Changes are occurring in the food & beverage industry regarding consumers providing opportunities to unlock growth.

In Arthur D. Little, we summarize them in four key trends:

• Demographic Variations. The importance of the segment of the elderly, a segment in which much of the purchasing power is concentrated and the smaller size of the Spanish households
• The economic recovery. Recovering of the Spanish national GDP, growth of the business confidence and the rise of the consumption of the households
• Changes in consumer habits. Consumer hyper-sensitivity to price in those products in which there is no perceived differentiation among the category and an increase in the number of customer willing to pay extra for high quality products
• Impact on distribution channels. Purchase frequency in the food channel has been shorten to avoid big-ticket disbursement boosting sales in convenience and proximity channels. On the other hand, away from home channel is benefiting from the improvement of the country’s economic situation

Consequently, companies could manage to outpace overall industry growth by focusing on core capabilities, anticipating channel shifts and nurturing future profit pools based on consumer insight. For this, companies will need to focus on tree key areas: (i) steering their strategies, (ii) developing propositions aligned with the new consumer, and (iii) build go-to-market strategies that are able to maximize such value propositions

• Defining the future company strategy and positioning as the path to ensuring that players develop capabilities that will enable them to maintain perceived differentiation in a market that is rapidly changing
• Developing competitive propositions through consumer and market knowledge as the means to prepare for the emerging changes in occasions, habits and overall segment value
• Defining go-to-market strategies that maximize developed propositions, given the increasing professionalization of distribution and the expected value shifts among channels