New study finds that consumers are open to 'green' shopping
WASHINGTON A new study released Wednesday by the Grocery Manufacturers Association and Deloitte found that 54% of shoppers demonstrated that they actively considered environmental sustainability characteristics in their buying decisions.
But while shoppers are often thinking green, they actually bought green products on just 22% of their shopping trips. More than 6,400 shopper intercept interviews were conducted for the survey, which is the basis of a larger GMA-Deloitte report released Wednesday titled “Finding the Green in Today’s Shoppers: Sustainability Trends and New Shopper Insights.”
According to the report, most shoppers surveyed (95%) are open to considering green products, while 67% of shoppers looked for green products, 47% actually found them and 22% purchased some green products on their shopping trip, highlighting the need for better shopper marketing programs to close the gap.
“Sustainable product characteristics are emerging as an important brand differentiator, but to capture the potential market value of green shoppers, retailers and manufacturers must do a better job of communicating the sustainable attributes behind the products to show the value of buying green to the shopper,” noted Scott Bearse, director and retail leader of Deloitte LLP’s Enterprise Sustainability group. “Consistent, aligned messaging in stores, online and at other touch points will be essential to converting shoppers from simply being interested in green to buying green.”
The study also found that a significant minority of committed and proactive green shoppers will pay a premium for sustainable products; however, the larger potential population of shoppers that lean toward green want price and performance parity for sustainable products because it is not their dominant purchase driver.
“This study marries two of the consumer product industry’s top priorities: meeting the needs of consumers and reducing our environmental footprint,” said Elliott Penner, Reckitt Benckiser president of food products and GMA Sustainability Task Force leader. “Understanding consumer expectations and shopping behavior are critical to the development of the industry’s overall strategy on environmental sustainability.”
Additional key learnings from the study include:
- Demographically, green shoppers are diversely spread along all income ranges, age brackets, education levels and various household sizes. On average, green shoppers tend to be older, have higher income and are more educated, but they can be found across the consumer population.
- Green shoppers represent a high value segment that buy more products on each trip and visit the store more regularly.
- Green shoppers are less price sensitive than the average shopper and they are generally not bargain hunters.
This report follows two previously released GMA-Deloitte reports on sustainability: