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01.31.2023

New Research: How Product Claims are Driving Fresh Pork Purchases

Bridget Wasser
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You Woman Holding Pork at the Grocery store
Product claims and attributes now appear more often on today’s fresh meat products. After successfully completing a beef attributes survey in April 2022, Midan Marketing recently completed a new self-funded market research survey focused specifically on the U.S. pork consumer to help marketers better identify and leverage their most compelling pork product attributes.

Midan’s September 2022 survey included a nationally representative sample of 1,000 current U.S. pork consumers who have a variety of motivations and purchase habits. MaxDiff analysis was utilized and involved survey respondents performing a “best” and “worst” ranking on a set of 29 possible pork product attributes related to quality, production methods, sustainability, sourcing, purchase habits and more.

Price was, unsurprisingly, the most important factor for consumers when selecting a retail pork package for purchase. Forty-six percent of consumers said that price is their top factor and 61% ranked it as their top one or two when cooking at home. Price is also the most important factor when selecting a pork dish at a restaurant. Over half (53%) of consumers ranked price as their top factor and 68% ranked it as their top one or two when eating out.

Quality claims (28%) and raising claims (23%) were the second and third most influential factors overall, with around a quarter of pork consumers ranking each as a top-two influencer. When asked to put price aside and think solely about quality, the top attributes respondents selected were “No Added Hormones” (56%) and “All Natural” (55%).

Additional production claims also rose to the top as quality indicators with “No Antibiotics Ever,” “No Growth Promotants” and “Product of the USA” each signaling quality to about half of respondents. Further down the list were two tested attributes that the industry generally considers to be product quality indicators – 43% of consumers viewed “Premium” as a fresh pork quality claim and 42% said the same for “Prime.”

When presented with a list of production-related claims to evaluate for general familiarity, respondents were most familiar with “Disease-resistant” (30% familiar) and “Carbon neutral” (28% familiar). Millennial and Generation X respondents said they were most interested in learning more about disease resistant pork whereas carbon neutral pork was of particular interest to consumers with kids in the home.

More than 60% of U.S. consumers enjoy pork at least monthly and 51% at least weekly. However, segment growth could be driven by focusing future marketing efforts on those attributes that most directly resonate with customers.

Midan is excited to share more study learnings with the industry later this month. We’ll be offering a package that includes a technical research slide deck, written insights report and a one-hour walk-through of the deck by a member of our Customer Insights Team. Subscribe to the Midan industry email to ensure you are notified when our Pork Attributes research is released.

Any citation of this data report should be credited as:
Midan Marketing, Pork Attributes Research, September 2022
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About the Author

A Texas A&M grad with both a B.S. and M.S. in Animal Science, Bridget is the new Associate Director, Customer Insights at Midan. In that role, she will lead CIT strategy and insights direction and facilitate high level internal stakeholder collaboration as well as relationships with external clients/vendors. As the former Senior Executive Director, Product Quality & Education at the National Cattlemen’s Beef Association, Bridget is the co-author of articles in several industry publications. When not working Bridget makes and sells cactus, succulent and house plant arrangements and cheers on all Denver and Texas A&M sports teams.
Bridget Wasser