THE British consumer is price conscious when buying food, but is also very value orientated making value more important than price in marketing, Ian Bentley of Marks & Spencer said at the Beef 2003 conference. "The key lesson is to supply what the consumer wants and then to exceed his or her expectations consistently," he said.
He said he saw Marks & Spencer neither being in a commodity market nor a niche market, but operating in a high volume, high quality market place. Volume was needed to ensure consistency of supply, and it was often
very difficult to operate in small niche markets.
A new product proving highly successful was meals that were prepared but not cooked and there were real opportunities for suppliers of the ingredients of these meals, said Mr Bentley.
