Shopper Insights Driving Growth of Kroger’s Simple Truth
Leveraging consumer insights, The Kroger Co. is expanding its Simple Truth brand and launching what the retailer says is its largest-ever Our Brands customer sales promotion, featuring savings on thousands of Simple Truth and Simple Truth Organic items.
With the help of insights from Kroger’s customer science arm 84.51°, the Cincinnati-based grocer aims to launch new, innovative, affordable Simple Truth products that align with customer trends, including increasingly popular categories like beverage, snacking and non-animal proteins.
To date, these growing trends have led to rollouts of Simple Truth Organic sports drinks and sparkling coconut waters, and Simple Truth fruit-and-nut bars and meatless entrees.
"We're proud of the high-quality ingredients that go into our Simple Truth products. We're equally proud of what's not in these foods. Simple Truth products are free from 101-plus artificial preservatives and ingredients," said Robert Clark, Kroger's SVP of merchandising. "Instead of GMOs and antibiotics, Simple Truth offers clean labels and fantastic flavors. Kroger has led the way for more than a decade in making natural and organic products more mainstream and accessible. We've always believed that our customers shouldn't have to pay higher prices just because a product is natural or organic. The truth is, we've always been affordable."
Launched in 2012, the brand now offers over 1,400 unique products across multiple categories, including grocery, meat, produce, deli, bakery, baby, household essentials and personal care. According to Kroger, Simple Truth also offers more Fair Trade Certified products than any other U.S. private label grocery brand.
Our Brand Success
In Kroger's third quarter of 2017, its Our Brands delivered strong performance, making up 28.2 percent of unit sales and 25.6 percent of sales dollars, excluding fuel and pharmacy. Simple Truth continued to grow in popularity the same quarter, with sales growing 19 percent.
"Our Brands is shaping the way we are redefining the grocery customer experience as outlined in our Restock Kroger plan," Clark said.
Simple Truth products are exclusive to Kroger banner stores. Customers can purchase the brand in store, via ClickList click-and-collect or Vitacost.com for ship-to-home delivery.
The Kroger Co. operates 2,793 retail food stores under a variety of local banner names in 35 states and the District of Columbia.