Using premium to tap into personal values
Premium can mean different things to different people and knowing what premium can mean to different segments of today’s buyers can help bring added value to products.
Hartman Group’s recent Premiumization and Everyday Value(s) 2025 study looked at how buyer’s personal preferences shape buying decisions, especially when it comes to products labeled considered ‘premium.’
As Melissa Abbott, vice-president, syndicated studies with Hartman Group said in an overview of the studies findings, said that notions of what ‘premium’ is has evolved over time with consumers and our buying culture. It used to be that “premium was once [considered] to mean fancy or gourmet,” she said. “You think of Godiva chocolate or Häagen–Daz ice cream. Then you have the ‘foodie’ era where you had stores and even food trucks offering global foods and tastes to people.”
Today, when the word ‘premium’ is used it is consumers placing a value on freshness, sustainability, wellness and convenience, Abbott added.
“Premium is now often defined by a consumer’s persona taste, and sometimes by whatever is the best offering available in a given category at a particular retailer,” she continued. “So premium now comes to be mean what values a shopper associates with a particular food or where the food is purchased.”
For retail operations, it becomes important to know what consumers think makes a product premium to position products to them; and for makers of food products to make their products stand out to these consumers.
Abbot said one group of premium consumers would be defined as ‘optimizers,’ those that look for foods and meals that are convenient, that is meals and foods that make their lives easier and healthier or bring something unique and sought-after to them. She gave the example of Trader Joe’s tapas cheese sampler. “The consumer then does not have to make the [cheese] selection themselves, and it gives them interesting cheeses to try, such as Spanish cheeses that right now are very cool and interesting to many.”
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Often, these optimizers closely aligned with those interested in sustainability and who place a high value on health and nutrition.
“For these consumers, premium tends to be more holistic and that includes such things as foods that are free range, pasture fed, part of regenerative agriculture,” Abbott said. “For them, health and nutrition are ‘premium’ and will even seek products that promote health and wellness, as well as tasting good.”
In the Hartman Group study, some 76% of people surveyed said they were willing to pay for products that they believed are associated with better nutrition or contribute to better health and wellness. 49% of consumers said they accept that better quality costs more and that using natural ingredients in foods makes them healthier and will seek such food and meals out in stores.
What is becoming more important to a growing number of consumers are the stories behind the products and foods purchased. This might include something of the cultural history of the food or tastes presented, of the food or meal origin and importance to the culture it comes from, and the high quality of the ingredients used in its preparation, and the sustainability efforts around where those ingredients are grown.
“Slow roasted, applewood smoked and products made with less processing, and all becoming important . . . as well as emphasizing such things as traditional fermentation used in the food,” Abbot said. “More people want to know who has made these products, what is behind them.”
Abbott also highlighted how sustainability is also covering packaging. Can the package be recycled or is made from recycled and bio-degradable materials, reducing the environmental impact of its disposal. For retail operations the goal to capture these customers who place a higher value on ‘premium’ products then in working to make them stand out on store shelves and grocery and convenience aisles.