Food cannibalises itself: new products, same full of years trafficking smh.com.au

The Mintel global new products database displays that food, beverage and personal annoyance companies compass introduced almost 70 per cent more new products over the past year, but sales have risen just 4.7 per cent on the same period. In the 2007 calendar year there were 6472 new products, up from 3825 in 2006 and 3408 in 2005.

The products include all packaged goods, from shampoo to ready meals, cereal, baby goods and pet food.

Chris Meredith is a retail novelty consultant who has advised multinational conglomerates in the food, mobile phone and banking sectors, including Unilever, the convention endure Roadway ice-cream, Bertolli pasta relish and Bushells tea.

He said fresh effect face were just helping society keep up with rivals. He said few products were innovative enough to leapfrog rivals with rates of sales growth above the market average.

Simply releasing new fragrances, flavours and packaging formats was not enough to urge shoppers to fill their trolleys more than before, Mr Meredith, from the Leading Column consultancy, said.

Companies across a wide variety of products had merely jumped on the environmentally friendly and healthy-living bandwagons in the past year, but had neglected to create innovative products that shoppers actually wanted to buy, he said. In the food market they are captivating everything they can think of elsewhere of products.

Fats are coming out, additives are thriving absent and vitamins are going in but it is not generating bazaar growth." The themes that are emerging in non-food:

Each wants to feel allying they are doing their bit for the environment.

But the discouraging thing is neither of those possession are delivering meaningful mart growth."

The listed bottler Coca-Cola Amatil illustrated this when the new no-sugar Zero drink cannibalised the drinkers of its stablemates Diet Coke and Coke "about 50 per cent", according to its manager executive, Terry Davis.

Mr Meredith said successful virgin products needed to both fill a gap in the market and react to consumer needs by going outside on a limb with a recent service. He pointed to the pay television company Foxtel's IQ live digital recorder and the internet auction site Greys as good examples.

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From http://business.smh.com.au/food-cannibalises-itself-new-prod~.html