Conde Nast and Goldman Sachs expanded its popular “Love List” this year to include food, with some surprising break-out results when their millennial “food enthusiast” base is compared with their national sample.
The top five retailers in that group were:
- Wal-Mart Stores Inc.
- Target
- Whole Foods
- Trader Joe’s
- Costco Wholesale
Compared to the national sample:
- Wal-Mart Stores Inc.
- Costco Wholesale
- Trader Joe’s
- Whole Foods
- Target
See the full list of Top 20 food retailers ranked here.
The catch? The list only included 58 retailers.
The 2017 Food Love List was conducted as an “aided brand affinity study” among a national sample of 7,555 U.S. consumers, with a subset of 564 Conde Nast “Millennial food-enthusiast consumers” who expressed a “high interest in cooking, dining and entertaining.”
The list prompted respondents with 35 attributes they use to describe brands they purchased from a master list of 172 brands and 58 retailers.
“Millennial consumers are looking for good value, convenience and consistency, which is why we’re seeing retailers like Wal-Mart and Target rise to the top of the list,” said Pamela Drucker Mann, chief marketing officer of Condé Nast, in a report on the study. “However, when it comes to the brands they’re choosing to purchase, like Kashi, Clif and Bear Naked, millennials are looking to brands that connect with them and fit into their lifestyles.”