Abundance of Choice Doesn't Help Ag Marketers
Tim Hammerich
News Reporter
Consumers are met with an abundance of choices in grocery stores, but more choices doesn’t always lead to better decisions. Ag economist Dr. Trey Malone says for one, it’s made the jobs of marketers harder, as they’ve had to switch from a push supply chain to a pull supply chain.
Malone… “So, you know, there is this change that's happened particularly around how consumers engage in the food system. The average grocery store in 1975 had about 8,000 unique SKUs. There were less than 100 breweries in the United States in 1980. Now there are something like 10,000 breweries, each of which making 12, 15 different beers. You know, the underbelly though, is that there is still severe consolidation in the beer industry. But the U.S. consumer typically doesn't recognize that consolidation and mostly just sees an explosion in the number of brands. And so I think, I say that to put it in the context of agricultural marketing having a much more difficult job now than when a lot of these generic advertising campaigns might have started in the 80s because we are just competing at this much deeper level, psychologically even.”
Dr. Malone says that's why there’s such an importance of trust for the intermediaries between the industry and the consumer.