Anyone who knows about ice cream knows about Unilever. The company rules the European market under various different brand guises, and is also one of the largest ice cream manufacturers in the world, with a 17 per cent market share. So when it says the industry needs to seriously rethink the way it targets consumers, or face ice cream being left out of touch with its customers, and therefore out of pocket, it makes sense to listen. "One of the reasons we feel ice cream consumption has gone down over the last ten years is that the industry has not followed where the consumers are going," says Gaby Vreeken, Unilever's business director for ice cream in the UK. "For example, ten years ago people did not spend a lot of time in shopping centres at the weekend, and the face of city centres has changed. There used to be a lot of convenience stores but these have been replaced by retail chains, which means people are less able to buy your products." According to Vreeken, this is a problem that is facing the ice cream industry throughout Europe. He also believes that the way ice cream is perceived by consumers needs to be addressed, and the best way to do that is perhaps the most obvious: find out what the consumers think.
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