Vaccinated Shoppers Prefer Private Brands from Wegmans, Trader Joe's, and Whole Foods

A study conducted by Numerator showed which private label brands in the grocery and health and beauty departments were most purchased among shoppers vaccinated against COVID-19.

While on the surface you may think that a report like this offers little value to the supermarket industry, I would disagree. Just as we segment shoppers by income, gender, ethnicity and the like – being able to dig deeper into +segmentation makes us all smarter marketers. “Brands now have the opportunity to connect consumer buying behavior to much more detailed, individual information — in this case vaccination status,” said Eric Belcher, CEO of Numerator in the study. “230,000 of the consumers in our panel have already shared their vaccination status with us in addition to their purchasing data, demographics and psychographics.

This gives brands a more complete understanding of how their specific consumers are relating to the Delta variant and to design marketing and advertising that better resonates with them.” Takeaways from the survey found that East Coast consumers being 13% more likely to be vaccinated than the average consumer, high-income households being more likely to be vaccinated, and consumers who say they live “very active” lifestyles having the highest vaccination score. Numerator then segmented grocer’s private brands and indexed them based on shopper’s vaccination rates.  Trader Joe’s led with three brands in the top 10, followed by Whole Foods and Wegman’s with two each in the top 10. The top five includes Charles Shaw/Trader Joe’s (128 Vaccinated Shopper Score), Trader Ming’s/Trader Joe’s (124), Food You Feel Good About/Wegmans (123), Whole Foods Market (122), and Hannaford (120).  Noticeable exceptions are private label brands from Safeway, Hannaford, and ShopRite, where the retailer itself did not make the top 10 list.  The full report can be downloaded from Numerators website