Consumer Trends Analysis: Understanding Consumer Trends and Drivers of Behavior in the UK Ready Meals Market

Synopsis
This report provides an overview of the UK ready meal market, combining market data, demographic consumption patterns within the category and the key consumer need states driving consumption. The report highlights best practice new product development for effectively targeting the most pertinent consumer need states and offers strategic recommendations to capitalize on evolving consumer need states.
Scope
Key consumer demographic groups driving consumption within the UK market are also identified. The figures showcase the volume of ready meal consumption attributed to specific age groups and gender, as well as identifying whether these demographic groups “over” consume in the category (i.e. they account for a higher proportion of volume sales than the proportion of society they represent overall).

Market value and volumes over the period 2007-2017 for the UK and nine other countries across the globe. The UK figures are also broken down into segment level to cover volume growth of ambient ready meals, chilled ready meals, dried ready meals and frozen ready meals over the ten year period.

The report quantifies the degree of influence that the 20 key consumer trends identified by Canadean have on ready meal consumption occasions, with granular analysis on the extent that degree of influences varies between gender and age group.

The report provides insight to highlight the “so what?” implications behind the data, and analysis on how the need states of consumers within the ready meal category will evolve in the short-to-medium term future.
Summary
Why was the report written?
This report has been designed to give an overview of the UK ready meal market in terms of the key demographic groups driving consumption and what their motivations are for doing so. The report adopts a unique method of quantifying consumer trends to highlight the degree of influence they have on consumption within the category. This enables the reader to identify the most important trends within the market and also determine whether beliefs over what influences consumer behavior within the category are accurate

What is the current market landscape and what is changing?
After witnessing only stagnant market value sales growth over the period 2007-2012, value growth in the category is forecast to accelerate over the next five year period ending 2017. The fact that value will grow at a faster rate than market volume indicates there will be a greater willingness to trade-up among consumers when choosing ready meals, meaning it is vital product positioning aligns with the most important consumer need states to benefit from this future growth.

What are the key drivers behind recent market changes?
Busy lives and changing life-stages are the key drivers of change within the UK ready meal market. Consumers are feeling increasingly time-scarce as they look to balance work and social lives, are and looking for meal solutions that allow them to free up time spent in the kitchen for more favorable activities. This is true of both men and women, who are also delaying “traditional” life-time responsibilities such as marriage and parenthood until later in life. These consumers are also looking to convenience meal offerings to help facilitate their busy lifestyles.

What makes this report unique and essential to read?
This report is built on unique proprietary data based on an extensive national representative survey, enabling Canadean to provide unique valuations of consumer target groups and the degree consumer trends influence consumption patterns.
Reasons To Buy
Cooking habits are being affected by time-scarcity as consumers look to juggle their personal and professional lives and look to free up time spent in the kitchen for more enjoyable tasks.

Consumers are shopping around more within the ready meal category because of a greater focus on value for money. This means that it is crucial that ready meals in the UK market are aligned with the most pertinent consumer need states.

Consumers are delaying responsibilities such as parenthood and marriage till later in life and are instead engaging in hectic social lives where they look to free up time spent in the kitchen.

Indulgence and escapism are among the main trends influencing consumption habits in the UK ready meal market. However, the non-emotive nature of the category means the trends are not as influential on ready meal consumption habits compared to other grocery categories.