CAN you name the two largest mass-circulation magazines in Australia?

Two points if your answer was supermarket giants, Coles’ and Woolworths’ free in-store consumer magazines.

According to data gathered by Roy Morgan Research, Coles’ in-store magazine had a readership in June this year of 5.188 million Australians, while Woolworths’ equivalent, Fresh Ideas, reached 4.88 million people. Both dwarfed the other 81 national popular magazine publications listed in the Roy Morgan study.

Coles Stephen Rennie addresses Thursday’s CA forum in Tamworth

It’s part of the changing landscape in the way that supermarket retailers (and indirectly, the red meat industry) engage with Australian consumers, says Stephen Rennie, national livestock manager for Coles.

Addressing Thursday’s Cattle Australia conference in Tamworth, Mr Rennie said cost of living pressures were clearly evident in the domestic market at present, with consumers cutting back on dining out.

“Sales are declining in cafes, restaurants and takeaways, and our surveys are showing 80 percent of domestic consumers are conscious of food and grocery prices,” he said.

“People are changing, but how does that affect beef? They still have to eat, but what are the changes in their shopping habits?” he asked.

Coles’ consumer survey work was showing consumers are looking for value, Mr Rennie said.

“Increasingly they are looking for value and what it brings for the consumer. At the same time, the importance placed by consumers on issues like climate change has declined. Some 38 percent – four people in ten – think enough is being done for climate change, our surveys are showing.”

“We’re seeing a situation where there’s a reduced willingness among consumers to pay a premium for sustainability. Only two percent of our customers are saying they want a product that is more sustainable and ethical in the meat department.

“That percentage is sightly higher in other parts of the supermarket, but in the meat department it’s just 2pc. I like to think that’s because we are doing a good job with the range we have, so we are satisfying a lot of customers,” Mr Rennie said.

Cooking more meals ‘from scratch’

He said one of the trends being seen was consumers wanting to cook more meals ‘from scratch’, while seeking inspiration from a variety of places to do it.

That ‘source of inspiration’ had changed a lot over the 30 years he had been involved in the industry.

“Coles used to advertise in the newspapers to inspire consumers to try something new, but that’s now changed. The total figure now is 73pc – pretty high – but it’s websites (49pc) and cookbooks + free in-store magazines (41pc) where consumers now get their inspiration,” he said.

While in-store magazines were now a key point of engagement with consumers, Mr Rennie said 46pc of Coles customers still came into the meat department to seek inspiration for meal ideas.

“People still buy with their eyes, so as a retailer we’re trying to inspire them to pick something up and do something with it. From the Coles in-store magazine perspective, we’re trying to not only offer recipe ideas, but educate people as well,” he said.

Among other customer trends picked up in Coles survey work, nine in ten Australians surveyed claimed to have consumed meat the previous three months, while only 54pc claimed to have used meat as an ingredient in a dish.

“The difference between those numbers is that some people only consume meat when they go out. The others are also using meat as an ingredient when they cook.

“But they are looking for methods to shortcut the cooking process, and we have seen that evolving over time. Independent butchers have led the way in value adding, and MLA has done a great job over time in educating butchers to do that.”

Technology was also helping large retailers to take the convenience factor to another level in red meat.

Mr Rennie used an example of Coles recently released value-added slow-cooked beef brisket in American BBQ sauce (pictured here)  – pre-cooked for 9.5 hours, requiring only re-heating by the customer for 30 minutes before serving. The product sells in Coles for $14.50 for a 700g pack, or the equivalent of $20.70/kg.

“It’s giving consumers the ability to have a great product, without all the time investment,” Mr Rennie said.

“It’s a little different from a totally pre-prepared meal – the customer can still put their own other elements around it – but we are seeing really good growth in products like this,” he said.

“We’re also using items like this to balance the carcase. It’s no different from having a freezer full of meat after a kill at home – you have to eat through the whole animal before you start another one.

“So we are developing products like this that better utilise the carcase and deliver better revenue.”

Another survey statistic was that 77pc of Australian consumers are deciding what to eat within a day of consumption.

“For this reason items like mince are a staple, because the consumer does not have to decide what to do with it, straight away. The consumer has a whole heap of options if they have a kilo of mince in the fridge.

“At the other end, customers talk about an item like roast lamb and vegetables as being around events and family gatherings. They are things the customer has always said, but as retailers we have to make sure we continue to cater for all those options.”

Mr Rennie said the ‘older family’ cohort (ie parents with teenage and older children) made up a third of all meat consumption in Australia, but this was not a group that retailers catered for particularly well.

“Some believe this could be because they have more time to shop and browse than parents with young children, who have less time. But also I don’t think we satisfy their requirements particularly well – some want bulk, some want a variety of items (to suit different family members) – and that’s where independents in the industry are really important.”

8 key needs

Mr Rennie listed eight key needs and attributes of the modern consumer, in no particular order. They included:

• Health
• Value
• Entertaining
• Quick and easy
• Product-specific dishes
• Versatility (ie mince and chicken fillets)
• Experimentation, and
• Contrasts between week-day and weekend shopping.

“But of course, weekends for some workers can be Tuesday/Wednesday – it’s not all about Sunday,  as we have traditionally seen,” Mr Rennie said.

The importance of 24 seconds

Another consumer survey observation was that shoppers spend more time perusing fresh meat than they do with pre-packaged or deli meat – but the average time is still short.

For fresh beef cuts, its just 24 seconds, survey work shows, while for fresh pork, 30 seconds.

“As retailers we want to try to tell more to the customer about the product,” Mr Rennie said.

“But it just shows the importance in shopping, in that many customers only have so much time. As much as many products now carry QR codes – and 65pc of Australians have scanned a code in the past month – the fact remains that if they only have 24 seconds to make a purchase decision on a pack of beef, they are not scanning codes to know more about it.”

“That’s why we have the magazines, providing more information for when people have more time. But it doesn’t mean we stop and give up on engaging with consumers via QR codes and other means – there’s investment being made in developing QR codes that tell more about the product, and one day it may not even require scanning – simply popping up on your smartphone.”

“But presently, many shoppers are time-poor – they want to be able to find the product where it was last time, and know it is available every time the visit, so they can get in and get out quickly.

When Coles surveyed customers about their interpretations of ‘quality’, one of the features raised (beyond the physical eating quality of the product in the pack) was length of time in packaging – effectively, how much time they had to use the product, Mr Rennie said.

In some responses, this was as important as eating quality, he said.

“Especially in a regional area like Cairns or Broome, they want to know they have two, three, four or five days on a product’s chilled shelf-life. They rate that as high as eating quality, in some examples – so quality means different things to different people,” he said.