While the current climate has presented obstacles to other retail categories, CBD has found a rapidly expanding consumer base in recent months, giving convenience-store retailers all the more reason to cash in on the growing demand. Here are three top trends retailers can leverage to boost CBD sales in their stores.
Stress support in high demand
To say this year has been stress-inducing would be an understatement—and recent stressors have encouraged a growing number of consumers to give CBD a try. Technomic’s Q4 2020 C-Store Consumer MarketBrief found that the top three reasons c-store consumers are interested in trying CBD are for better sleep, for anxiety support and for relaxation in general. It makes sense, therefore, why almost one in four CBD users entered the category in the last six months, as reported by consumer research from High Yield Insights. This means that in just the last several months, the CBD category has recruited a whopping nine million new users.
In addition, High Yield reports that more than one in three longer-term CBD users (an estimated 13.4 million adults) tried at least one new product format during this time, giving c-store retailers incentive to offer a variety of high-quality CBD products for new and experienced CBD consumers alike.
Calling for quality
When it comes to CBD, quality is non-negotiable. Technomic’s Q4 2020 C-Store Consumer MarketBrief found that concerns about CBD safety and quality are among the primary deterrents that keep c-store customers from purchasing, with 26% of consumers saying they’re worried about the safety of CBD, 20% saying they don’t know enough about CBD to purchase and 18% saying they don’t have a CBD brand they trust enough to purchase from.
While these obstacles present a challenge, they present retailers with an opportunity, too. Consumers with high standards for CBD quality are a strong prospect for consumer retention; once they find a brand that meets their standards, they’re likely to stick with it. For this reason, it’s crucial for c-store retailers to stock only the highest quality CBD products—and to make quality a focus in merchandising—to convert and retain new customers.
Accessibility remains crucial
Alongside product quality, accessibility is key to drawing in consumers who are unfamiliar with CBD. Product format is one of the most important factors in making CBD more approachable to new customers; familiar formats such as gummies, capsules and topicals can make consumers more comfortable trying CBD or a new CBD product for the first time.
CBD growth amid the pandemic confirms this: June 2020 data from IRI found that, while mainstream retail CBD sales as a whole were up 89% year over year, ingestibles in particular—e.g. drinks and snacks—outperformed other formats, growing by 130%.
In summary, stress support, quality and accessibility are key sales drivers for c-store CBD sales—and c-store retailers, therefore, need to turn to a CBD manufacturer they can trust to deliver on consumers’ key demands. Industry leader cbdMD checks each of these boxes with top-quality, guaranteed THC-free* CBD products in an array of consumers’ favorite formats, including gummies, capsules, topicals, tinctures and more.
To learn more about how cbdMD products can help retailers capitalize on the growing demand for high-quality CBD products, visit www.cbdmd.com.
*THC-free is defined as undetectable at the lowest level which can be consistently detected using valid scientific analytical tools.
This post is sponsored by cbdMD