If you ever wanted to know how some brands are consistently out in front of the crowd in innovation and messaging, then you’ll want to read on. Today, top brands use AI-enabled consumer insights to predict consumer purchase intent and significantly impact their bottom line. Let’s see how it looks!
Brands are staying ahead of the curve using social listening to pick up on what consumers want and meeting demands head-on. Using artificial intelligence to detect emerging trends is no longer a luxury for brands, but the way business is done.
Here we’ll explore how brands use consumer intelligence to predict CPG purchase intent by focusing on the health food dialogue making the rounds on social media. Specifically, we’ll explore:
- Getting ahead of the consumer purchase curve
- Healthy food themes in the CPG industry
- The surge in healthy home delivery services
Consumer behavior has fundamentally changed over the past two years. Brands that want to stay relevant with their products and services need to change with them. Here are a few recent stats we uncovered that speak to emerging trends in consumer behavior:
- Since the beginning of the pandemic, 75% of US customers say they’ve tried new shopping behaviors for both economic reasons and shifts in personal priorities.
- Understanding your consumer demographics is vital as Millennials tend to have the least patience online of any generation. Gen Z’rs are the most likely to eschew loyalty and bounce from brand to brand.
- 50% of customers will do an about-face and shop with a competing brand after a bad customer experience.
Every point of the purchase funnel can be navigated with diligent market intelligence. As an example, let’s take a look at purchase intent through a social listening lens.
Getting Ahead of the Consumer Purchase Curve
Today’s social listening tools are fully capable of capturing online conversations around the topics that concern your brand and separating out the posts from individuals that are curious about your products.
That being the case, there’s no reason that you shouldn’t be adding this intel to your consumer intelligence strategy. Whether you are investigating social commentary on your brand, products, or those of your competitors, there is a vast ocean of market intelligence to help get you ahead of the consumer purchase curve.
Pulling the topic of healthy CPG food products into our analysis, we can quickly get a grip on the customer decision journey. As we can see below, the consideration, evaluation, and purchase segments of the conversation are high, while the actual purchase intent is comparatively low.
Digging in further to these purchase intent posts, we can uncover competing brands, product evaluations, and drivers/barriers for purchase. As we can see from the word clouds alone, people are concerned about health, pricing, and eating habits.
We are also poised for a deep dive into the brands that are top of mind with consumers. From there, we can learn about their successes and shortcomings to adjust our sails and capture the winds of positive consumer sentiment.
Healthy Food Themes in the CPG Industry
To uncover the themes driving healthy food products in the CPG industry, let’s look at a data visualization of the discussion. That way, we can see the overarching themes capturing consumers’ attention.
Network of social media posts mentioning healthy food CPG options and concerns. 10/2019 – 10/2021.
Naturally, healthy eating discussions are at the top of the list, followed by organic food. Healthy delivery options, recipes, and eating habits follow. Therefore, these are topics worth looking into to inform messaging and creative direction.
Further digging into the topics above reveals social media users are primarily concerned with bolstering their health against the coronavirus. As such, CPG food brands would want to use this intel to formulate an effective marketing strategy that highlights the properties in their products that consumers are looking for.
These are emerging trends in the social narrative. Connecting the dots between these conversations in your sector with competitors’ shortcomings and consumer pain points found in your purchase intent analysis will put you right on top of the white space surrounding your brand.
That’s the heart of actionable consumer and market intelligence. And it’s the key to intelligent innovation and customer satisfaction too.
But there’s always more under the hood, which is why consumer intelligence is so important. Let’s take a look.
Surge in Healthy Home Delivery Services
We know that home delivery has become a massive topic with consumers since the onset of the pandemic. Back then, brands were ironing out the ability to augment delivery services at all costs. Today, many of those problems have been solved, and we see that people have grown tired of eating fast-food takeout and delivery. As time has passed, more consumers are looking for options that deliver fresh, healthy food instead of pizza and burgers.
But the kicker is, we’re living in a very cost-conscious environment these days. So how does that work with health-minded consumers on a budget? Well, as of now, it doesn’t necessarily follow logic, but that doesn’t mean it’s not happening. It’s the very essence of an emerging consumer trend that’s based more on emotions than logic – and emotion (the desire to live healthier) – will win out over other necessities that brands may find unexpectedly tough sells.
But healthy food delivery is in a critical space in its adolescence where customers are exploring their options, expressing their pain points, and going with the best available option – the option that resonates with where they are emotionally. And social listening reveals that consumers are willing to spend a little more to safeguard their health or add healthy food delivery to the menu more often.
Okay, @freshly , you got me. The meals are all delicious and now I need you in my life. Maybe not every week because $ but I’ll definitely order again. The chicken Florentine was excellent
— Allister 🏳️🌈 he/him (@alchanwiz) August 2, 2021
CPG brands that are paying attention to the online conversations can get in on this emerging trend and nurture the purchase intent portion of their sales funnel with relevant deals and offers that could rival shoppers’ traditional grocery budgets.
Uncovering consumer needs helps brands strategically move the needle from consideration to purchase intent. And the sooner you get into the weeds with consumers’ social conversations, the sooner you get out in front of the competition with products and services that meet specific needs of varying audience subsets:
Meal services like @freshly, @magickitchen and @realhomechef can be life-changing resources for seniors. https://t.co/DJbZLO5WFZ pic.twitter.com/i2s5lJ5S5Q
— SymptomFind (@Symptomfind) September 23, 2021
Social listening provides the real-time market intelligence that helps you create consistent demand. And it helps you get there before anyone else. Identifying emerging trends enables you to shape your products and messaging to hit precise consumer targets. And that’s a game-changing capability in any market!
Is your consumer intelligence helping you to predict CPG purchase intent and create impactful solutions? Reach out for a demo, and we’ll get you tuned into the consumer insights that help shape today’s top brands.
