Reports on konsumerbehavior and beliefs are always a great source when trying to understanding, educate and open the minds of procurement professionals (or anyone involved in development and manufacturing). Most often they expose consumers as a sort of elephant – they rarely forget and once they start moving in a direction, getting them to change can be an overwhelming task.
Recently, Konsument Föreningen Stockholm – swedens largest non-profit consumer organization – opened a social media project called “Myths about Food” whereby they sought to expose and bust many of the myths that still float around consumer circles.
One of the questions in the survey was related to the use of apples in Lingoberry jam. Now anyone who’s ever been to the nordic region will have experienced the importance of Lingonberry in Scandinavian cuisine. The fact that it’s one of IKEA’s big sellers abroad is a testament to the fact if nothing else. In it’s purest form Lingonberry jam consists of lingonberrys and sugar so when your starting to mess with the recipe you’re getting into pretty deep waters.
Evenso, about 20 years ago many producers were exposed using apple sauce in lingonberry jam to make their product cheaper.
In this years survey (swedish only) – 72 percent of the respondents still believed this to be true. Even though producers stopped the malpractice years ago.
Now that’s something to keep in mind when you’re trying to balance cost with your products consumer product.
