Provenance and ethics important in 2011

Sainsbury's and Morrisons are already competing with strong campaigns on fresh food provenance, the Grocer reports. According to Kantar, Morrisons' advertising showed good results, with a 7.3 per cent year-on-year uplift in sales of fresh and chilled goods despite the supermarket's overall market share slipping from 12.1 per cent to 12 per cent. There was an opportunity for organic to bounce back following increased demand for premium fresh food, said the company, but organic must be linked to superior product quality, the news source wrote. "Fresh is still a real point of difference for supermarkets," said Kantar's Ed Garner to the Grocer. According to Garner, the mood has shifted and people are talking about food rather than price. He claimed things like free-range, Fairtrade, sustainability and local would become more important. Garner warned against relying on the organic label alone to deliver sales. "The top four organic brands are doing well because they are quality products, not just because they are organic."