Australia’s sweet tooth: confectionery survey reveals consumer trends
The findings just released of a nationwide survey by Australian consumer research group, Roy Morgan Research, reveal which confectionery brands Australians are choosing to buy, and why Australians decide to eat sweets in the first place.
Roy Morgan Research sampled the views of 18,483 Australians aged over 14 years who said they had consumed sweets such as lollies, toffees, éclairs and caramels in the past four weeks. The survey was carried out between October 2010 and September 2011.
Of those surveyed, 19 per cent said they had consumed Allen’s ‘Snakes Alive’, making it the most consumed product amongst respondents.
The Natural Confectionery Company Jellies, whose products include Snakes and Jelly Babies came second, with 14 per cent saying they had chosen these one of these products.
According to the survey’s findings, these two brands sit well above the group of brands that make up the rest of the top ten.
The survey found the most common motivation for respondents to consume any sweet was because they “wanted to enjoy the different tastes, textures and colours”. The second most common reason was “wanting to indulge”, and the third was because they were bored and wanted something to nibble on to get through a boring task.
The survey also found a trend for respondents to give different reasons for consuming different brands of sweets. For example, Allen’s Snakes Alive consumers were more likely than the average sweet consumer to say the reason they last ate sweets was, “I wanted to indulge myself to make me feel happy”.
By contrast, those who had eaten Mentos Fruit Flavours were more likely than the average sweet consumer to say “I needed an energy boost and wanted to feel recharged and ready to go again”, while Chupa Chups consumers were more likely to say “I just wanted to enjoy the different tastes, textures and colours”.
Roy Morgan Research’s Industry Communications Director, Norman Morris said that a profusion of confectionery products on Australia’s supermarkets shelves has put marketers under great pressure to make their products stand out from the crowd.
Mr Morris said, “These results open the way for marketers to more effectively promote to their target market by taking advantage of the triggers for their brands’ consumption. They could also inform new product development by allowing sweets producers to tailor new products to the reasons people eat them.”
