NWPB to employ variety of research initiatives to promote watermelons
The National Watermelon Promotion Board’s Research Committee is responsible for developing and implementing research to help the promotion and education programs, health and nutrition research, and other topics supporting the promotion of watermelon.
New in 2023, the board will work with Fusion Marketing to execute consumer research that will provide key insights into the watermelon consumer, which will aid in building consumer demand.
“The research will identify and measure the importance of attitudes, usage and purchase behaviors of watermelon shoppers,” said Mark Arney, executive director of the NWPB. “Additionally, the findings can be used to further develop the established benchmark of consumer trends to measure the progress of marketing goals and objectives.”
The board will continue to work with IRI to provide a snapshot of the retail scene using retail scanner data. The report produced from the research includes national, regional and market-level data for whole, mini and cut watermelon. This report, coupled with the Retail Ad Report sourced from Specialty Crops Marketing News, provides a thorough overview of watermelon at retail.
Also new, the board will work with Menu Matters to establish a new benchmark to measure operator use of watermelon. This benchmarking work will build off past research, and key issues to benchmark include usage and perceptions of watermelon, watermelon formats used, applications for watermelon, key hurdles and drivers.
On the health and nutrition research front, the board will invest in Watermelon Rind Nutrition Analysis to analyze the nutrition qualities of watermelon rind with the goal of getting watermelon rind in the USDA Foundational Foods Database as a part of Food DataCentral and create a nutrition facts panel for use across all marketing and communications programs.
Additionally, the Board will fund Evaluating the Microbiome, Energy Balance, Lipids, Oxidative Stress and Neurocognition in Adolescents and Young Adults with Florida Gulf Coast University.
Lastly, Wild Hive has been in a partnership with the NWPB on the Nutrition Research program since 2017 and continues to support the team from the Nutrition Research RFP in order to leverage the results of published research studies through targeted media relations.
