New Report Uncovers American Foodies Are Hungry for ‘Foreign Foods’

New consumer insights for food & drink exporters from outside the USA

Marketing ‘Foreign Foods’ in a “Buy Local” Market is Green Purse PR’s new syndicated report exploring American consumers’ perceptions around products’ country of origin. Too often brands coming from outside the USA are disadvantaged as retailers in America prefer local or American products over foreign. We believe producers should feel proud to tell the world where they are from and be perceived as more unique and special for it.

We conducted qualitative research in late 2019 with 25 American consumers across the USA to understand how (if at all) products’ country of origin impacts what products get into their shopping carts. We choose to focus most on how Americans perceive products from Australia, Iceland, Ireland and New Zealand. We choose these countries as they tend to offer a lot of products that fall into the categories we know best — specialty food & beverage and natural products. We also honed in on some specific, premium product categories, including: meat, seafood, wine, olive oil, honey, chocolate and specialty salts.

Our research resulted in identifying many useful consumer insights regarding how Americans perceive foreign food & drink in general, as well as perceptions of each of the focus countries, how they make purchase decisions in these key categories, how receptive they are to country of origin and provenance stories, as well as how best to reach and connect with American consumers. Our report includes several recommendations for exporters to better leverage their unique country of origin story to appeal to American consumers hungry for the different and exotic.

We are now delivering our report, Marketing ‘Foreign Foods’ in a “Buy Local” Market, Exploring American Consumers’ Perceptions Around Products’ Country of Origin, with a focus on your country and product category.