Simple, green sells

Green going strong
Even with the economic downturn, consumers continue to purchase sustainable or green products. Packaged Facts, a market research firm, reports that U.S. supermarket sales of “ethical” products, including organic produce, will increase 8.7 percent in 2009 to about $38 billion.

The Organic Trade Association said organic sales in the United States reached $24.6 billion in 2008. The growth rate for food and non-food organic products was 17 percent from 2007 to 2008. Organic food is the largest segment of the organics market, totaling nearly $23 billion in sales and accounting for 93 percent of all organic sales. The growth rate for organic food products from 2007 to 2008 was 15.8 percent. Non-food organic products saw an annual growth rate in 2008 of 39.4 percent over 2007. Non-food items include flowers, fiber, clothing, personal care products, household cleaners, pet food and nutritional supplements.

Reuters reports that some experts say more consumers are increasingly thinking about their purchases from both a financial and environmental perspective. Shelley Balanko, vice president of ethnographic research at marketing consulting company Hartman Group, told the news agency that consumers are realizing green products offer better quality and cause less harm to the environment.

Buying on a whim
Although consumers may be thinking more about what they buy and where they buy, impulse buying is still going strong. In a national ShopSmart poll of 1,000 women about their impulse shopping, 60 percent indicated they made an impulse purchase within the past year. And 39 percent had made an impulse purchase within the past month.
Unfortunately, flowers didn’t rank as one of the top selling impulse items. We’ve got work to do.