Soft and springy are the deciding factors, reveals study

A new Novozymes study has identified ‘sofntess and springiness’ as the number one driver for consumer bread brand choice.

The Bread Purchasing Behavior Study 2011 gathers insights from 2274 respondents across Denmark, the Netherlands, Spain and Russia.

It explores business-critical questions for Europe’s bakeries: What makes a consumer choose a particular brand? What qualities do they base their bread purchasing decisions on? And which of these can tempt them to switch?

The study has been conducted by Retail Institute Scandinavia and is sponsored by Novozymes. It builds on the intelligence gained in the 2010 study (covering 3794 consumers in UK, Germany, Sweden and France) and gathers more critical insights to support consumer-driven innovation across the baking sector.

Surveyed consumers say that they choose the bread that can offer the same quality, every time. This result adds further weight to the insights gathered in the 2010 survey, confirming that the tendency to choose bread based on consistent quality is a Europe-wide trend.

This year’s baking industry survey was one of the largest ever undertaken in the industrial baking sector, with 128 key industry representatives approached to give their perspective on the challenges facing the industry.

While there was no surprise that innovation, fluctuating costs and quality remain the top three concerns for the baking industry, the ability to maintain consistent quality has emerged as the clear number one challenge perceived by European bakeries in 2011.

An analysis of purchasing behavior conducted as part of the consumer study highlighted the decisions typically made by consumers when buying bread. The survey showed that while the majority of consumers consider a combination of factors when choosing between bread brands, ‘softness and springiness’ is the most common criteria they use to make their decision.

Responding to these insights, Fokke van den Berg, Novozymes Regional Marketing Manager for Baking, pointed to what appears to be a pan-European consumer need:

“The 2011 study includes countries with far more diverse bread purchasing and consumption traditions than we looked at in 2010. Given the differences in bread types and buying behavior – for example to squeeze or not to squeeze – it is remarkable how uniform the need for crumb softness and springiness is across Europe.

“The fact that softness and springiness is a deciding factor for consumers is certainly encouraging for Novozymes. Our enzyme solutions have been helping the baking industry to achieve exactly this consistent softness for decades.”