Convenience Highly Rated by Consumers in Food

    Purchasing

    by Bryan Salvage on 8/18/00 for www.meatingplace.com

 

    Convenience and one-stop shopping continue to be top priorities with

    consumers.

 

    That’s the conclusion of Schaumburg, Ill.-based ACNielsen’s Fourth

    Annual ACNielsen Consumer and Market Trends Report

 

    "The unprecedented sales growth of food items in the drug store and

    mass-merchandise channels shows that these channels are

    succeeding in their efforts to capture more of their customers' total

    spending by offering a wider assortment of products," said Todd Hale,

    senior vice president, ACNielsen consumer analytics.

 

    For the year ended April 15, the mass-merchandise channel boosted

    its sales of deli and dairy products by 142 percent and 34 percent,

    respectively. “While both channels' overall share of sales of these items

    is still relatively small, their gains are noteworthy,” Hale said.

 

    In terms of overall department growth, deli department sales grew the

    fastest, with a 13.4 percent increase, comparing sales for the year

    ended April 15 with the previous year, according to a news release.

    Driving deli growth were sales of convenience-oriented ready-made

    salads.

 

    The report was compiled using the ACNielsen Scantrack retail

    measurement service, the ACNielsen Homescan consumer panel,

    modeling and analytics work from ACNielsen KnowledgeWorks, and

    several secondary sources.