CivicScience Insight Report. Healthy Snacking and Multi-Snacking:

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1 CivicScience Insight Report Healthy Snacking and Multi-Snacking: A Food Industry Marketing Challenge? A web search for articles about snacking and snack trends yields much narrative along two key themes: healthy snacking; and Millennials as shaping the future of snacking. But by taking a large sample study of U.S. consumers and their reported snacking behavior, research data show otherwise. CivicScience canvassed over 2,300 U.S. consumers, 13 years and older, to profile them based on how often they snacked on a given day. The following question was posed: Yesterday, how often did you snack or eat food in between main meals? The idea behind the structuring of that question was to provide them with a very recent timeline so that they could more accurately remember the information. The question ran on our polling network for six days, allowing an average to arise out of a mix of weekend and week days. Here s how the top-line data broke down: April 22, 2015: Snacking is a hot area for packaged food manufacturers and grocery retailers. This Insight Report provides research insights on: More frequent snackers Healthy food snackers The profile of these consumers differ, and some of their overall attributes may be surprising and present a challenge for food industry marketers.

2 29% of consumers only snacked once between main meals. Another 29% snacked twice. 22% snacked three or more times. 21% did not snack between meals. Snacking two or more times per day happened at a higher rate on a Saturday. Essentially, 51% of consumers snack more than once on an average day. We then grouped the total respondents into three categories in order to develop more in-depth profiles of each segment: Single Snackers: Those who snacked only once in a day Multi-Snackers: Those who snacked two or more times in a day Non-Snackers: Those who did not snack Here s where the data does not align with the trending, health-oriented articles that advocate for healthier snacking multiple times per day as a way to increase wellness. It seems very clear from the insights we found that more frequent snacking, in actuality, corresponds generally with greater calorie consumption and a less healthy lifestyle. Now certainly, there are exceptions to that, but we re talking about the on average profile as we identify areas where this segment of consumers meaningfully differ from that of the general population of respondents: Who is the Multi-Snacker? Gender: Skews slightly towards women (55% vs. 45% men). Age: Those 18 and under are 26% more likely than average to be multi-snackers. Among adults, those aged and are more likely to snack multiple times per day. (Yes, some portion of Millennials fit into this category.) Snack Food Preference: Multi-snackers are somewhat more likely to prefer sweet snacks than do single snackers or non-snackers. In fact, the more often someone snacks, the higher overall their preference for sweet snacks. Sedentary Lifestyles? 25% of multi-snackers say that TV is important or a passion of theirs, compared to 20% of single snackers and 15% of non-snackers who say this. Multi-snackers are somewhat more likely to watch more hours of TV in an average day.

3 Unhealthy Eating: Multi-snackers are 66% more likely than single snackers to say that the reason they don t eat healthier is: not enough time / too much work. This is 2X the number of non-snackers who also say the same. Self Esteem: Multi-snackers are more likely than single or non-snackers to see themselves as less physically attractive than others their age. Interestingly, we did not find that urbanicity had any effect overall on snacking frequency, nor did income. Snackers also are not any more likely than the general population to try new products before others. Based on that rapid snapshot of more frequent snackers, we see in general a consumer who typically is younger in age or early-middle-aged who prefers sweet snacks, watches more TV overall, yet sees healthy eating as being too time consuming. So if this group overall is not choosing frequent snacking as a way to drive a healthy lifestyle, then who is the consumer that prefers healthy snacks? We looked at those who say they prefer healthy snacks over salty or sweet snacks, and it turns out, in aggregate, the healthy snack fan is not the picture of a young, virile Millennial market maven who is setting new snacking trends Who is the Healthy Snacker? Age: The healthy snacker skews much older, with 48% of them being over the age of 55 compared to 38% of all U.S. adults who fall into that age group. More Educated: 24% of healthy snackers have a college or professional degree compared to 18% of the general population. Single Snackers: Healthy snackers are most likely of all snackers to only snack once per day. Healthy Eaters: They are 87% more likely to buy organic food regularly. Active Lifestyles: This generally older group of consumers is very active, being 50% more likely to exercise fairly often (at least several times per week). Brand vs. Price: When shopping for food, they believe brand and price are equally important when making a purchase decision.

4 Traditional Media Consumption: They are 15% more likely than other respondents to prefer watching TV content live (vs. streaming, on-demand, or via a DVR). They are slightly more likely to say TV ads influence them more than online ads or social media, and they are 23% more likely to NOT use social media at all. They are also 28% more likely to NOT use a smart phone. Not Market Mavens: Like the multi-snackers, they are less likely to try new products before others. This group is also less likely to tell others about products they favor. Healthy snacking seems to become more important as consumers get older in age, when greater importance tends to be placed on health. The Go-to-Market Challenge Those two insights that emerged from our study the profile of the healthy snacker and the profile of the frequent snacker may present strong marketing challenges for packaged food manufacturers who are focusing on growth in snack offerings: Those who represent the largest potential market opportunity (the multi-snackers, at 51%) are generally not making purchase decisions based on health but on convenience so these insights are relevant at a category manager and R&D level. Meanwhile, healthy snackers consume between meals less frequently and are less likely to experiment with new packaged snack offerings. They do care about brand, which may be useful to existing large brands that can leverage familiarity. So if not among those two groups, where can packaged snack manufacturers find their market mavens those consumers who are more likely to try new products before others and who talk about products with others and on social media? It turns out that it is in the non-snacking group (which makes up 21% of consumers) where there is an increased likelihood to find general consumer market mavens. It certainly may be possible to convert some of them to snackers, with the right offering.

5 About the CivicScience Methodology: CivicScience collects real-time consumer research data via polling applications that run on hundreds of U.S. publisher websites, cycling through thousands of active questions on any given day. Respondents voluntarily opt-in their answers with no incentives, compensation or coercion -- they answer for fun and are kept anonymous, allowing for greatly reduce bias and higher levels of engagement. The 2,313 respondents for this report were weighted for the U.S. Census, 13 years and older, and data were collected from April 10-16, CivicScience builds deep, timely psychographic profiles of these respondents with each question they answer over time, providing valuable consumer sentiment and behavior insight data to the decision makers who care. The CivicScience methodology has been scientifically validated by a team of academic leaders and by independent research firms. CivicScience currently has millions of anonymous consumer profiles stored, growing daily. April CivicScience, Inc. Visit our online Insight Report library: Click here to browse more Insight Reports like this, leveraging real data from our InsightStore enterprise consumer research platform.