BY Rachel Cagle
Lily's Sweets, the leader in the no-added-sugar movement with its botanically-sweetened chocolate and confections, announced the results of a survey conducted to learn just how much Americans love chocolate. The study, commissioned by Lily's earlier this year, revealed while 82% of U.S. adults claim to be limiting the amount of sugar in their diet, nearly 1 in 5 people are still eating chocolate at least once a day.
Our chocolate obsession outweighs our intent to reduce sugar
The Lily's study revealed four out of every five U.S. adults are reducing sugar. Additionally, 36% claimed to be doing so more than last year, and 45% expect to increase this behavior next year. That being said, 62% of chocolate category consumers agree they'd eat more chocolate if it was healthier, and nearly half of the people surveyed said they'd feel less guilty eating chocolate if it contained lower amounts of sugar.
What we'd give up for chocolate
So just how much do Americans love chocolate? Chocolate category consumers love this satisfying treat so much they would surprisingly give up many of their favorite things for a chance to win chocolate for a year:
- 51% agree they'd give up their favorite alcoholic beverage for a week
- 48% agree they'd give up makeup for a week
- 48% would say so long to social media for a week
- 28% even agreed they'd give up sex for a month
According to those stats, Americans love deals on chocolate almost as much as they love the sweet itself. Sales on dark chocolate and other chocolates with less sugar in them can be advertised to Candy/Chocolate Shop Shoppers both traditionally and digitally. According to AudienceSCAN, these shoppers' favorite emails include coupons/discount codes and limited-time offers/sales, and last year, about half of this audience took action after receiving an email ad. Within the last month, 55.2% of this audience turned to the internet to find coupons or discount codes, with 51.2% taking action after finding ads on daily deals sites such as Groupon last year. Also last year, these shoppers took action after receiving direct mail ads, seeing TV commercials, either receiving an ad via text or seeing ads on their mobile smartphone apps, and seeing ads in both print and digital magazines and newspapers.
AudienceSCAN data is available for your applications and dashboards through the SalesFuel API. In addition, AdMall contains industry profiles on chocolate confectionery producers and candy shops, as well as lead lists at the local level. Media companies, sales reps and agencies can access this data with a subscription to AdMall from SalesFuel.