HONEY PURCHASE DECISION TREE

One of the best ways to think about the journey to making a honey purchase is by creating a purchase decision tree (below), which illustrates the key considerations that a shopper makes at each step. To shed more light on how people make the decision to purchase honey, we mined information from NHB’s 2024 Consumer Attitudes & Usage Study to look specifically at the factors shoppers consider in different purchase situations.

It begins before someone even heads to the store, when a consumer planning a shopping trip considers whether they will need to purchase honey. NHB’s study found that almost four out of five honey purchase occasions are planned; the consumer either sees they are running low on honey and needs to restock, or they have a special use in mind for honey that has them writing it on their shopping list. The other 21% of purchase occasions are not planned but are decided while shopping in the store.

Nearly two-thirds of all planned honey purchases are driven by the need to restock, while the balance – 16% of overall honey purchase decisions – are due to having a special recipe or use in mind.

Price is the #1 consideration in both situations, followed by size. Next comes consideration of what type or form of honey to purchase and then which brand. Ranked after these first four attributes come consideration of any product claims, specifically whether honey is labeled as local, raw or organic. However, the color or clarity of honey shows up as the #7 criteria when purchasing honey with a recipe or specific use in mind.

Just over half of the unplanned purchases were influenced by seeing something new or different in the honey section. This situation accounted for 11% of overall honey purchase decisions in the study. The balance of unplanned purchase decisions – accounting for 1 in 10 honey purchases – was because the shopper had been motivated by seeing honey on promotion or on display.

When looking at unplanned purchases influenced by seeing something new and different, price is still the #1 consideration but significantly less important than the other purchase situations. On the other hand, the importance of a claim of local or raw/unfiltered rises to the #2 and #3 rankings and an organic claim also has a stronger influence.

For shoppers deciding to purchase based on a display or promotion, the first three considerations are the same as planned purchases – but then several notable differences are apparent. Color or clarity becomes more important and rises in the rankings, while brands are a factor in fewer of the purchase decisions.