Whilst there is certainly a place for innovation and new food concepts, many investors and product developers forget that food is deeply cultural and habitual. Most consumers don’t want to be “disruptive” or “radical” when it comes to what they eat; they like what they know, and they value familiarity over creativity. New research from HealthFocus International - an insights firm that's been monitoring consumers' health beliefs for 30 years - emphasises this and highlights the importance of using common words as much as possible when speaking to consumers.
The US-based company asked 12,000 consumers across 25 countries about their perception, awareness and acceptance of various sweeteners. A key finding was that overall, natural sweeteners are more accepted – but only if they sound familiar.
This was exemplified by the fact that 33% of consumers rated monk fruit as a ‘good’ sweetener, even though only 21% consumers said they were aware of its existence. Comparing this to a sweetener with a more complex name, like stevia, only 28% of consumers rated this as a ‘good’ sweetener despite consumer awareness being much higher (41%). As summarised by HealthFocus: “When more consumers feel good about an ingredient than actually know of an ingredient, that’s significant.”
The gap was even bigger for more scientific-sounding sweeteners, such as Rebaudioside A (Reb-A) and the scientific plant name for stevia: Steviol glycosides. Only 7-11% of consumers rated these as ‘good’ sweeteners; less than a third of monk fruit’s 33%.
This can be explained by the fact that monk fruit is a combination of words that are part of consumers’ everyday vocabulary, one of which - "fruit" - has strong health connotations. Meanwhile, stevia isn’t a word used in other contexts. A similar logic can be applied to other types of sweeteners such as inulin, which is frequently listed as “chicory root fibre” on product packaging, or xylitol, which could be spelled out as “xylitol (derived from birch tree bark).
For more information about the survey, click here: https://www.healthfocus.com/lpage/sweeteners-the-consumer-perspective
