Retailers should have more solid, nutrition-based data with which to market mushrooms when a pair of professors at St. Joseph’s University, Philadelphia, complete research over the next two years.
Neal Hooker, professor of food marketing, and his partner, John Stanton, also a food marketing professor, are working under a $330,000 U.S. Department of Agriculture specialty crop initiative grant to identify strategies to help retailers better promote, advertise and price mushrooms.
The pair wants to study “center-of-store strategies,” such as communication tactics, and implement them in the produce department, Hooker said.
The research will focus on how retailers can use the nutrition qualities of mushrooms to sell more of them.
When mushrooms pass through an ultraviolet light treatment, their vitamin D content is elevated to 100% of the daily recommended intake, he said.
Since vitamin D is associated with calcium absorption in the body, a deficiency could lead to concerns over bone health or osteoporosis, Hooker said. There’s also emerging evidence of other potential benefits of mushrooms, such as promoting heart health and fighting cancer.
Gary Schroeder, president of Kennett Square, Pa.-based Oakshire Mushroom Farm, which does business as Dole Mushrooms, has a degree from the university’s food marketing program. He said he also is a principle investigator in the study.
Dole Mushrooms is a lead innovator when it comes to focusing on the relationship between mushrooms and vitamin D, he said.
“It was a natural fit that we would be the industry partner.”
There already have been some successes in marketing fruits and vegetables based on their nutrient content, he said, citing blueberries and their antioxidant message as an example.
The study will include all produce, Schroeder said, “but we’re going to use mushrooms and vitamin D as our test case on how to get consumers to be more responsive and how to talk to consumers about the health benefits of produce and eating more produce.”
Researchers will study whether consumers realize the nutritional value of mushrooms and whether they will be willing to pay for that advantage, he said.
They’ll also look at how packaging, labeling and messaging resonate with consumers.
Researchers conducted their first focus groups late in 2011 to explore what consumers understand about vitamin D and whether they make the connection that mushrooms can be a good source of the vitamin, Hooker said.
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