Pork Board Uses Eye-Tracking for Purchase Insights

What do consumers really look at when shopping the meat case? What kind of signage does the best job of engaging and inspiring them? To find out, the National Pork Board (NPB) conducted cutting-edge eye-tracking research to determine exactly what consumers look at while shopping the meat case and for how long.

NPB's research also identified which images and messages resonate best with shoppers, and inspire them to pick up meat for their shopping carts as well as the center of their plates.

The results show that images of whole cuts of pork proved to attract consumers’ attention more swiftly, and more effectively communicate the meat type (pork), than dishes that use pork only as an ingredient.

“We’re very excited to use this type of technology to understand exactly what impacts consumers when shopping for meat,” said Patrick Fleming, NPB's director of retail marketing.

“Our signage and POS have to put pork front-and-center and give a clear call-to-action to effectively catch consumers’ attention and inspire them to get pork in their carts.”

Consumers also prefer signs that don’t include photographs of people, as it distracts them from focusing on the meat image. Based on the short amount of attention time that ironman signs get in grocery stores (about three seconds), the meat image may never be looked at when people are included in the photograph. Additionally, clear call-to-action taglines fared better than brand taglines in terms of participant preference.

More information on the eye-tracking research can be found at PorkRetail.org.