Quality, value, and convenience proved crucial at Christmas – AHDB
Convenience, quality, and affordability are important factors that influenced red meat purchases during the hectic Christmas season.
According to AHDB, prior to Christmas, 37% of consumers claimed that high quality products were important to their Christmas meat purchases (You Gov/AHDB Pulse November 2024).
This desire for quality was seen as one of the key drivers to purchase this Christmas, with positive volume change year-on-year seen for premium offerings for both beef and pigmeat, outperforming offerings in the economy tier (Kantar 4 w/e 29 December 2024).
In analysing the sector, Emma Wantling, retail and consumer insight manager at AHDB, noted: “Although the premium tier has had a positive performance throughout 2024, this growth was enhanced over Christmas, highlighting the importance for premium offerings in the festive period.”
When buying premium beef and pork meat, around two in five consumers state that buying British is the most important factor and that assurance around quality is important. For beef, visual factors such as the colour of the meat, the amount of fat and the level of marbling are important quality cues for premium meat (YouGov/AHDB Tracker November 2024). Quality messages have been seen to be key for red meat pack labelling and in-store point of sale communication.
Lamb, with higher market average prices per kilo in general (£10.45 vs £9.48 for beef, £7.53 for pork) already plays at the expensive end of meat offerings and as such the premium tier represented only 4% of volumes at Christmas this year (Kantar 4 w/e 29 December 2024).
Wantling concluded that for Christmas 2025, continued focus on the premium tier will be important, including premium own-label offerings allowing consumers to up trade to a treat at Christmas.
When assessing convenience, the AHDB observed that in the run up to Christmas, 34% of consumers claimed they were going to avoid the supermarket chaos and utilise online retailers more for their Christmas food (IGD Shopper Vista 17 November 2024), and this translated into a +1.3% year-on year volume grown for this channel, with online grocery spend reaching a record £1.6bn, covering 5.6m households this Christmas (Kantar 4w/e 29 December 2024).
From a cooking perspective, prior to Christmas 26% of consumers claimed that meat that was easy to cook was important to them for their Christmas day purchases (You Gov/AHDB Pulse November 2024). This need for convenient cooking is illustrated by a +7.1% volume growth year-on-year for pre-prepared pigs-in-blankets, outperforming their individual components which declined in volume growth (sausages -0.4%, bacon -6.3%, Kantar 4 w/e 29 December 2024). Ready to cook beef steaks and ready to cook pork joints also saw positive year-on-year volume growth this Christmas (+72.9%, 17.5% respectively, Kantar 4 w/e 29 December 2024), suggesting that easy to cook solutions for the main event and meals in the run up to Christmas are key to consumers.
“The trend for convenience is likely to continue through to Christmas 2025, with consumers attracted to meat offerings that are easy and quick to cook,” Wantling said of consumers’ purchasing behaviour.
Given the ongoing cost of living challenges, value for money via promotional activity was highlighted by AHDB as being instrumental in the growth or decline of different meat offerings. Shoppers are likely to continue looking for value into 2025 and paying careful consideration to promotions across the year.
The AHDB found total pork volumes declined this Christmas by 2.1% year-on-year, driven by consumers primarily switching out of pork to chicken. This decline has been seen throughout 2024 and retailers increased share of pork volumes on promotion this Christmas by 2.1% in an attempt to stem this decline. This resulted in a +4.5% volume growth year-on-year for pork offerings on promotion (Kantar 4 w/e 29 December 2024), highlighting that promotions are one lever to pull in the effort to counteract switching to chicken.
Total beef volumes grew +0.8% year-on-year this Christmas. Promotions for beef were particularly important for lower social class consumers, with a +6.4% year-on-year growth in volumes sold on promotion for this group. Here promotions helped consumers manage their budgets through the Christmas period (Kantar 4 w/e 29 December 2024).
For lamb, Christmas 2023 was driven by promotions, with 46.7% of volumes sold on promotion. This Christmas, the share of volumes sold on promotion dropped to 34.2%, in line with earlier years, resulting in lamb volumes declining -2.8%. Despite this, lamb showed a strong performance versus 2022 (+8.2% volumes year-on-year Christmas 2024 vs Christmas 2022).
