Potato Council invests in consumer and market research to help levy payers make better informed – and potentially more profitable – business decisions and to highlight potential marketing opportunities.
We have a wealth of data gathered from specialist research organisations such as Kantar WorldPanel, NPD Crest, YouGov and others, all of which is channelled through the AHDB Market Intelligence Division. This covers the potato’s performance in retail and foodservice markets, changes in the type of potatoes consumed in home and regular reports on food trends such as online retailing, organic food and older consumers.
We also commission bespoke projects, principally through our partner research agency The Oxford Partnership, which are designed to improve our understanding of the shopper, and drive marketing and new product development in the industry. This has included tracking changing attitudes to potatoes over ten years, looking at the shopper decision tree and understanding how to best position potatoes to consumers.
Head of marketing and corporate affairs for Potato Council, Caroline Evans, explained: "Having access to consumer and market research can help industry when making strategic business decisions. Regular reports with top line market information are available but this service builds on that, enabling levy payers to send enquiries which drill down into specific areas – for example, discounter performance or how salads are performing.
"With such a large bank of data now available, we wanted to ensure that the industry is able to benefit from a service which answers their specific questions. Using the service can save businesses money, as it provides access to readily available information which will either provide the answer, or identify where additional research needs to be commissioned.
"Since Potato Council has been part of AHDB, we have been able to purchase market data collaboratively with the other divisions, which means we are now able to offer levy payers more resources in this area."
Send in your research questions by e-mailing marketing@potato.ahdb.org. We will endeavour to respond in five working days using our existing research bank, depending on the complexity of the enquiry.
