Globalization has sparked the adventurous consumer’s curiosity when it comes to discovering new food experiences, world flavors and the unique story behind the product, that is according to Innova Market Insights. Enjoyment remains paramount in the food and beverage space and brands are enticing consumers by using strong visual appeal, indulging flavors and textures, and rich sensorial language to bring the product experience to life from the shelf.

During a webinar presented on FoodIngredientsFirst yesterday, Sarah Browner, a market analyst from Innova Market Insights noted that nowadays consumers expect more from what they spend and that consumer desire for newness and variety is on the rise.

“Consumer eating habits bring people together, brands are tapping into these trends by using bolder, unconventional flavors and novel varieties that bring an element of surprise and the potential to create social media buzz,” she explains.

For example, brands such as KitKat is responding to this and Nestlé brought their latest innovation to the market in the form of Ruby KitKat. The ruby chocolate claims to be a new chocolate experience and on the packaging reads: “Discover a new chocolate experience.” And after ten years of development, it is the first new kind of chocolate in decades and Barry Callebaut unveiled the ruby variety in September 2017, creating a fourth kind of chocolate in addition to dark, milk and white.

“Brands are also responding by creating more engaging experiences, drawing on aspects like sensory delivery, storytelling and tastes from other cultures,” Browner adds.

“As competition for consumer attention and loyalty intensifies, brands are increasingly turning to packaging to achieve differentiation on retail shelves and enhance engagement, to deliver an interactive experience to consumers before, during and after consumption.”

“Instagrammable food” is also a major trend for consumers. “Millennials and Gen Z drive the trend of novel, creative, impactful foods with funky colors, shapes and flavors that are exciting to share through social media,” Browner explains.

Two in ten US consumers take pictures of their food and beverages and shares them online once a week or more (2017), according to data from Innova Market Insights.

Data has also revealed that more food and beverage products claim “discover” on their packaging, there has been a 52 percent growth of new product launches tracked with a discovery claim, when comparing 2017 to 2016 launch statistics.

“There has never been so much variety and spread in the choice of authentic cuisines around the world,” states Browner. “The connected world has led consumers of all ages to become more knowledgeable of other cultures, which has created an opening for visually appealing products with high authenticity and specific ingredients.”

Food truck and street-food flavors have been a source of inspiration for NPD for retail, according to Innova Market Insights. Recent data shows there has also been a 24 percent growth in food and beverage launches with a food truck or street-food claim (Global, 2017 vs. 2016).

“One of the flavor trends we now see in the market is food truck: street food and food truck flavors have been a source of inspiration for NPD for retail.”

“For example, Walkers recently launched a range of new ‘streetmixes.’ As we’ve seen a lot of Asian street food flavors being launched, Walkers has introduced us to the flavors of Mexico City, Mumbai and Bangkok,” Browner notes.

“Meanwhile, in North America, from 2013 to 2017, the share of new ethnic flavored food & beverage launches with a Mediterranean flavor grew by 6.4 percent,” she adds. “In 2017, 23 percent of the new F&B launches tracked with an ethnic flavor are private label brands relative to 19 percent in 2013.”

“We also see evocative and sensorial language that brings the product experience to life from the shelf through strong visual appeals to consumers globally. These descriptive words used for flavors makes the product hard to resist, gives the product a luxury element with the words luscious, dreamy, scrumptious.”

And it isn’t just the visual appeals of F&B launches that consumers are influenced by. Texture is also an important factor in purchasing behaviors.

“1 in 10 UK and US consumers are influenced by texture claims when buying food & beverages and we see that the industry is responding to this,” Browman states. “We performed an analysis on textures in our database and found a significant growth of a range of textures,” she concludes.

Overall, brands engage with the consumers and their fans by creating a buzz around their brand, launching limited edition products with exciting flavors, shapes and concepts. The interest in a cleaner and transparent lifestyle results in the growing number of consumers adopting what they consider to be healthier diets. As the health aspect of food becomes more important, flavor continues to be the number one factor consumers pay attention to when making buying food and beverage purchases.