Consumers can be very vocal with their concerns around the ethical, environmental and health related impacts of producing and consuming meat. There is increasing pressure on companies operating in this sector to acknowledge these concerns and to come up with more ethical, more popular alternatives.
There is ample work in this area with plant based, insect based and with cell-based products.
The plant-based alternatives are already competing in the market, they appear to have their limitations and not all consumers seem to be as enthusiastic about them as they are in voicing their ethical concerns about meat.
Insect and other protein-based alternatives are being trialled, but are struggling to gain consumer acceptance, while cell-based meats have a distance to travel yet before we see them on the market in any significant way.
But are these ever going to gain sufficient traction to become truly viable alternatives to our traditional meat-based meals?
It is clear that plant-based alternatives are struggling to move beyond their current market share and that, even with improved products consistently reaching the market, they are having minimal affect upon overall meat consumption.
Will insect-based products and/or cell-based meat fare any better?
One thing that we can be certain of is that they will not be an easy sell.
If these alternative proteins are to have any significant impact they will need to be positioned very thoughtfully and their consumption experience thought through very carefully.
Consumers are very good a pointing out the issues about the foods that they are currently eating but are not so good at changing their consumption habits, especially when presented with something new or different.
The fact that insects are an ethical, sustainable alternative to meat or that cell-based meats remove live animals from the food-chain altogether does not overcome the visceral reaction that many consumers have at the thought of eating them.
Logical arguments around ethics, environment and health will not be sufficient.
Those of us that remember the Monsanto saga when genetic modification became “Frankenstein Foods” and the advance of pest resistant, high yielding crops with the potential to dramatically improve crop viability in marginal agricultural regions and feed millions more cheaply, was set back by public resistance to the unknown and misunderstood.
Alternative proteins and cell-based meat are a part of our future, but their acceptability and how quickly they can become part of the mainstream is yet to be understood.
Who will be the winners in gaining the early market share is not dependant upon their technology or even their ability to create innovative products. Success will depend upon their ability to create and market products that overcome consumers’ initial negative emotional responses to them.
Those that succeed will do so because they identify the emotional and psychological drivers for, and objections against, these products and develop communications and product experiences that hit the correct emotional cues.
It will not be easy. You need to step back from the logical evaluations of your products and examine your consumers’ psychological expectations and their emotional responses to your consumption experience.
You need to deliver products that not only have an attractive ethical, environmental, health story but also have, within the consumption experience, cues that confirm these expectations while also feeling sufficiently familiar not challenge your consumer.
Success with alternative proteins will require cutting edge science and R&D, creativity in design and a very considered appeal to the psychological/emotional requirements of the consumers as well as their more vocally broadcast, more rational, concerns.
Chris Lukehurst is a Consumer Psychologist and a Director at The Marketing Clinic:
Providing Clarity on the Psychological relationships between consumers and brands
