And while just 17% of consumers said they typically have snack mixes at home, the leading brand of snack consumers remember trying in the past 30 days was Chex Mix, followed [image-nocss] closely by Ritz and Fiber One. All three have been very successful in extending their iconic brands into multiple flavors and even multiple categories.
That said, consumers could recall buying these brands, but they typically could not recall the new flavor or SKU they tried. This fuzzy memory effect could be due to an overload of flavor varieties. General Mills' Chex Mix, for example, has 13 different flavor varieties ranging from salty to sweet. Kraft Food's Ritz brand has six varieties of its cracker brands, plus a new Crackerfuls cheddar cheese cracker sandwich.
Kashi and Kellogg's Special K cereals were the two brands mentioned most frequently as new cereal products tried by consumers in the past 30 days. In fact, they had more mentions than any brand across the six categories researched, with 127 and 123, respectively. General Mills' Cheerios brand rounded out the top three with 80 mentions. The nearest competitor was Post's Honey Bunches of Oats with 24 mentions, one-fifth of what was garnered by the two cereal leaders, as seen in the graph below. The same branding recall issues manifested in the cereal category, where some consumers could remember the brand, but not the specific flavor, listing "Post" or "Kellogg's" in their responses.
These findings emerged from a New Brand Trial survey Market Force conducted last month among its network of 300,000 independent mystery shoppers and merchandisersconsumers across the country dubbed "The Force." Nearly 6,000 consumers responded to a series of questions designed to shed light on which brands drove the most new product trials and why. The research looked at categories including beverages, snacks, coffees/teas, cereals, cleaning products and health/beauty products.
It is probably no surprise to any veteran Consumer Packaged Goods (CPG) marketer that, when the consumers were asked what made them pick up and buy a new product in the categories studied, four in 10 said "they saw it on the shelf or display."
Promotions such as coupons were mentioned as driving factors by another three in 10. Referrals by friends was the next most popular reason driving new product purchases, and advertising was cited by just 8% of survey respondents, as noted in the graph below. There were some differences by category, with cereals being the most responsive to promotions and couponing, and snack purchases influenced most by merchandising.The survey was conducted in January 2010 among the Market Force network of more than 300,000 consumers. The pool of 6,000 respondents ranged in age from 19 to 72 and reflected a broad spectrum of income levels, with approximately half reporting incomes of more than $50,000 a year. Approximately 75% were women, the primary household consumer purchasers. Half had children at home.
Members help make our journalism possible. Become a CSP member today and unlock exclusive benefits, including unlimited access to all of our content. Sign up here.