Plant-Based Boom to Premium Spirits: How Food & Beverage Brands Are Reshaping Consumer Research in 2024

The New Frontier of Food and Beverage Market Research

The global food and beverage market is undergoing one of its most dramatic transformations in decades. Valued at approximately $8.9 trillion in 2023, the sector is projected to grow at a CAGR of 6.4% through 2030, driven by shifting consumer values around health, sustainability, and convenience. For market researchers, this evolution presents both rich opportunities and significant methodological challenges. Understanding not just what consumers eat and drink, but why — and how those motivations are changing — has become mission-critical for brands operating in this space.

From Nestlé's strategic pivot toward nutritional science to Diageo's expansion into premium non-alcoholic spirits, industry leaders are investing heavily in consumer intelligence. The question is no longer whether to invest in food and beverage research, but how to conduct it with the precision and cultural sensitivity the market demands.

Key Market Drivers and Research Implications

Several macro trends are reshaping the research agenda for food and beverage companies in 2024. Understanding each trend requires a distinct research lens:

Plant-Based Protein Growth: The global plant-based food market reached $29.4 billion in 2023 and is projected to grow at a CAGR of 12.1% through 2032 (Grand View Research). Research teams at companies like Beyond Meat and Impossible Foods have relied extensively on sensory evaluation panels and ethnographic home-use tests to close the gap between consumer aspiration and actual purchase behavior.
Functional Beverages: Drinks fortified with adaptogens, probiotics, and nootropics have moved from niche to mainstream. The functional beverage market is expected to hit $279 billion globally by 2030. Researchers must navigate complex regulatory frameworks set by bodies such as the FDA and EFSA when validating health claims in consumer-facing communications.
Premiumization: Across both food and drink categories, consumers are trading up — even amid inflationary pressure. Nielsen IQ data shows that premium private-label products grew 11% in unit sales in 2023, outpacing national brands. This creates fertile ground for pricing research and conjoint analysis studies.
Sustainability Consciousness: According to a 2023 Euromonitor International survey, 64% of global consumers identify as "eco-active" — meaning sustainability influences their purchasing decisions. Measuring the gap between stated and revealed environmental preferences remains one of the most analytically demanding tasks in the field.

Methodological Approaches That Are Gaining Traction

Traditional focus groups and surveys, while still foundational, are increasingly being supplemented — and in some cases replaced — by more immersive and data-rich methodologies. Here is how leading F&B research teams are evolving their toolkits:

Sensory and Ethnographic Research

Sensory panels have long been a staple of product development in food and beverage. However, the integration of biometric data — including galvanic skin response and facial coding — is adding a new dimension to flavor and packaging evaluation. Companies like Givaudan and IFF (International Flavors & Fragrances) have invested in advanced sensory labs that combine trained panels with AI-powered emotion recognition software to decode subconscious consumer reactions.

Ethnographic research, meanwhile, is gaining renewed interest as researchers recognize that in-home consumption behavior often diverges significantly from what participants report in lab settings. When Kraft Heinz conducted in-home ethnographic studies for its condiment lines, researchers discovered that consumers were using certain sauces in entirely unexpected culinary contexts — intelligence that directly informed NPD strategy and marketing messaging.

AI-Enhanced Survey Design and Text Analytics

The proliferation of online survey platforms such as Qualtrics and Forsta has democratized quantitative research, but the real competitive edge now lies in how brands analyze unstructured data. Natural language processing (NLP) tools are being applied to social listening data, app reviews, and open-ended survey responses at scale. For a category as emotionally charged as food, where nostalgia, identity, and cultural heritage are powerful purchase drivers, the ability to extract nuanced sentiment from text is invaluable.

Key Takeaway: Leading F&B researchers are increasingly combining quantitative panel data with AI-driven qualitative analysis to capture both the scale of behavioral patterns and the depth of emotional motivation.

Case Study: Oatly's Segmentation Strategy

Oatly's meteoric rise — from a Swedish niche brand to a global plant-based dairy challenger generating over $700 million in annual revenue — offers a compelling case study in sophisticated market segmentation. The brand's research team developed a proprietary segmentation framework that moved beyond demographics to identify psychographic clusters based on environmental identity, dietary philosophy, and media consumption habits.

Rather than targeting a monolithic "health-conscious consumer," Oatly identified distinct segments including "Committed Veganists," "Flexitarian Explorers," and "Sustainability-Adjacent Mainstream" consumers — each requiring a different brand voice, distribution strategy, and product format. This granular segmentation, validated through large-scale conjoint analysis studies, allowed Oatly to expand its portfolio without diluting its brand equity.

Regulatory and Ethical Considerations for Researchers

Food and beverage research operates within a complex regulatory environment. In the United States, the FDA's guidelines on health claims, structure-function claims, and nutrient content claims directly affect how researchers can frame questions about product benefits without priming respondents. In the EU, EFSA's stringent nutrition and health claim regulations under Regulation (EC) No 1924/2006 require that any consumer research used to support a health claim meets specific scientific standards.

Beyond regulatory compliance, ethical considerations around recruitment are increasingly prominent. Researchers must be vigilant about recruiting vulnerable populations — particularly children — in studies involving sugary beverages or heavily processed foods, in accordance with MRS (Market Research Society) guidelines and local advertising standards.

Actionable Recommendations for Market Researchers

For professionals working in food and beverage market research, the following priorities will define best-in-class practice in the coming years:

Invest in longitudinal panel infrastructure: Single-point-in-time surveys are insufficient for tracking evolving dietary behaviors. Building or accessing longitudinal consumer panels — such as those managed by Kantar Worldpanel — enables trend detection that cross-sectional studies miss.
Bridge the intention-behavior gap: Use behavioral data (e.g., grocery scanner data, app purchase histories) to validate and calibrate self-reported survey findings. Partnering with retail data providers like dunnhumby or 84.51° can be transformative.
Embrace sensory-emotional integration: Don't rely solely on rational attribute ratings. Integrate implicit measurement techniques to capture the full emotional architecture of food and beverage preference.
Build cultural competency into global research designs: Flavor preferences, health beliefs, and eating rituals vary enormously across geographies. Standard survey instruments developed in Western markets often perform poorly when deployed in Southeast Asia or Latin America without significant adaptation.
Monitor regulatory shifts proactively: Work closely with legal and regulatory affairs teams to ensure research designs anticipate changes in labeling law, health claim standards, and advertising restrictions.

Looking Ahead

The food and beverage industry's complexity — spanning agriculture, manufacturing, retail, and foodservice across deeply segmented consumer populations — ensures that market research in this sector will remain both challenging and intellectually rewarding. As AI tools mature and behavioral data streams proliferate, the researchers who will add the most value are those who can synthesize across methodologies, bridge the quantitative-qualitative divide, and translate consumer intelligence into commercially actionable strategy. The brands that win will be those whose research functions are not just reactive data gatherers, but proactive strategic partners.