an educational opportunity for the target audience to learn more about where or how their chicken is produced and provide more transparency to consumers.
Transparency
There is growing desire for transparency in poultry production among consumers who want to understand where their chicken came from and how it was produced, especially among the millennial generation.
Many poultry companies are enhancing traceability systems to provide consumers with supply chain information. An e-commerce platform can easily give consumers this kind of information, online farmers market ChopLocal co-founder Katie Olthoff said.
An e-commerce platform allows farmers featuring their products on the website to give background and tell the story of where that chicken came from. Consumers enjoy being able to see a picture of where their chicken came from and read about the farmer that produced it.
“Consumers value the transparency of seeing a family photo. That's something in commercial agriculture or commodity meat that we haven't been able to tap into as well,” Olthoff said. “They want to feel good about the food they are providing for their family. That is something e-commerce can help with.”
Even if consumers are not extremely interested in looking into where their product came from, having access to that information gives consumers a sense of relief and reduces the perception that the integrated poultry industry is secretive.
Preliminary data from ChopLocal shows its customers often choose to buy products without marketing claims, such as antibiotic-free. Olthoff suspects this is because the added transparency gives consumers more confidence in their purchase, so they are willing to purchase the less expensive product with no claim.
“It’s common for consumers to question what they are eating and feeding their families, and having a marketing platform that shows pictures and tells a story about where that product came from helps them feel more comfortable purchasing that product. That’s a win for the industry,” Olthoff said.
Variety, sales and flexibility
E-commerce platforms help provide additional product variety to consumers and sales channels to producers.
According to Chris Perdue, Perdue Farms' vice president of DTC marketing, DTC allows the company access to its consumers directly, without relying on retail geography. This lets shoppers purchase the company’s brands and products anywhere in the continental U.S. with more variety than they are used to experiencing in retail.
While there are multiple ways to structure an e-commerce platform, ChopLocal’s website features a “booth” for each producer they market for, similar to a farmers’ market. Giving consumers the experience of being connected to the farmer in that way is beneficial to the producer, and further tells the story of where the product is coming from, Olthoff said.
While Perdue Farms’ direct-to-consumer website doesn’t have specific farmers featured in its product descriptions, it allows consumers to shop by cut, production type, price and more.
Perdue said the website’s sales continued to grow each year since its 2020 launch.
“DTC is still a small channel for the company even though it continues to grow and gain traction,” he said. "While there are good margins, there is also significant cost to operate a DTC business as we must acquire every single customer ourselves through marketing efforts."
Since COVID caused a massive increase in the digital purchases of groceries, Perdue said some of its retail partners are seeing a 25-30% of their grocery revenue coming through digital channels.
Additionally, having an e-commerce platform can help larger processors launch new or niche products on a smaller scale for testing and get consumer feedback without bringing them to market.
“Launching a new product can be incredibly expensive and risky for larger companies,” Olthoff said. "They have to devote shelf space to something unproven. I have always thought that if a larger brand had an established e-commerce presence, they would be able to launch and test new products via e-commerce, without distributing to massive numbers of retailers, devoting shelf space etc.
Outside of DTC being a sales channel, Perdue said bringing new products directly to its consumers via purchase provides feedback much more efficiently compared to traditional testing.
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