Frozen Food Category Report

A £15m opportunity for Frozen Foods sales online

Analysis from e.fundamentals Insight Manager Helen Thomas,
"Premiumisation is a key category growth driver across grocery in general, but in particular for frozen foods, a category that has been outperforming chilled and ambient in value change."

However, there is room to improve online execution to leverage this consumer trend and further boost online sales.

Research by e.fundamentals has found that premium frozen products do not get their fair share of page-1 search results on retailers’ sites, relative to their share of range. As about 40% of conversions come from appearing on page 1 of search results, e.fundamentals believes this could be costing the category an estimated £15m per year, which would give frozen eCommerce a boost of 2.5% yoy.

Retailers and brands should consider this opportunity and encourage shoppers to trade up through search where possible.

The single biggest contributor to this incremental gain would be the Ice Cream category, which has seen premiumisation driven by NPD in flavour and dairy-free ranges. However, some newer premium market entrants might not have the rate of sale and brand visibility to win in search, so will be under represented, making it even harder to break into the mainstream market. By understanding how retailers’ algorithms work, having a promotional strategy and optimising product content, premium brands can give themselves the best chance of capitalising on this finding.

With Frozen ready meals, there is less of a gap and this is reflective of the premium own label ranges that are prominent in the category, as well as branded products like Weight Watchers.

e.fundamentals unique approach to analysing eCommerce category strategy is a powerful tool which can uncover these incremental gains.

Category Gap between page-1 search results and range share* Incremental Gain
Frozen food opportunity

Retailers included; Asda, Morrisons, Sainsbury’s, Waitrose, Ocado, Iceland

• percentage point gap between a product’s % share of page-1 search results on retailers’ sites and its % value share within its sub-category

Share of range and share of voice data taken from e.fundamentals May and June 2019 and looks at products found online in each category tracked by e.fundamentals and premium vs economy / mainstream brands weighted share of page 1 search for a variety of search terms. Value is an annualised estimate.

For further information see ‘The captain’s table: frozen food category report 2019’ in The Grocer Magazine.