Five Big Findings From Nielsen’s Research On The Canadian Consumer

November 8th, 2016 | Matthew Chung, Manager, Communications and Content

Dale King
Dale King

Nielsen recently released its Insights 2016 Report, which provides a 360-degree view of the Canadian consumer. ACA sat down with Dale King, Director of Client Services at Nielsen Canada, to discuss the report’s findings and the top takeaways from it. Dale and her colleague Stephen Schnier, Client Service Representative, Nielsen Media, Canada, presented all of the findings on Nov. 8 during an ACA Webinar.

ACA: What did Nielsen find is top of mind for the Canadian consumer making purchasing decisions in 2016?

King: Canadian consumers are extremely price conscious. Overall, they value getting the most out of their dollar over other purchasing factors, such as product selection and loyalty. Product quality is more important for them when looking at categories such as grocery and CPG products, but price is still a strong factor and price is considered more important than brand origin by Canadians.

Price is definitely a primary consideration in decision making for Canadian consumers. Consumer Confidence – which refers to consumers’ willingness to spend, view of their personal finances and job security – has been soft since 2014. It was measured at an index of 95 in Q2 of this year and Q3 results released this week put it at 97. Going hand-in-hand with this tentative confidence is consumer’s behaviour of saving more than they are spending. They are paying off debts and putting off major purchases in order to save for the future.

Are Canadians weighing a tradeoff between paying lower prices or buying local?

King: With regard to purchasing goods that are uniquely Canadian, there are niche consumers that will pay a premium for local, but for the majority of the population price will trump local. In our research, we saw that price was more important than even taste. While some age groups were more influenced by local, in general consumers across age groups are making purchasing-decisions with pricing at the forefront.

Your report notes that between now and 2020, Millennial spending on CPG products will grow 107%. What will this mean for CPG companies?

King: With Millennials being such a large cohort, it is important for any company to have a Millennial strategy – and ideally already executing it. As Millennials get older and rely more on CPG products, they will purchase these products more than boomers. This means that CPG companies will have to adapt to the product preferences of Millennials, such as their being more focused on the environment and more price conscious.

Your research also examines the viewing habits of the Canadian consumer. Are you seeing shifts in terms of the amount of time Canadian consumers spend engaging with content across platforms?

King: More than 45% of Canadians are currently, or have in the past, used a paid streaming service and time spent streaming is increasing. However, TV still dominates SVOD in total hours spent, at 20.4 hours per week spent watching TV, on average, versus 5.6 hours of SVOD TV viewing per week. However, while there are more mediums that are capturing consumers’ attention, TV remains an important medium for mass reach for all targets – even families with children, which are the highest consumers of SVOD.

Have there been surprising trends in the media landscape here in Canada?

King: One of the interesting things we saw was that there were spending increases in only two media categories – and not the ones you’d expect. Radio saw a .2% increase while spending on outdoor was up 4.1%. Our research shows over 60% of Canadians still discover new music through radio and now digital radio – in particular the tough-to-reach Millennial crowd. Given the large amount of discussion about digital and the number of opportunities within digital streams this may be surprising to some. But it adds needed perspective on traditional mediums that have maintained their value with marketers.

Download a recording of the ACA Webinar: Nielsen’s Media Insights Presentation. Nielsen will participate in another ACA Webinar on December 6th, about the Millennial Mindset. They will talk about Millennials being the We, More and Now generation. If that sound a little like how Boomers were described 30 years ago – it is true that they are very like their parents, but their actions are amplified by their ability to be so connected.