A new survey indicates rising consumer satisfaction with their diets, and it also examines shoppers' access to and preference of the type of stores where they purchase food.
The share of consumers who indicated they are either “rather happy” or “very happy” with their diets rose from 81% in January 2024 to 87% last month, according to the April 2024 Consumer Food Insights report from Purdue University.
The CFI report also found that urban consumers are more likely than rural consumers to be happy with their diets, according to a news release.
The survey-based report out of Purdue University’s Center for Food Demand Analysis and Sustainability assesses food spending, consumer satisfaction and values, support of agricultural and food policies, and trust in information sources. Purdue experts conducted and evaluated the survey, which included 1,200 consumers across the U.S.
“Over the past 28 months, we’ve measured food insecurity among rural households that is nearly twice the rate of urban households, 22% versus 14%, respectively,” the report’s lead author, Joseph Balagtas, a Purdue agricultural economics professor and Center for Food Demand Analysis and Sustainability director, said in the release. “Poverty rates are higher in rural areas, and one consequence of poverty is that it is harder to afford to put food on the table.”
Shoppers' access to stores
The April survey included questions related to consumers’ store choices, the release said. Specifically, it gauged what types of food stores consumers have available to them and which of these available stores they shopped at in the last month.
The survey covered what a typical shopping trip is like for consumers and which store attributes are important to them when deciding where to shop. Also included was how responses differ between rural and urban consumers, the release said.
The most commonly accessible store formats are traditional grocery stores (accessible to 82% of the sample) and superstores (82%), followed by dollar stores (66%), club stores (57%) and convenience stores (51%), according to the release.
Accessibility differs along the rural-urban divide. Grocery stores are slightly less accessible for the rural population than the urban population (76% versus 83%), while superstores (89% versus 82%) and dollar stores (78% versus 64%) are more accessible for the rural population.
The store format with the biggest difference in accessibility is club stores.
“Only 30% of the rural population compared to 60% of the urban population tell us they have access to club stores,” Balagtas said.
Consumers' store preferences
The researchers also find some rural-urban differences in store choice.
“Among people with access to grocery stores, rural people are slightly less likely to shop at grocery stores and slightly more likely to shop at superstores,” Balagtas said.
About 60% of rural households with access to a dollar or discount store shopped at one in the last 30 days, according to the survey.
This finding aligns with 2021 market research of the USDA Economic Research Service that highlights dollar-store market growth in rural U.S. nonmetro areas.
The university's Center for Food Demand Analysis and Sustainability researchers also attempted to gauge the importance of different store attributes in respondents’ decision-making process.
Following previous literature regarding store choice, they asked consumers to rate the importance of key items on a scale from 1, or not at all important, to 5, or very important.
“The top-rated attributes were ‘food selection,’ ‘offering of fresh produce’ and ‘price,’ which received average ratings of 4.6, 4.6 and 4.5 out of 5, respectively,” report co-author Elijah Bryant, a survey research analyst at the Center for Food Demand Analysis and Sustainability, said in the release.
“Out of the listed attributes, ‘online shopping’ received the lowest average rating at 3.1. However, it should be noted that this does not imply that online shipping is not important to consumers. It just did not score as high on the scale,” Bryant said.
The Center for Food Demand Analysis and Sustainability researchers further asked consumers to pick the attribute they consider most important when choosing where to buy groceries. One-third of consumers selected “price” as the most important attribute, followed by “food selection” (19%) and “offering of fresh produce” (12%), the release said.
“Many consumers appear to be cost-focused when choosing where to shop, especially rural consumers, about half of whom picked ‘price’ as the most important attribute when picking where to shop,” Bryant said. “Inflation over the past few years may have more consumers conscious of the cost of their groceries.”
Average weekly food spending rose to $202 last month, up 10% from April 2023 and 17% from April 2022. Rural households spend less each week on food away from home than urban households. This likely resulted from rural residents eating fewer meals at restaurants, Bryant said.
The consumer price index measure of food inflation remained unchanged from last month at 2.2%. This is the first time the index has not decreased since it peaked at 11.3% in August 2022.
As for consumer beliefs and trust, the survey showed that urban consumers are more likely to view agriculture as a significant contributor to climate change than are rural U.S. residents. Many of the latter rely on agriculture as an economic driver.
“Similarly, more urban consumers, 50%, believe that eating less meat is better for the environment than rural consumers, 38%,” Bryant said. Even so, the researchers see few differences in the level of trust in different sources of food-related information, the release said.
“However, the USDA, which works closely with the agriculture industry and rural economies, scores higher on the trust index among rural consumers compared to urban consumers,” Bryant said.
Related link: View the April 2024 Consumer Food Insights report from Purdue University