Phil Lempert

Phil Lempert
Exploring the consumer market with the Supermarket Guru

Most people cant predict the futurebut Philip Lempert can. An expertanalyst on consumer behavior, marketing trends, new products and food trends,Lempert has identified and explained impending trends to some of the mostprestigious companies worldwide. He has appeared on NBCs Today Show, TheView, Oprah, Discovery Health and Extra, and is the author of severalbooks including the forthcoming Phils Picks: The SupermarketGurus GuideTo The Best Food Products. Lempert took time out to talk with INSIDERsHeather Granato about the current market for health foods and the marketopportunities for dietary supplement firms.

INSIDER: What is the biggest misconception manufacturers have aboutconsumers?

Lempert: That consumers are stupid. That the industry knows so much morethan consumers. If manufacturers would just sit back and listen, everythingwould be fine. Consider the recent situation with carbon monoxide and meat.Maybe you couldget away with that stuff in the 1960s, but not any more. Consumers are smarter.They have tools like the Internet. Manufacturers and food brands give lipservice to saying they understand the consumer, but the reality is that they dont.Its time they take the next step going to supermarkets and watching howpeople shop, what they buy, tapping them on the shoulder and talking to them. Getting out from behind the desk and really looking at the marketplace. Itsimportant to have an open dialogue with consumers. Use Web sites to promotequestions from shoppers and communicate directly with them. Companies got intothe whole thing of quantitative research and received data on thousands ofpeople, and they became faceless. It is important to reconnect with consumers ina very real way to be successful.

INSIDER: How are consumers integrating health and wellness into their foodchoices?

Lempert: There is an overall trend that consumers understand eatingbetter can lead to a better and longer life. Consumers are also taking moreresponsibility for themselves. There is more mistrust among consumerswhetherits bird flu, mad cow or food safety issues. Consumers dont trust as muchas they did before. In addition, consumers have greater expectations forproducts that are healthy. There is no reason why eating healthy should be more expensive, lessconvenient or less tasty. Look at Kelloggs Frosted Flakes. They took out athird of the sugar, and 99.9 percent of the population cant taste thedifference. Youll see more companies going through those voluntarynutritional corrections, doing the right thing. Like General Mills going allwhole grain, which was huge. Nobody said to them, Hey, make it whole grain.They said Now the research is there, so lets figure out how we can make ittaste as good and well do the right thing. Theyre doing what theyshould have been doing all along, without charging a higher price.Foodtechnology has come a long way in the past five or six years, and there is noreason any consumer or any company really has to sacrifice any of the attributesany more to be healthy.

INSIDER: What about the marketing of functional foods?

Lempert: Consumers dont have any understanding of what the industrymeans by the term functional foods. The problem is similar to that facingirradiated meat. Industry is using the wrong terminology. Consumers are interested in foods that offer added benefits and the promiseand hope of preventing disease and living a longer life. Its a great concept.However, its a very human hope. The term functional is not humanistic and doesnt inspire consumers. A Hummer is functional.The challenge is to develop better terminology that doesnt scare consumers.The interest in healthy foods and these products is not just a fad, but we haveto be able to deliver products to consumers that live up to expectations. Theyalso need to have that wow factor to help empower people to buy thingsdifferently and shop differently.

INSIDER: What about consumers impressions and expectations of dietarysupplements?

Lempert: I think dietary supplements have a couple of different paths toexplore. First, when shoppers go to buy a dietary supplement, they are stillvery confused.The opportunity for dietary supplements is 10 times what it isnow. While the industry has grown substantially and says things are great, itshard to be a consumer buying a dietary supplement. The way retailers displaythem is impossible. They are organized by brand or the type and you are facing athousand different bottles, all white and all looking the same.We need to see arevolution in how to communicate to consumers what dietary supplements are rightfor them.Today, most dietary supplement buyers have gotten the informationelsewhere, either from a magazine or radio saying what to look for. There hasalso not been a great job of branding, with few exceptions. Its a sea ofconfusion. I see a lot of people looking, picking up and finally, out ofdespair, picking one and walking out. There has to be a much more concertedeffort in consumer education and retailer education so the person in the retailenvironment can actually help someone choose.

Second, there is a huge opportunity for dietary supplements to workhand-in-hand with foods. Adding nutritional ingredients to certain foods whenappropriatecalcium in Tropicana is a wonderful examplecan enhance it in away consumers feel safe and understand what it is. The consumer market fordietary supplements is like the Internet, where you have a zillion pages ofcontent and Web sites. What Google did for the Internet is what somebody has todo for dietary supplements.The reason Google has been so successful is itssimple.You go to the page, there is only one page to type in the word and hitthe button, and the results come up.Wow.Thats what we want. Nobody has time anymore, and the average person spends just 22 minutes in thesupermarket shopping. Whatever we can do to help them buy what they need when itcomes to health and wellness in a better way is good.