Marketing, sales and consumer behaviour – January 2020

Markets and trends - food
A recent report (5.19 MB) by FoodDrinkEurope provides comprehensive statistics and insights on the EU food and drink industry. Atradius has published Market Monitors for the food and drink industry in a number of EU countries including the Netherlands. In the FoodShopper Monitor 2020, FSIN examines the food behaviour of the next Convenience Generation, Generation Z. You can read more about the results here (in Dutch). The Innova top 10 food trends for 2020 show that consumers are concerned about plastic waste and food waste. ‘Global Food and Drink Trends for 2030’, published by Mintel, also shows consumer concern for plastic waste. You can download the report after filling in your details. Wunderman Thompson has published ‘The Future 100: Trends and Change to Watch in 2020’. You can download the report after filling in your details.

More markets and trends
In the period leading to interpack 2020 (7-13 May) the organisation is publishing a number of articles. The first article is about the pharmaceutical market. The second article looks at the confectionery and baked goods segment. According to European Bioplastics market data update 2019 (1.84 MB), packaging remains the largest market segment for bioplastics with more than 53% (1.14 million tonnes) in 2019. Ucima expects the Italian packaging machinery manufacturers turnover to grow by 1.8% to 8 billion euros in 2019.
NL research (161 kB) by BNO NEXTpack (in Dutch) shows that clients are satisfied with their design agency. According to CBS-Statistics Netherlands (in Dutch), NL producers expect to invest 2% less in 2020 than in 2019. The CBS also announced that expenditure on R&D activities increased by around 4% in 2018.

Environment and sustainability
Smithers has published the Packaging Sustainability Trends guide that you can download after filling in your details. The Consumer Conditions Scoreboard 2019 (5.46 MB), published by the EC, shows that more than half of consumers have environmental impact in mind when shopping. According to research (3.8 MB) by ING, EU companies use over 8 million tonnes of plastic to produce food and drink packaging. ING presents 6 ways to tackle the plastic puzzle. In the October 2019 MOU we reported on similar ING (in Dutch) research for the NL market. For his thesis (25.01 MB) at WUR, Nigel Steenis studied consumer response to sustainable packaging design. A natural field experiment in Amsterdam has found that consumers have no clue about how to recycle bioplastics. The Tinbergen Institute published a paper (756 kB) about the research. Research (728 kB) by the Green Alliance also finds that there is little consumer understanding of what the terms compostable or ‘biodegradable’ plastic mean and how the material should be dealt with once used.

Consumer behaviour
DS Smith research finds that Europeans spend 39 days of their lives struggling to open packaging. In an article (773 kB) published in Management Science Letters, Prince Satam Bin Abdulaziz University research looks at the role of packaging in consumer buying behaviour.
Euromonitor has published a report highlighting the top 10 global consumer trends to watch in 2020. You will receive the report by e-mail after filling in your details.
Loughborough University research finds that labelling foods with the amount of physical activity needed to burn off calories is linked to healthier choices. An article (abstract) about the research is published in the Journal of Epidemiology & Community Health.

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