Fascinating findings on soft drinks

New shopper insights will be presented by Field Agent at next week’s UK Soft Drinks Conference on 10 May in London, based on 100 visits to Asda, Sainsbury’s, Tesco and Waitrose over the Bank Holiday weekend.

In preparation, Field Agent conducted an online survey last week of 500 UK consumers who buy soft drinks.

Here are the findings I found most fascinating:

• 61% drink soft drinks as a replacement for alcohol when socialising.
• 45% buy soft drinks for an energy boost.

• The greatest shift in behaviour over the past year has been towards low sugar/calorie (+23%).

• 38% don’t decide what to buy until in store.

• The biggest factors in deciding what to buy are taste (9.3 out of 10), flavour known and liked (9.0) and price (8.1), with promotion on 7.5, brand on 7.2 and environment friendly packaging down at 5.7.

• Assuming the same price, 35% would prefer cans, 28% glass, 22% recycled plastic and 7% plastic.

It’s not too late to book for the conference, which features a powerful platform of industry leaders including Britvic, Coca-Cola, Fever-Tree and Suntory, innovators like Biotiful Dairy, Illy, The Naked Collective and Trip as well as Asda and DEFRA. Go to zenithglobal.com/events.