KANSAS CITY, Mo. – The Pew Research Center estimates that by 2050 the number of Muslims worldwide will grow to 2.76 billion, or 29.7 percent of the world’s population.
As a market segment, these consumers have specific needs for halal products — that is products that are considered permissible under Islamic law. In Canada, halal-observant consumers are one of the fastest growing consumer segments. Statistics Canada data estimates that by next year, the country’s Muslim population will reach 1.4 million and exceed the size of Canada’s Chinese ethnic market.
So, what are the keys to understanding the halal consumer? What must food companies do to gain their trust?
Tracking consumption trends in this segment is Nourish Food Marketing, publisher of the Halal Shopper Study. Nourish surveyed approximately 1,000 principal halal-observant grocery shoppers across Canada for the sixth installment of the study which found a shift in where halal-observant consumers are doing their grocery shopping.
“Each year we run this study and each year we can correlate the efforts being made in the community with the study results we see,” said Salima Jivraj, client services director at Nourish and founder of Halal Foodie, an online resource featuring restaurants, products and recipes for halal-observant Canadians. “While we see the shift in which grocery stores consumers are shopping, we also continue to see consumer expectations rise.”
In this episode of the MEAT+POULTRY podcast, Jivraj shares insights from the study and what food companies can do to boost their halal-observant consumer base.
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