More Pork Fattens Meat Case Sales: Report

With foodies inventing ever-new ways to create and consume food, it’s natural that more grocers are paying attention to a core of their store: the meat case. It turns out that increasing the number of pork options for shoppers may be one of the secrets to increasing overall category sales.

A new virtual research study funded by the National Pork Board and fielded by Midan Marketing and InContext Solutions found that expanding pork offerings while reducing ground beef facings resulted in a 7 percent increase in overall fresh meat sales. Furthermore, the increase in pork cuts and facings did not negatively impact other fresh meats. Beef and chicken sales remained constant throughout the study, while pork sales rose 23 percent when more cuts and facings were available on the shelf.

“Shoppers in our virtual study did not substitute pork for other meats when there was more pork available within the fresh meat case," said Amy Hebard, group VP of Insights for InContext Solutions. "They simply purchased more meat overall. It’s clear that increasing pork choices in the meat case not only helps pork sales, but helps drive sales for the entire category."

For the study, InContext Solutions ran a control standard round with SKUs for pork, chicken and beef against a test setup that added six additional cuts and three additional facings for pork, while maintaining the same number of beef cuts (but eight fewer facings), with no change for chicken.

“The options for how to alter display cases to promote overall category sales are unlimited with virtual research and can be looked at from a variety of different angles depending on the end goal,” explained Rich Scamehorn, chief research officer and co-founder of InContext Solutions.  “Selecting virtual testing allowed Midan and the National Pork Board to innovate and test new ways to lay out the case, to help their retailers determine the optimal approach for increasing pork sales.”