New data has confirmed that consumers most important consideration when it comes to shopping for sugar confectionery is price. This was followed by quality, stock availability, range, layout and offer.

The 2016 Shopper Intelligence grocery shopper measurement programme which monitored shopping habits and tastes of shoppers across all the major supermarkets, found that confectionery ranked highly (62%) as a grab and go purchase and low as a browse purchase (20%), indicating that retailers have a small window to drive purchase. Out of this 62%, the main facilitators of a quick purchase were product standout, (43%), ease of shop (43%) and prominent promotional display (23%).

40% of shoppers also said that the confectionery items were purchased just for them, but as expected a much higher than average proportion of shoppers were buying for their children (11% vs a 4% average).

High levels of consumption occur on the day of purchase (24%) or are brought to keep at home for a later date (35%). However, sugar confectionery is amongst the top 10 categories (ranked 7^th) across the store wher planned consumption is later out of the home. This suggests that for supermarkets, sugar confectionery ranges should include smaller, easy to carry packs and there is an opportunity to perhaps prompt out of home occasions such as part of a picnic pack or lunch boxes for example.

53% of surveyed shoppers said they planned to buy confectionery prior visiting the store, placing it amongst the least planned category in store.18% of the 53% of shoppers planned to purchase a specific brand, and whats more 15% actually bought the intended brand, indicating a conversion rate of 85% and a high level of brand loyalty among planned shoppers.

Nearly half of confectionery buyers (46%) who bought hadn’t planned to buy prior to visiting the store making confectionery the 5^th most impulsive category in store. Nearly a third of the purchases (32%) were prompted by a promotional trigger, with display accounting for 23% and price and special offers 14%. As a category with a low dwell time the onus is on the retailers to engage with the shoppers through in-store promotions and secondary displays.

The gap in diversity of ranges, space for favourites, pack sizes and innovation are all highlighted by confectionery shoppers as showing scope for improvement, with the range gap ranking as 9^th in importance out of 149 categories, indicating that shoppers place a high importance on having a wide range of confectionery from which to choose.

Chris Adkins, director, Shopper Intelligence says, "The opportunity and growth potential for the confectionery category lies in its expandability with 54% of shoppers agreeing they often buy more than they originally planned. It is also a category that benefits strongly from in-store promotions, displays and price offers which all act as key drivers to purchase."