Blue Chip Consumer Packaged Goods Companies Are Leveraging Penton's New Hope Natural Media's NEXT Trend for Early Innovation

Business Intelligence Solution Offers Pre-shelf Product Data, Predictive Consumer Segmentation and Concept Lab for Food and Beverage Companies, Retailers, Suppliers and Investment Firms in the Natural and Healthy Living Market

News provided by

Penton

Mar 06, 2014, 09:00 ET

ANAHEIM, Calif., March 6, 2014 /PRNewswire/ -- Penton's New Hope Natural Media announced that blue chip consumer packaged goods companies – TwinLab, MetaBrand, Lundberg Family Farms, General Mills Small Planet Foods, Clorox, Kellogg's Kashi, Quinoa Corporation, and PepsiCO – are among those using NEXT Trend to gain a competitive edge when bringing natural products to market. NEXT Trend offers proprietary pre-shelf natural products data, future trend predictions and insights, a predictive consumer segmentation, custom research and extensive industry expertise that helps enterprise level companies quickly recognize and act on emerging, high-growth market opportunities.

(Logo: http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20140306/CL76677LOGO)

NEXT Trend assists consumer products companies, retailers, suppliers and investment firms identify key market drivers; predict which pre-shelf products and ingredients are poised for widespread adoption; develop targeted, localized go-to-market strategies; and minimize risk and accelerate speed to market with a fast, affordable, early product concept filter.

"The natural products industry is a burgeoning market that is projected to grow to $226 billion by 2018 with an annual growth rate of 8.6 percent," said Fred Linder, SVP, Penton. "NEXT Trend leverages 35 years of New Hope's proprietary pre-shelf data to deliver intelligence, insights and innovation. The natural products industry is a high-growth market that is becoming more mainstream, and we are seeing an emerging need for data and insights that can help companies successfully innovate and position themselves to gain a healthy share of the next trends in natural products."

Bill Tuohig, Vice President and Product Leader of New Hope Natural Media said, "NEXT Trend's pre-shelf data, predictive market intelligence and progressive data science techniques provide companies with the analytical capabilities and insights to drive innovation at both an emerging and mass market level."

Next Trend's exclusive pre-shelf data includes: 30+ top trends, 40,000+ products, ingredients and attributes, 8,000+ ingredients, and 1,000+ product categories.

"NEXT Trend has provided us with early stage intelligence around new product innovation at Lundberg Family Farms. The tool complements traditional scan data and offers interesting product and ingredient insights that are unique to the natural and organic industry. It's been valuable in identifying trending ingredients and relevant claims to consider incorporating on our packages," said Todd Kluger, VP of Sales and Marketing, Lundberg Family Farms.

New Hope Natural Media's Predictive Consumer Segmentation is also overlaid within NEXT Trend to help brands and retailers identify and target consumers who are most likely to be early adopters of natural products and corresponding high success potential regions in the United States. Five key consumer segments differentiated by early adoption, lifestyles, behaviors and beliefs toward health and wellness were created from the research, redefining traditional market segmentation. The segmentation allows companies to effectively target interested, passionate consumers and provides them with concepts and marketing strategies to optimize product innovation.

NEXT Trend also provides a dynamic Product Concept Lab within the Predictive Consumer Segmentation, which allows product innovators to test new product concepts early in the new product development cycle. This fast product filter allows innovators to focus on high potential product concepts, which saves time and money and decreases new product development cycle times.

"Discovering a consumer segment that is passionate about health and wellness, are new product early adopters, and are willing to pay a premium price to stay healthy and maintain their appearance, is rare in today's natural products market. As our innovation team was exploring growth opportunities, the NEXT Trend solution revealed a new, racially diverse, male consumer segment called the #Young4Ever's with these attitudes and beliefs. A high potential product concept was validated when the consumer segment was overlaid with NEXT Trend's certification and category insights," said Ed Rinker, Research Fellow, Open Innovation Networks, Clorox.

To learn more or see NEXT Trend in action, visit www.nexttrend.com. To schedule a demo, please contact Colin Gerard, Sales Manager at [email protected] or (303) 998-9170.

About New Hope Natural Media
New Hope Natural Media, a division of Penton, is the leading media resource and information provider for the natural, organic and healthy products industry, with print, in-person/event, and e-business products and services.

About Penton
Penton is a professional information services company. We engage and inform millions of professionals every day, helping them decide how to grow and solve their most critical business challenges. As a leading provider of workflow solutions and insightful content, marketing services and networking via in-person and online events, we help businesses do business. We focus our industry expertise on five core growth markets - agriculture, transportation, natural products/food, infrastructure, and industrial design and manufacturing.