For a long time, two principles held in food and drink. Indulgent and healthy were opposites, and cheaper often meant better value. Both are quietly breaking down, and businesses that recognise this have a real advantage. We asked Jules Greene, Senior Insight Consultant at FIS Group, about the shift she finds most thought-provoking in consumer behaviour right now.
It starts with a trade-off that shoppers are no longer willing to make. For years, shoppers felt they had to choose between eating well and enjoying themselves. Jules hears it described all the time. “I eat like this Monday to Thursday, and then Friday to Sunday I make these sorts of choices, and overall it feels okay,” is the familiar rhythm. Healthy on weekdays, indulgent at the weekend, balanced across the week.
That compromise is fading, led by younger shoppers but spreading well beyond them. “Why would you choose healthy or indulgence?” Jules asks. “Why can’t you have healthy indulgences?” The opportunity is to deliver both at once, whether through functional ingredients, more natural recipes, or the many other levers a product can pull. Shoppers increasingly expect pleasure and goodness in the same mouthful, not split across different days of the week. It is a small shift in expectation with big consequences for product design. The question is no longer whether a product is a healthy option or a treat. It is how it can be both, convincingly enough that a shopper does not feel they are compromising on either.
At the same time, cost of living pressure is reshaping what value means, though not in the way most businesses assume. The instinct is to reach for promotions and more for less to drive volume. Jules thinks that tactic is losing its impact.
“On a pure price calculation, a bulk or bundle deal might be a good saving,” she says. “But if I do not actually need those things, the better value for me is to spend that money on something I want more.” This is the move from value for money to what she calls value for me. A saving on something you did not really want is not much of a saving at all. For years, the deal itself was the draw. Now, more and more, the deal is only as good as how much the shopper wanted the thing in the first place.
Which leads to the idea at the heart of it. If a product is genuinely impressive, tempting, distinctive and memorable, it is worth paying for. Not once, as a treat, but every single time. “I am worth paying for every time,” is how Jules voices the products that get this right. “I am not an upgrade. I am just how you should eat or drink.” That is the space to aim for. Not the occasional upgrade a shopper talks themselves into, but the default choice they reach for without hesitation. It is a high bar, and deliberately so. Shoppers are quietly raising it themselves.
Becoming that default is the real prize, and it is harder than lowering a price. It means understanding, in detail, why shoppers choose what they currently choose, and why your product is not yet the answer.
Understanding why shoppers chose what they chose, and what would move them, is a different kind of work. It is also where the breadth of a good insight partner earns its place. As Jules puts it, a client does not simply get the benefits of the six or so discussion groups they commission. They enjoy the benefits of the thousands of hours spent up close with shoppers, and the ability to connect behaviours in one category to everything happening around it.
It is also why she bristles at the most common objection to qualitative work, that it is only thirty people, or six people in one city. If a decision genuinely needs big numbers, she is the first to say go and get them. But when you need to understand the why behind the numbers, qualitative explorations are essential.
So what is the first step for a business that wants its product to become the default choice? For Jules, it begins with the choices shoppers are making today. What are they picking now, and why? What is missing, and why has your product not earned its place yet? Answer those questions honestly and the path forward starts to appear.
The way in is through getting close to real behaviour. Jules recommends three starting points in particular: consumer workshops, ethnography and shopalongs. Watching and listening to how shoppers actually choose, in their own lives and at the point of purchase, is what brings the whole picture to life. A workshop surfaces the wants, needs and pain points. Ethnography shows what they actually do. Shopalongs capture the split-second reality at point of purchase. Together they explain not just what a shopper picks, but why, and what it would take to become their default.
The products that win the next few years will not necessarily be the cheapest. They will be the ones shoppers decide are worth paying for, every time. If you want to understand how your product earns that place, understanding the choices shoppers make today is where we would start, and we would love to talk it through.