Dive Brief:
- Nielsen launched its Product Insider, a measurement tool for retail and consumers, aimed at transforming on-pack nutrient and food ingredient labels into quantifiable attributes, according to a company release.
- The tool utilizes Nielsen’s robust market measurement and Homescan Consumer Panel data, combined with Label Insight’s industry-leading cloud-based product attributes. It provides a high level of data granularity to food manufacturers and retailers.
- Nielsen Product Insider will allow clients to view the necessary data to see which products contain added sugars—and how much.
Dive Insight:
Nielsen Product Insider will offer fast-moving consumer goods companies and retailers a better barometer to look at sales performance, shopper demographics and product trends.
All of this should extremely useful to manufacturers, who can use the analysis to better predict what consumers desire and understand their preferences for the type of ingredient information they want to see.
Despite efforts to improve food labels in recent years, just how much consumers are paying attention is still unknown for the most part. Numerous studies have shown that they are seeking greater product transparency about real ingredients and attributes, but whether they are looking at these labels and making buying decisions based on them is still up for debate.
An Innova report revealed that 75% of U.S. consumers say they read the nutritional and ingredient labels of food products and 91% claim food and beverage options with recognizable ingredients are healthier. But the director of the Center for Food Safety and Applied Nutrition at the Food and Drug Administration has stated that research on consumer psychology has shown that nutritional labeling gives the organization “compelling reasons to be pessimistic” about how much it impacts purchases.