The food industry

The financial crisis's has had an impact on consumer buying habits in the food industry as well as in all other industries. Less sales of premium products, a slowdown in sales of organic foods and increased focus on retail chains' private label products are just some of the challenges the industry is facing.

Over the past years the above challenges have led many food manufacturers to worke more intensely with assortment optimization and product economy rather than focusing on innovation and concept development that are crucial for future-proofing all the strong brands in the food industry.

Particularly the retail chains' focus on private labels is a major challenge for food manufacturers. This is not only the situation now, but it is becomming the situation of the future and this because todays consumer just now is being "educated in" buying value for money, which most often means that the consumer is buying products that are launched under the chains' own brands.

What can branded goods of high quality do to take advantage of the significantly more positive and optimistic opinions that exist today? This may seem like a big issue but the answer is generally not so complicated. If companises want consumers to continue choosing the leading food brands it requires great insight into the market, important insights into the consumers and a willingness to invest in innovation and new concepts. Because consumers will always reward the good ideas!

In Wilke's food team we deal with many different types of challenges together with many different food customers. Common to our work is a specifical focuse on helping our food customers generating growth through Wilkes overall business philosophy: ROI - Relations, Optimization and Innovation.

Some examples of exciting projects implemented by the food team:

• Relations: Brand loyalty, Shopper indsights, Targetgroup Studies, etc.
• Optimering: Assortment Optimization, Con joint analysis, Brand Optimization, etc.
• Innovation: Innovation workshops, concept development, product testing etc.

At Wilke we feel that the optimism is back in Danish food business and this because many of our customers just now really are started focusing on innovation and new initiatives. We look forward to continuing our close cooperation with our food customers, so that we also together in the future can create results that not only can be seen in the stores, but also can be measured in revenue and earnings.