Kevin Moffitt with Pear Bureau Northwest:
Pears remain impulse buy for American consumers
MOFFITT: Well the first issue is the fact that pears are just not on people’s list. Not everybody is buying pears. They’re an impulse item with just a small but solid core group that is buying most of the fruit sold.
In a list of top fruit items sold in the U.S. apples come in at the number one spot but pears don’t make the top 10 at number 11.
MOFFITT: And in addition to that, while nearly 90% of consumers buy bananas, apples are close behind at about 83%, grapes come in at 75% and strawberries 71%. Less than 50% of consumers buy pears in any given year. In addition to that 35% of pear purchasers are buying 90% of the pears sold.
He says of those that do buy pears they tend to buy only 7 times per year.
MOFFITT: And they’re purchasing about 1.8 pounds or roughly say 4 pears per trip. That compares with a medium purchaser who’s buying on just about 2 purchase trips per year and they’re buying about 3 pears each trip. And the light purchasers are only buying about once a year and they’re buying about 2 pears. So while we’ll continue to nurture those heavy pear purchasers one key objective is to move those medium pear purchasers up slightly.
Source: aginfo.net