Retail Trends: Consumers and Transparency

Caring for Animals & Creating Trust in Food

Along with sustainability practices current consumers are also looking for transparency in the management of their food supply chain. Consumers want more information than ever before about how the food they eat makes its way to their plates. Nutrition, food safety, animal welfare, and labeling are all things consumers want to know more about, and the transparency they are looking for around food and food production is evolving quickly. Our food system is working hard to meet consumer expectations that can be a bit of a moving target.

“What we're doing is we're looking at conversations that consumers are having online, regardless of if we were observing them or not. And we're looking at their conversations in order to identify what something means, what a topic, a trend, an issue, something like today's topic, transparency. What does it mean to consumers? How are those meanings evolving or changing? And what does this mean for our business?.... It's helpful because we can answer what is happening in culture but our goal is really to get to the why. ” - Cheryl Auger

In this episode, Jane Dukes, Associate Director of Value Chain & Consumers Affairs, speaks with Cheryl Auger, the Director of Client Success MotivBase, and Jim Lanier, the Senior Manager Animal Welfare and Market Quality Assurance with HEB Grocery.

“I work with different departments across the company to ensure that all animals in our supply chain are properly cared for. We actually establish partnerships with our vendors, industry groups, and actual producers to develop and monitor our standards and more accurately our expectations.” - Jim Lanier

We want to explore what consumers are looking for to fulfill this transparency desire in their food chain. It can mean anything from labeling to animal welfare and ingredient sourcing. An ethnography study on consumers and transparency earlier this year that Cheryl led. We discovered that consumer values and concerns play an important role when they ask for transparency in animal protein. In addition, we learned that consumers are driven by the need to make the right decisions when it comes to food and their health and part of that is fueled by skepticism and fear. They are worried about food safety, skeptical of production practices and worried about animal welfare as well as what’s not found on the label.

“Consumers are looking for standardized approaches to organic or other forms of labeling. They're looking for some help cutting through the noise or cutting through some of their confusion. So when it comes to consumers, understanding of transparency or their top concerns, we're seeing nutritional benefits, animal welfare, ecological impact, food safety, and standardizing organic.” - Cheryl Auger

This Week’s Podcast:

• Meet Cheryl Auger, Director of Client Success MotivBase, and Jim Lanier, Senior Manager Animal Welfare and Market Quality Assurance with HEB Grocery.
• Explore insights into consumer behavior with regards to food chain transparency and where they are placing their priorities
• Discover how consumer wants and concerns have evolved over time and how producers can respond to these demands