Cartagena, Spain
July 11, 2016
During the seminar held on 29 June in Cartagena, the importance of flavour was emphasised as a key selling point, even more than the price factor, along with people’s interest in a healthy diet.
Bayer is proposing a joint strategy to the food retail chain to offer brand new solutions to meet the needs of a highly fragmented market.
Vegetable Seeds, Bayer’s business unit responsible for marketing the Nunhems® brand of horticultural seeds, has called upon every segment of the food retail chain to develop a joint strategy to boost the European melon and watermelon market and highlighting the healthy nutritional properties of these fruits to make them attractive to every consumer segment. The proposed collaboration is based on preliminary work that identified the main consumer trends in the fruit and vegetable segment followed by an analysis, involving the whole sector, that examined new business opportunities for melons and watermelons.
Vicente Navarro, Managing Director Marketing and Sales Vegetable Seeds at Bayer.
During the seminar held on 29 June in Cartagena, attended by international sales and marketing experts, the importance of flavour was emphasised as a key selling point, even more than the price factor, along with people’s interest in a healthy diet. The management of companies such as Ramafrut, Pozo Sur, Hessing and Zenalco (Auchan Group) all acknowledged that flavour must be the priority of any marketing strategy to boost the melon and watermelon market. Full customer satisfaction is the only way to encourage repeat buying and drive customer loyalty.
The experts emphasised also the need to promote the healthy properties of melons and watermelons and the benefits they bring to health, especially among children. The expert mentioned that criticism of excessive consumption of foods full of industrial sugars may influence consumption of certain fruits with a high natural sugar content. “The solution lies in a joint effort by every stakeholder involved to send the right message and raise consumers’ awareness about different types of sugar, so that fructose content will be interpreted as exactly what it is: a definite health benefit compared to sugary snacks explained Sjanny van Beekveld, Insights Director at IRI, international consultancy firm.
New formats
Market research on consumer trends has revealed that the European melon and watermelon market is showing slow growth, although slightly more dynamic in the segment of small watermelons of less than two kilograms. “During the last few years, we have made huge efforts to improve the product, guarantee quality and increase customer loyalty, but we need to continue working as a group to bring new and more creative solutions to the market in which flavour is the number one asset,” noted Vicente Navarro, Managing Director Marketing and Sales Vegetable Seeds at Bayer.
The study on market trends showed the positive fact that new presentation concepts at the point of sale are helping to overcome the seasonality factor and increase the consumption of melon and watermelons. In this respect, Bayer believes that the development of new, more customized formats is fundamental to satisfy a fragmented market with very different consumer habits. “It’s no longer enough to come up with a global solution to satisfy everyone; we’re living in a time where consumer wants a different product and we need to work together to meet the objective of satisfying every consumer segment,” said Paco González (pictured), the General Manager of Iberia and Global Sales & Marketing Manager of Melons and Watermelons Vegetable Seeds at Bayer.
As part of the growing trend for people to graze on fruit snacks several times a day, the need has been identified to develop new varieties of melons and watermelons with a longer useful life and excellent internal quality.
Fresh fruit snacks is currently one of the market segments with the biggest growth forecasts, especially in the 18-34 age group, who are used to grazing several times a day. In this case, the fruit is competing directly with sugary and chocolate-based snacks that have such a firm hold on the snack market. “One option to win the battle against traditional snacks is to use the same marketing techniques as these major brands and reposition melons and watermelons in the supermarket,” says Hans Liekens, Business Director at Hessing. “We need to position melons and watermelons as sexy convenience products - such as slices or portion packs of ready-to-eat melon or watermelon - right next to the chocolate bars and at the same price level. In this way, the consumers’ choice criteria will be limited to healthy and unhealthy. Fruit snacks can become the new impulse products” concludes Liekens.
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