When Vegan Shoppers Aren’t Vegan: Uncovering Customer Intelligence

Your target audience might not be as intuitive as you think. Maybe you specialize in making men’s razors only to discover that women like them better. Maybe your brand has been targeting working moms when they should be taking a closer look at stay-at-home dads. This is where the value of customer intelligence comes in.

Take vegan products. Did you know that only 12% of people buying vegan brands are actually vegan?

People are increasingly turning to plant-based products for either health, environmental or animal rights reasons, and brands of all sizes are looking to capitalize on this fast-growing market. And with the rise of flexitarianism, there is no one-size-fits-all approach to marketing a vegan product. Solely targeting those that identify as vegan leaves 88% of the total available market untouched, according to our study.
What does this mean for brands looking to disrupt or make their mark in the vegan category? Or, for that matter, anyone trying to land their product

Understanding the category dynamics, who your target audience is, and what they are looking for in the brands they buy is crucial to your long-term success.

By painting a clear picture of what your target market looks like and what they look for in your category, you can develop messaging and refine your brand positioning to land your product’s value proposition and, ultimately, drive growth.

Divvying Customers into Segments
Get better customer intelligence by segmenting your target audience. Segmenting your target audience allows you to understand the groups that operate in the market, what drives them, and how you should be communicating with them.

Target audience segmentation falls broadly under four buckets:

• Location: Where are they based geographically? Do they live in the city or in rural locations?
• Demographics: What are their personal characteristics? Their gender, age, race and nationality?
• Lifestyle: What is their mindset and what are their interests? What is important to them?
• Behaviors: How do they interact with brands in the category? Do they have propensity to buy?

Take the lifestyle bucket, for example. In our vegan study, we discovered that 80% of Vegan shoppers only drink 1-2 cups of coffee per month, and over half work out more than three times per week.

These discoveries, coupled with the fact that only 12% of them actually identify as vegan, would inform the type of communications and the channels with which you’d target your audience.

Establishing Category Needs
So now you that know what your target market looks like, you need to get to grips with what these consumers want from the category.

Understanding category needs – as well as how your competitors deliver on these needs – will help identify white space for you to make your mark. It will also help define where you should focus your messaging and product positioning. Category needs aren’t limited to pure product function either – it’s also about how people interact with your brand as a whole.

For example, we found that Vegan shoppers expect the brands they interact with to be openly committed to doing the right thing – they must have Integrity. In fact, since the beginning of February, the importance Vegan shoppers place on Integrity has risen by 12%.


Integrity is one of our 16 Drivers of brand growth which, together, determine the strength of a brand’s relationship with people. A brand that scores high on Integrity is defined as “one that has principles and does the right thing.” This could be through something like a commitment to sustainability and how well this is communicated, or through something like promoting the diversity of the company’s Board. Provenance also has a big role to play in how well a brand scores in Integrity; especially if the product makes ethical or organic claims.

Our Brand Management platform, ProQuo AI, provides small and medium sized businesses with an always-on understanding of where their brand stands. AI-powered brand guidance tells brands what they need to do, daily, to be their best.

So, before launching your vegan product, you can find out which of the 16 Drivers are most important in the category. Understanding your brand and your competitors’ performance against each of these Drivers is essential. With this information you can quickly learn what it is you need to do to effectively compete in your category, as well as where to focus to drive a competitive advantage.

In the meantime – interested in learning more about our vegan study? Take a look!