NFPI TO UPDATE STUDY WITH CONSUMER FEEDBACK

JULIE C. BOEHNING

LEESBURG, Va. -- Consumer insight will be added to a study the National Frozen Pizza Institute plans to update, a retail committee decided at NFPI's annual conference here.

General consumer preferences, overlooked in the original study, will be added to the revised version, Steve Greiner, chairman of the retail committee, told members of the McLean, Va.-based NFPI. The mission of NFPI's retail committee is to promote the frozen pizza category through communication with retailers.

The committee said that data on consumer buying habits might determine the underlying reasons for frozen pizza's impressive sales. With the new consumer piece, the committee hopes to provide retailers with demographics and trends.

The original study, conducted in 1994 by Information Resources, Inc., Chicago, determined that pizza, although profitable, is often underpromoted and usually not given enough shelf space at the retail level.

To update the study, NFPI's retail committee and Information Resources will look at sales data from supermarkets where space was increased or decreased after 1994 to determine if frozen pizza sales were affected.

"This might help us make a case to the trade for increased frozen pizza space," Greiner said at the conference, held last month. A goal of the committee, he added, is to strive to make frozen pizza outperform other frozen categories by three times.