April 27, 2009
Compete Blog: Americans and CPGs Embrace the Kitchen
Through
a special arrangement, presented here for discussion is an excerpt of a
current article from the Compete Blog. Compete Inc. is a web analytics
company that focuses on understanding how consumers use the internet.
By Debra Miller
As wallets get tighter
and tighter, people are increasingly making their own meals instead of
making restaurant reservations, and turning to the internet for cooking
help. Last month, people conducted 18 million searches that included the
word "recipe," more than a 50 percent increase in the number
of searches from the year prior. Searches for "casserole" and
"pasta," both easy and low cost meal options, rose by 56 percent.
Among the top visited
cooking sites, four are owned by large consumer packaged goods companies.
Why is this so notable? Sale of brand name products have taken a hit over
the past year. More and more budget-conscious shoppers are turning to private
label product in lieu of their pricier brand name counterparts. Consumer
packaged goods companies need to find more creative ways to sell their
brands, and what better way to accomplish this goal than to create recipes
centering around their products. Betty Crocker, Kraft, Pillsbury and General
Mills are banking on this theory and are aggressively targeting people
searching for recipes.
Above is search referral
data for the four recipe sites. On average, search referrals to the sites – comprised
of paid and unpaid referrals – have doubled over the past year. At the
same time, the percent of paid referrals – generated when a user clicks
through on a paid search result – has increased exponentially. Non-branded
food and recipe terms currently comprise a significant percent of their
paid terms and, unsurprisingly, are among the top keywords driving traffic
to the domains. This strategy has had a positive impact on site visitation.
Traffic to all four sites
has steadily increased over the past year, peaking during the last two
months of the year along with pumpkin pie, sweet potato, and gingerbread
cookie consumption. So will this strategy compel shoppers to purchase Pillsbury
crest rolls, Philadelphia cream cheese, Bisquick pancake mix and Progresso
soups instead of the private brand? Perhaps, but if nothing else, at least
these companies are helping people find a tasty recipe for a quality home
cooked meal.
Discussion Questions:
How are CPG food brands best capitalizing on cooking/recipe websites?
What opportunities are they missing? How can retailers also tap into
their popularity?
BrainTrust
Recent Discussions
Discussion Questions
Poll
The best recipe sites offer consumers ideas from the companies that sponsor them and the opportunity to interact with other consumers. They should not be overtly reliant on company brands. They should also allow consumers to comment on existing recipes, post new recipes and suggest ways to improve recipes.
CPG companies can gather valuable information from doing this, develop a loyal online following and request permission to begin a dialogue with each consumer.
An obvious opportunity for manufacturers and retailers alike is presented by frequent shopper data. Identify shoppers who buy raw ingredients and present them with recipes that use those ingredients–along with money-saving offers when they buy them all in a single trip. Manufacturers can sponsor the branded parts of the list, and retailers get increased basket size.
A more sophisticated use would be identifying shoppers based on the cuisines they cook, and targeting them for cuisine-appropriate ingredient offers. Someone buys oyster sauce and straw mushrooms? Let them know that you have fresh bok choy in the produce aisle and give them a discount on a particular brand of soy sauce. A shopper buys lots of crushed tomatoes and fresh basil? Introduce them to your premium fresh pasta.
For many retailers, the tools used to manage their loyalty databases are too cumbersome to allow this type of subtlety in targeting without enormous investments of time and effort. But for those retailers who are ready to move to the next generation of targeted marketing and collaboration tools, there will be increasing opportunity to work with brands to better serve shoppers.
I think the challenges and opportunities are very well laid out in this article: we’ve tracked CPG websites for the last eight years and the top two reasons consumers visit are always coupons and recipes–so, lots of stickiness but the conversion to private label at the point of sale continues to be a stumbling block.
The work Kraft, General Mills and others are doing to bring recipes and information into the store via the iPhone is particularly interesting to me as it melds this trend with “in-store media’ that is truly portable and demand driven. In closing that gap between research and purchase, the CPGs have an opportunity to enhance brand loyalty and reduce switching.
Ben’s right: only the best retailers have the systems in place to capitalize on all this. What’s interesting to contemplate is whether the retailers themselves will try to be the aggregators of recipes, shopping lists and coupons on their sites and re-balance the equation in favor of private label or not.
Creating meal solutions that help consumers eat healthy and save money and time is a huge opportunity for National CPG Brands. One site that was not mentioned on this survey was http://www.foodnetwork.com. Not only do they provide a huge library of receipts, but several of their shows focus on the themes mentioned above.
I would encourage National CPG Brands to do the following:
1) Work your products into shows on Food Network including Sandra Lee’s new show “Money Saving Meals” and her original show “Semi-Homemade Cooking.”
2) Create new receipts and more of them on the actual products or include a simple recipe book in the product. Great example is Bisquick!
3) Co promote a national brand with a store brand to create a meal solution. This accomplishes two things. By selecting a non competitive store brand to pair up with your national brand you could potentially take sales away from a competitor. Second, the consumer will benefit from this experience by saving money and credit your brand and the retailer for helping them accomplish this.
I have enjoyed Bisquick recipes for years and look forward to see some new ideas soon
The senses need to be involved. People need to see finished dishes and feel tempted, imagining the aroma and taste. Make it real rather than just another box on a shelf. I saw this article today about people wanting to cook more but lacking skills and confidence. Products that make cooking seem irresistibly tempting will be the ones that novices go for.
Lloyd Grossman Study Shows More Want to Cook at Home
The article and follow up discussion all have good points. If the marketers leave their websites to chance they will possibly miss the opportunity that all of us support.
Most companies are heavily investing in Search Engines, but leave the actual Web site mostly to chance. If the available metrics aren’t satisfactory a few nips and tucks are made and the website is floated anew.
My studies of website optimization have shown that website effectiveness is based on four critical components: Motivation/why the visitor comes to the site, Expectations/personal experience with web sites and how the consumer anticipates this site’s performance, Content/appropriate depth and prioritization and Navigation/intuitive is best.
Evaluations of the web site against these criteria assure success for the marketer and the consumers…a win, win situation.
This is another case of K.I.S.S. Many recipes call for too many ingredients and most of them are costly. Watch most of the cooking shows–the food looks delicious but they have a gazillion things you have to mix together and it takes much longer than expected. And if you tie in the other discussion about more men being at home, this becomes a greater priority. Men will, and can cook but patience is an issue.
However this is an uphill battle as manufacturers and retailers would need a collaborative effort and we know how well that works. Someday they will both get it right, but until then….
As most discerning cooks know, the best online resource for superb recipes is http://www.foodnetwork.com. It connects to all of the cooking programs on the Food Network, providing written as well as video instruction. Also, it helps sell cookware, which is currently on the uptick, and which is always a precursor to economic recovery. As Yogi sez, “you could look it up.”
Everything said here is correct. The big opportunity, though, is to have recipe kiosks in the store that customers can interact with as they purchase. When boneless chicken breasts and artichokes are on sale, customers can hit the kiosk and find out what else they should purchase for a hit recipe.
Consumers are changing the way they cook, increasing trips and insisting on fresh ingredients. Stores that help customers adapt will be rewarded with sales lifts.
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According to a recent First Insight study titled “Is Gen Z Still Choosing Your Brand,” while…Is Supply Chain Volatility Here To Stay?
Can we expect an ongoing volatility to remain in terms of retail supply chain?Has Same-Day Delivery Become an Expectation Across Retail?
Are expectations around retail delivery speed in flux?
The best recipe sites offer consumers ideas from the companies that sponsor them and the opportunity to interact with other consumers. They should not be overtly reliant on company brands. They should also allow consumers to comment on existing recipes, post new recipes and suggest ways to improve recipes.
CPG companies can gather valuable information from doing this, develop a loyal online following and request permission to begin a dialogue with each consumer.
An obvious opportunity for manufacturers and retailers alike is presented by frequent shopper data. Identify shoppers who buy raw ingredients and present them with recipes that use those ingredients–along with money-saving offers when they buy them all in a single trip. Manufacturers can sponsor the branded parts of the list, and retailers get increased basket size.
A more sophisticated use would be identifying shoppers based on the cuisines they cook, and targeting them for cuisine-appropriate ingredient offers. Someone buys oyster sauce and straw mushrooms? Let them know that you have fresh bok choy in the produce aisle and give them a discount on a particular brand of soy sauce. A shopper buys lots of crushed tomatoes and fresh basil? Introduce them to your premium fresh pasta.
For many retailers, the tools used to manage their loyalty databases are too cumbersome to allow this type of subtlety in targeting without enormous investments of time and effort. But for those retailers who are ready to move to the next generation of targeted marketing and collaboration tools, there will be increasing opportunity to work with brands to better serve shoppers.
I think the challenges and opportunities are very well laid out in this article: we’ve tracked CPG websites for the last eight years and the top two reasons consumers visit are always coupons and recipes–so, lots of stickiness but the conversion to private label at the point of sale continues to be a stumbling block.
The work Kraft, General Mills and others are doing to bring recipes and information into the store via the iPhone is particularly interesting to me as it melds this trend with “in-store media’ that is truly portable and demand driven. In closing that gap between research and purchase, the CPGs have an opportunity to enhance brand loyalty and reduce switching.
Ben’s right: only the best retailers have the systems in place to capitalize on all this. What’s interesting to contemplate is whether the retailers themselves will try to be the aggregators of recipes, shopping lists and coupons on their sites and re-balance the equation in favor of private label or not.
Creating meal solutions that help consumers eat healthy and save money and time is a huge opportunity for National CPG Brands. One site that was not mentioned on this survey was http://www.foodnetwork.com. Not only do they provide a huge library of receipts, but several of their shows focus on the themes mentioned above.
I would encourage National CPG Brands to do the following:
1) Work your products into shows on Food Network including Sandra Lee’s new show “Money Saving Meals” and her original show “Semi-Homemade Cooking.”
2) Create new receipts and more of them on the actual products or include a simple recipe book in the product. Great example is Bisquick!
3) Co promote a national brand with a store brand to create a meal solution. This accomplishes two things. By selecting a non competitive store brand to pair up with your national brand you could potentially take sales away from a competitor. Second, the consumer will benefit from this experience by saving money and credit your brand and the retailer for helping them accomplish this.
I have enjoyed Bisquick recipes for years and look forward to see some new ideas soon
The senses need to be involved. People need to see finished dishes and feel tempted, imagining the aroma and taste. Make it real rather than just another box on a shelf. I saw this article today about people wanting to cook more but lacking skills and confidence. Products that make cooking seem irresistibly tempting will be the ones that novices go for.
Lloyd Grossman Study Shows More Want to Cook at Home
The article and follow up discussion all have good points. If the marketers leave their websites to chance they will possibly miss the opportunity that all of us support.
Most companies are heavily investing in Search Engines, but leave the actual Web site mostly to chance. If the available metrics aren’t satisfactory a few nips and tucks are made and the website is floated anew.
My studies of website optimization have shown that website effectiveness is based on four critical components: Motivation/why the visitor comes to the site, Expectations/personal experience with web sites and how the consumer anticipates this site’s performance, Content/appropriate depth and prioritization and Navigation/intuitive is best.
Evaluations of the web site against these criteria assure success for the marketer and the consumers…a win, win situation.
This is another case of K.I.S.S. Many recipes call for too many ingredients and most of them are costly. Watch most of the cooking shows–the food looks delicious but they have a gazillion things you have to mix together and it takes much longer than expected. And if you tie in the other discussion about more men being at home, this becomes a greater priority. Men will, and can cook but patience is an issue.
However this is an uphill battle as manufacturers and retailers would need a collaborative effort and we know how well that works. Someday they will both get it right, but until then….
As most discerning cooks know, the best online resource for superb recipes is http://www.foodnetwork.com. It connects to all of the cooking programs on the Food Network, providing written as well as video instruction. Also, it helps sell cookware, which is currently on the uptick, and which is always a precursor to economic recovery. As Yogi sez, “you could look it up.”
Everything said here is correct. The big opportunity, though, is to have recipe kiosks in the store that customers can interact with as they purchase. When boneless chicken breasts and artichokes are on sale, customers can hit the kiosk and find out what else they should purchase for a hit recipe.
Consumers are changing the way they cook, increasing trips and insisting on fresh ingredients. Stores that help customers adapt will be rewarded with sales lifts.