ORLANDO, Fla. —A roast by any other name might sell just as well, but separate consumer research efforts by the National Pork Board and Merck Animal Health indicate that the standard terminology used in meat departments could be having a bigger than expected impact on consumer purchases and, ultimately, shopper satisfaction.For example, when surveying both heavy pork consumers and average pork consumers, NPB found that a majority of both groups believed that “top loin” pork chops were superior to pork loin chops or pork rib chops.
“The top loin pork chop was overwhelmingly thought to be tender, better quality, and what both groups would purchase,” Jarrod Sutton, assistant vice president of channel marketing for the National Pork Board, explained during the “Marketing and Merchandising: Case Studies in Understanding Consumer Choices” session here at the 2012 Annual Meat Conference.
“We dug into this a little bit. Because anyone who knows anything about meat — the darker the color, the more marbling, you guys know the good eating experience that results. But as we get into the nomenclature research, you can quickly find out that consumers thought the top loin chops were the best because they say 'top.' Top's the best, right? This is what consumers are telling us, and it's across the board.”
NPB is on the case, and will be conducting further analysis to assess possible changes to pork cut terminology during the coming year.
Similarly, consumer panels conducted by Merck Animal Health as part of their effort to develop web-based training videos for store-level staff in conjunction with the National Cattlemen's Beef Association, revealed that standard terms used to describe beef production might not be optimal.
Surprisingly, consumers tended to prefer the term “farmer” to describe people who raised beef, rather than the more standard “rancher.” And “traditional” beef was preferred to “conventional” beef, when describing beef that wasn't organic.
“It's simple things like that that we don't typically think of as an industry,” Kyle Pfeiffer, account manager for Food Chain Affairs at Merck Animal Health explained in this week's issue of SN.
Our Marketing manager sent me this yesterday. In my area, I'm not too concerned about vague names. We present our product as it should be but I've worked where varying terms were used to try to increase sales. Mock tender steak/roast turned into "petite tender steak/roast" or even sometimes the old timers would throw a mock steak or 2 in with a tenderloin steak family pak. Some customers never knew the difference, but MOST did!!! It's one of the reasons that store is no longer there.
I think it's in the wording, I sell a giant pork and hot chilli sausage in the summer and call it Welsh Dragon sausage. Then in the winter to secure sales I then rename them Winter Warmers, It works.
I believe something called URMIS (or something like that) was set up to be a standard for primal/steak descriptions many years ago
it is confusing-I got hit yesterday with a good question what is a sirloin tip steak? This store used this description on loin tips/sirloin tips/steakhouse tips or my fav tender-loin tips
the knuckle is out of the round, so it should be round tip, or tip steak cap on/off
even the beef made easy posters have sirloin tip steak for coming out of a knuckle-when i first started the steaks from a knuckle were called face steaks and the roast was called a rump roast
A few years ago, of all places-way up north in maine, a meatcutter asked me what is a country fried chicken steak? A customer was asking for it- I said I think it's a beef cube steak- dipped in milk , then flour-ready to fry-well we put quite a few out, and they all sold-we even ran some bnls chicken breast thru the cuber , for chicken fried steak with chicken-and it sold- most have never heard of it-til they saw it on the cookin channel- now he has his own name for it-named it after the town he is in-that way no one can duplicate it
the petite sirloins from a top-butt , have many creative names to them, as do shoulder tenders from terras majors
what we use to call swiss steaks from the bottom round-I saw called western grillers-from the national cattlemans beef assoc.-I think thats pushing it-tough damn steak no matter what you call it
