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Shoppers Shift to Cheaper Meats Such as Bone-In Chicken, Pork

Shoppers looking to slash their household food budgets have given a boost to several less-expensive items in supermarket meat cases, such as bone-in chicken breasts, bone-in pork chops and regular ground beef, according to data and consumer research from Midan Marketing and Shugoll Research presented here yesterday at the American Meat Institute’s annual Meat Conference.

DENVER — Shoppers looking to slash their household food budgets have given a boost to several less-expensive items in supermarket meat cases, such as bone-in chicken breasts, bone-in pork chops and regular ground beef, according to data and consumer research from Midan Marketing and Shugoll Research presented here yesterday at the American Meat Institute’s annual Meat Conference.

Total retail meat volume was up 3.5% between October 2008 and January 2009 compared with the same period a year earlier, according to scan data from conventional supermarkets sourced from FreshLook Marketing.

But lower-priced items posted much faster growth. For example, total chicken volume sales were up 7.3% during the fourth quarter of 2008, while bone-in breasts were up 15.5%; during the most recent four months, boneless pork roast sales were down —13.6%, while bone-in pork roasts were up 6.6%.

Boneless pork chops did post stronger growth, with a 5.3% increase in volume, than bone-in pork chops, which grew 3.5% off of a smaller base. And regular ground beef posted 6% volume growth, compared with 3.8% volume growth for the entire beef category, and 2% growth for premium ground beef.

Data and consumer research were presented during the session “Holding on to Your Consumers in a Tough Economy: Insights from New Consumer Research and Actual Meat and Poultry Sales Data.”

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TAGS: Meat