Food and Beverage Market Onderzoek

---

De voedings- en drankenindustrie is in beweging. Verschillende factoren zorgen voor verandering in de industrie. Deze factoren zijn onder andere verstedelijking, toegenomen bevolkingsgroei en veranderende consumententrends. De trend naar voedsel en dranken gemaakt van natuurlijke elementen neemt wereldwijd toe. Ook de trend naar online voedselbezorging groeit, wat de focus van dit rapport zal zijn.

Eten bezorgen

Consumers can now order from a broad selection of eateries with a single tap of their mobile phones. Online food delivery platforms continue to increase accessibility and choice. New online platforms are racing to capture consumers and new markets. Platforms are springing up across Asia, the Americas, the Middle East, and Europe. The industry that transports restaurant meals to homes is experiencing rapid change.

Food Beverage Market Research: How Category Leaders Win Shelf, Share, and Loyalty

Food beverage market research separates the brands that grow share from those that defend it. The discipline has matured well past concept tests and tracking studies. Category leaders now treat consumer evidence as an operating input, not a quarterly check-in.

The reader of this article likely runs a business unit measured on volume, margin, and velocity. The pressure points are familiar. Private label has closed the quality gap. Health-driven reformulation collides with taste expectations. Channel economics shift faster than annual planning cycles. The firms pulling ahead are the ones converting sensory and shopper evidence into faster decisions on assortment, pricing, and innovation.

What Modern Food Beverage Market Research Actually Measures

The work has split into four hard categories. Sensory science establishes whether the product wins on the palate. Shopper research establishes whether it wins at the shelf. Concept and claim testing establishes whether the proposition travels. Competitive intelligence establishes whether the moat holds.

Each requires different instruments. A central location test (CLT) with hedonic scaling tells the brand team if a reformulated cola matches the parent SKU. A triangle test or duo-trio test tells R&D whether a sweetener swap is detectable. QDA (quantitative descriptive analysis) panels tell marketing which sensory attributes to feature on pack. JAR (just-about-right) scales paired with penalty analysis show which attributes drag liking, and by how much.

The mistake category teams make is treating these as interchangeable. They are not. A concept that scores well in monadic testing can fail a paired comparison against the incumbent. A product that wins QDA can lose at shelf when shopper context is added.

Where the Best Category Teams Differentiate

The conventional approach runs annual U&A studies, layers in concept tests at gate reviews, and commissions tracking. It produces decisions, but slowly.

The leading approach treats research as an integrated stack. Nestlé, PepsiCo, and Unilever have rebuilt their innovation pipelines around continuous sensory panels, accelerated shelf-life testing (ASLT), and CATA (check-all-that-apply) screening that compresses the concept-to-launch timeline. The competitive advantage is not the methodology in isolation. It is the cadence. A team that can run a CLT, capture penalty analysis, and reformulate in eight weeks beats a team that runs the same sequence in six months.

SIS International Research has observed across food and beverage engagements that the firms gaining share treat descriptive analysis panel calibration as a continuous discipline rather than a project. Calibrated panels detect formulation drift earlier, which protects the brand equity that took decades to build.

The Sensory Methods That Drive Commercial Outcomes

Five methods carry disproportionate weight in commercial decisions.

Central location tests remain the workhorse for liking, purchase intent, and diagnostic feedback. A well-designed CLT with sequential monadic design controls for order effects and produces clean reads on competitive sets.

Discrimination testing answers the question reformulation teams need most. Triangle tests detect whether consumers can tell the difference. Paired comparison tests show which version they prefer. Duo-trio tests confirm parity against a reference standard.

JAR scales with penalty analysis isolate which attributes are too sweet, too thin, or too bitter, and quantify the liking penalty for each. This is the input R&D actually uses.

Temporal dominance of sensations (TDS) captures how flavor evolves across a sip or bite. For functional beverages, plant-based proteins, and reduced-sugar formulations, where aftertaste drives repeat purchase, TDS produces insight no static scale can match.

Napping and projective mapping reveal how consumers actually group competitive products. The output often contradicts the brand team’s assumed competitive set, which redirects positioning.

Shopper, Concept, and Claim Evidence at the Shelf

Sensory wins matter only if the product reaches the basket. Concept-product fit testing connects the two. A concept may score well on its own and a product may score well in CLT, but the alignment between expectation and delivery is what drives repeat.

In SIS International’s structured expert interviews with category managers and quality assurance leaders across U.S. and U.K. food and beverage retailers, the consistent pattern is that private label parity is no longer a quality story. It is a sourcing and sensory benchmarking story. National brands that maintain a measurable sensory advantage on two or three diagnostic attributes hold premium pricing. Those that cannot, lose it.

Clean label perception, plant-based protein sensory gaps, and functional ingredient positioning all hinge on the same mechanism. Consumers accept compromise on one dimension if another is reinforced. The research job is to identify which dimension carries the trade and protect it.

A Decision Framework for Research Investment

The following allocation reflects how mature category teams sequence research spend across the innovation and lifecycle stages.

Source: SIS International Research

The Trends Reshaping Food Beverage Market Research

Four shifts are changing how the work is commissioned.

The sober shift has expanded the non-alcoholic adult beverage category from a niche to a strategic priority for major brewers and spirits houses. Diageo, Heineken, and AB InBev are running sensory programs against a moving target, where consumers expect adult complexity without alcohol’s flavor contribution.

Health reformulation under sodium and sugar pressure has made discrimination testing a board-level instrument. A triangle test result determines whether a reformulated SKU can ship under the parent brand or requires a sub-brand.

Private label sophistication has compressed the premium gap. Costco’s Kirkland Signature and Aldi’s exclusive brands now win blind tests in categories that were untouchable a decade ago. National brand teams that monitor parity through quarterly sensory benchmarking detect erosion before it reaches scanner data.

Functional and plant-based growth has exposed the limits of standard hedonic testing. Liking scales miss the nuance that drives repeat in oat milk, pea protein, and adaptogen-fortified beverages. TDS and descriptive analysis fill the gap.

What the SIS Approach Adds

SIS International’s proprietary research in food and beverage spans CLTs, ethnographic shop-alongs, B2B expert interviews with category managers and sourcing leaders, and competitive intelligence across North American, European, and Asian markets. The recurring finding is that brands win when sensory evidence, shopper evidence, and competitive intelligence are read together, not in sequence.

The discipline rewards specificity. A penalty analysis that quantifies a 0.4-point liking drag on sweetness is more useful than a tracking study showing softening preference. A napping exercise that reveals consumers group a premium juice with functional waters rather than juices changes the merchandising conversation. Food beverage market research earns its budget when it produces decisions of that resolution.

The Outlook

The category teams gaining ground share three habits. They run continuous calibrated sensory panels rather than episodic studies. They integrate shopper and sensory reads before gate reviews, not after. They commission competitive intelligence on formulation and sourcing, not just pricing and promotion. Food beverage market research delivers its full return when it operates as infrastructure, not as a service line.

Over SIS Internationaal

SIS Internationaal biedt kwantitatief, kwalitatief en strategisch onderzoek. Wij bieden data, tools, strategieën, rapporten en inzichten voor besluitvorming. Wij voeren ook interviews, enquêtes, focusgroepen en andere marktonderzoeksmethoden en -benaderingen uit. Neem contact met ons op voor uw volgende marktonderzoeksproject.