They say your best prospects may lurk among your own customers. Astute product marketers across the store are finding out just how much that can add to the bottom line, if you pay attention to behavioral changes among your target audience.

Single-serve is becoming a marketing opportunity of choice in more product categories. Campbell’s has been doing it in wet soup, and Kraft has adopted the strategy in cheese.

There’s even an example or two in seafood. I’ll provide one interesting example from Denmark at http://www.packworld.com/package-25272.

In food products, one common denominator in this strategy is snacking. More food marketers are finding ways to increase usage occasions for their products by introducing packaging formats that allow portability and expand on the eat-anywhere concept. By increasing the usage occasions, brands that have reached saturation in their categories might be able to open up new opportunities for sales from their existing customers.

For additional ideas, I also suggest checking out the wine aisle, where marketers continue to reinvest in package improvements that enhance the user experience. Bag-in-box options and single-serve bottles are beginning to appear. And then there are Target Wine Cubes, which offer single-serve portions.

Packaging Machinery and Manufacturers Institute has just released a report identifying beverages as an area of the store where single-serve options will multiply as consumers seek more options for grab-and-go convenience.

What opportunities for increasing product-usage occasions can you identify in your category? Start by looking at
changes in consumer behavior and then identify how you can fill in the gaps.

If you can come up with the right answers, your brand becomes adaptable to the life styles of more of today’s consumers, thereby benefiting the bottom line