Happy Holidays!

As 2021 comes to a close, the NEXT team conducted a survey similar to this time last year gauging consumers’ comfort level with traveling and celebrating the season. While we now have vaccines in place, the rise in new Covid-19 cases and variants has left consumer sentiment towards holiday travel virtually unchanged compared to this time last year.

We also wanted to gauge which Thanksgiving meal categories consumers bought more of this year, compared to last year. We surveyed 500 consumers who self-identified as the primary decision-maker for holiday meal-planning to better understand which meal categories saw more purchasing momentum, and which categories may have been impacted by inflation and/or constrained budgets compared to last year.

44% of natural shoppers told us they bought more appetizers and snacks than they did last year, and 38% bought more turkey and desserts. 35% of natural shoppers bought more alcohol than last year, meaning 65% bought the same amount of alcohol or less this year compared to last.

In the remaining categories, 60% or more of natural channel shoppers either decreased their Thanksgiving meal purchases this year or their meal remained unchanged.

How are you meeting the needs of today’s changing and evolving consumer through these particularly volatile times? NEXT can help you better understand your consumer, by testing new product concepts, categories, consumer price ceilings, and more. Let’s talk!

Plus, don’t miss the Changing Consumer Special Report! This report, created in partnership with Nutrition Business Journal, highlights the trajectory of the US supplement consumer and provides the data and insights you need to support consumers’ evolving definitions and attitudes about health and supplement use, based on age and consumer category.

From all of us at NEXT, here’s wishing you a happy and healthy holiday season!