How To Increase Demand For Potatoes
December 11, 2013 To identify new opportunities and promote a proactive and forward-looking approach to increase demand for potatoes, the United States Potato Board (USPB) is taking a closer look at a younger audience. The up-and-coming generation (18 to 30-year-olds), just now forming new households and starting families of their own, is big.
In fact, the Millennial Generation is about 80 million people, which is about the same size as the Baby Boomer generation. To stay relevant and increase demand for potatoes, it will be critical to understand millennials and how potatoes fit into their lives—now and in the future.
With this in mind, the USPB is conducting research to:
• Better understand the millennial audience, especially attitudes and behaviors related to potatoes
• Explore opportunities to increase potato consumption among millennials
• Identify sub-segment(s) within the millennial audience with the greatest potential for growth in potato consumption
The project consists of three phases:
Phase 1: Secondary research and database mining
• Data on the millennial audience from past USPB consumer research
• Online databases for information on millennial attitudes and eating habits
• Articles and syndicated studies relating to millennials
Phase 2: Consumer segmentation (quantitative)
• Online survey among millennials to identify and size different consumer groups within the millennial audience based on food and lifestyle attitudes and behavior
Part 3: Segment deep-dive (qualitative)
• In-home interviews and focus groups with select segments of millennials
Findings to date indicate that as a generation, millennials are highly food-involved. Along with being food-involved comes an interest in and affinity for cooking. For many millennials, cooking isn’t a job or responsibility, but rather a passion, as is going out to eat. They’re looking for more from their meals — not just something to fill them up, but something to experience.
However, millennials are also a highly budget-minded generation. Good value for the money is the most important attribute when choosing food for a meal at home or in a restaurant.
Millennials are busy. About one-third (34%) of dinner occasions at home are time- and/or energy-constrained situations. Despite often being energy- or time-constrained, millennials are cooking from scratch twice as often as they are using frozen foods or boxed meal helpers.
When it comes to potatoes, though, millennials are not significantly different from the rest of the population. Potatoes are primarily consumed for dinner at home as the main component of a side dish. Mashed, baked and French fries are the top three potato preparations. When preparing potatoes at home, 73% are using fresh, and of those, 51% are using russet. According to previous USPB studies, this is right in line with what older generations are doing.
Attitudes about potatoes among millennials are very positive. About 89% rate potatoes “excellent” or “good” for being a good value, and 88% rate potatoes “excellent” or “good” for being something everyone would enjoy. In fact, potatoes rate highest on what’s most important to millennials.
For more information, go to www.uspotatoes.com.
Source: USPB press release
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