Quality revolution brewing in the US

That’s the message from Dr Kirk Cornell, senior director of strategic insights at leading US-based market research company the Hartman Group.

Cornell and Hartman’s client services manager Linda Cox were in New Zealand recently to talk with business groups on the latest phase of the group’s work.

The Hartman Group has been probing for NZTE North American consumer perceptions, including those of New Zealand and around issues of sustainability.

Initial findings were based on Hartman Group’s extensive range of US consumer interviews plus a series of ethnographic research group studies and retail buyer interviews.

More recent work includes additional ethnographic studies in the US to gain new insights into American high-end active lifestyle consumers.

The new insights will ultimately inform strategies for targeting key US market segments.

They will also help New Zealand companies leverage their product and company attributes to meet US consumer priorities in specific product categories.

These insights may also be used to help companies optimise their communications, branding and business development activities.

Many New Zealand product and company attributes relate to sustainability.

The link between sustainability and quality

In recent meetings in New Zealand, Cornell emphasised the message that while sustainability is not top of mind for most US consumers, the concept of quality is – and importantly, the two ideas are linked.

In the minds of many US consumers, general quality and sustainability cues overlap for many New Zealand products.

“Though widely used in business circles, the term ‘sustainability’ is not a household word and has limited traction as a marketing term,” said Cornell.

“Many consumers interpret sustainability as ‘green’.

“‘Responsibility’ is a better word that represents a broader concept to describe ‘good companies’.

Cornell says that for many people, sustainability starts at a personal level in, on or around the body.

In this context, New Zealand’s high-quality food and beverages sector occupies a ‘sweet spot’ in the minds of US consumers who look both to current-day products and to a mythical romanticised past for quality and sustainability.

He highlighted a series of ‘vague but very positive’ impressions of various aspects of sustainability in New Zealand.

He warned that these ideas are ‘not necessarily rational’.

In the area of resource consumption in New Zealand, for example, Hartman’s research reveals a ‘quasi-mythological’ notion of a land in which water is unpolluted and there is no over-exploitation of resources.

In the case of animal welfare, neither hormones nor antibiotics are used on animals, while at the company level, respondents believe there is a high standard of care for every New Zealand product.