The avocado has experienced almost unprecedented sales growth in the U.S. market over the past decade and there is evidence that it is the “super users” that are driving that growth and should be the consumer segment retailers target.

At least that is the conclusion of some market research analysis commissioned by the Hass Avocado Board. In late July, Steven Muro, president of Fusion Marketing, which analyzed the data in the report, presented a webinar outlining the importance of “Super Users”, as well as “Heavy Users” and “Hispanic” households to the avocado category.

Muro revealed that the data was delivered by IRI, a syndicated data compiler that surveys representative groups to gauge consumer trends. Simply put, Muro said super avocado users are “the avocado shoppers you must have to grow sales.”

For this study, the data focused on the shopping habits of avocado buying households in the 2016 to 2019 time frame.

In 2016, avocado households were categorized into four groups: light, medium, heavy and super users. Each group represented 25 percent of avocado shoppers. “Light Users” were identified as those purchasing less than $5 of avocados per year while the “Super Users” topped $25 per year. “Medium Users” were roughly in the $5 to $11 sales arena while “Heavy Users” spent between $11 and $25 annually.

Studying the purchasing of these shoppers — and using the same dollar amount demarcation — the research showed that both super and heavy users gained market share during that four-year period while light and medium users represented a smaller number of the overall category and spent less money annually on average. Muro theorized that this actually represented growth for those 2016 shoppers as many obviously moved up the ladder. In 2019, heavy and super users represented 54 percent of avocado shoppers while light and medium users only represented 46 percent. Clearly some shoppers in the lower half moved to the upper half and some heavy users moved into the super user category.  Overall, Muro said two million more households purchased avocados in 2019 than did so in 2016.

The data shows that the heavy and super users purchased a whopping 90 percent of avocados sold at retail in 2019. These two groups represent a bit more than 35 percent of U.S. households as avocados have a market penetration of close to two-thirds of all households. The other 65 percent of the population bought only about 10 percent of the avocados sold at retail.

While this might point to some significant upside for avocado sales, this webinar was focused on how critical these over-indexed shoppers are to retail sales growth. In fact, Muro said the super and heavy users accounted for 100-percent of the growth in the category during the four-year time frame studied.

Muro also took a look at Hispanic households, which is another population segment that is very important to the avocado category.  Not surpisingly, Hispanics housholds skew largely toward the heavy and super user categories. As a group, Hispanics represent 17 percent of the population but purchase 21 percent of avocados, measured by dollar sales. The penetration in the Hispanic households is approaching 85 percent and that segment continues to increase its avocado purchases. From 2016 to 2019, dollar sales increased 8 percent. In fact, Hispanic households spent an average of $28 annually purchasing avocados while non-Hispanic households were $22 annually. “Hispanics are a powerful group and ally” in growing avocado sales, according to Muro. The study showed that though they only represent 17 percent of households, they accounted for almost one quarter of growth in the period studied.

The bottom line, according to the longtime marketing expert, is that retailers need to focus their attention on super users in the avocado category, which almost certainly includes a healthy percentage of the Hispanic households in their marketing territory.