HAB’s Supply and Market Data Hub

HAB’s supply and market data hub, is the avocado industry’s source of consolidated data and tools that makes stakeholders more knowledgeable and supports critical decision-making.

The Hass Avocado Board has created a comprehensive data and research program that helps its stakeholders to be equipped to make better decisions on how to best market their products in the United States. It provides volume data, consumer studies and insights, retail information, consumer purchase behavior, and state of the category reporting that helps drive the avocado selling business.

As the availability of data is always subject to budgetary constraints, not every company in the category has the ability to obtain it. Consequently, HAB decided to make those investments for them and became a data hub with a robust information database that is made available for all the industry stakeholders at no cost to them. The availability of this funding is what allows HAB to create this type of information, which is unique to the produce industry and vital for the decision-making process for all the players across the supply chain.

Alex Gavito, who has been working at HAB for the past five and a half years, is the gatekeeper for all this data. He started as Global Data Manager, and his position has evolved over time and recently he became Senior Business Insights and Data Services Manager. He manages two separate data program areas: The Target Audience Research, in which he carries out the shopper research that focuses on household purchases; and also, the Supply and Demand Information that focuses on what is on the market, its availability, where it’s sold, how much and when. Everybody who is involved in the avocado marketing and sales is a beneficiary of Alex’s work.

Similarly to the entire HAB team, he plays a part towards making avocados the #1 consumed fruit in the U.S. By providing the industry´s stakeholders with the appropriate tools that support them to generate additional demand and help in increasing sales and velocity, he is an asset to the industry. Additionally, the data he provides can help support sellers to identify where new opportunities await in the marketplace.

To accomplish this, several reports and data sets are provided by different sources on a regular basis.

• The first one is the projections and weekly updates provided by the industry’s organizations from each producing country.
• The second one is the Avocado Volume and Inventory System (AVIS) which, since 2014 combines the information provided by all the marketers and importers throughout the US.
• The third source is IRI PLU scan data information, used to create reports based in dollars and units, giving the stakeholders a very good landscape of what is going on in retail.
• The fourth one is the National Consumer Panel that, with a 120,000 households’ sample is a very representative picture of the US market.
• Finally, HAB uses an IHS Markit data to monitor global avocado trade, which allows us to provide import and export information on the main avocado trading countries, which helps marketers know what is going on in the rest of the world with the consumption, ensuring supply for the US market.

The latest study published is called the Market Opportunity Matrix based on 2019 data and designed to help avocado merchandisers and industry stakeholders to identify, quantify and prioritize potential market-level opportunities for their business. Another recent publication is the second part of the Millennial Avocado Study focused on the Market Basket which reveals insights on the value and content of the Millennial market basket with and without avocados compared to the non-Millennial’s.

What can you expect for 2020?

Three different studies will be carried out this year: Building the Path to Dynamic Growth which will be published in April; Uncovering the Value of Bag Avocado Shoppers which will be published in July, followed by the Shopper Motivations to Purchase and Use Bags. The reason why HAB is focusing on bags is that the latest trend on avocado purchase at retail revealed that bag purchases have grown from 20% to over 30% in the last couple of years, so HAB wants to understand why this happened and also, help marketers and retailers understand that bags complement their bulk sales, providing an additional option to their customers.