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Hitwise Intelligence - Heather Hopkins - North America

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Recession Proof Category - Recipes

October 22, 2008

I recently heard a Ad Age podcast interviewing Suzanne Grimes of Reader's Digest Food & Entertainment Group discussing an increased interest in recipes and home cooking in the down economy. We on the Hitwise analyst team are always on the hunt for recession proof categories and so I thought I'd put the claims to the test.

Judging by the following chart, it looks like the podcast was right - visits to Food and Beverage - Lifestyle and Reference (a category that includes recipe websites) have been climbing as stock prices have been plummeting.

But, looking back over the past few years, we see an annual increase in visits to recipe websites at this time of year. The increase starts with back to school and then peaks on Thanksgiving weekend, only to retreat for a few weeks before searches rise in time for Christmas turkeys.

To isolate this seasonal effect, I compared visits to the same period last year and found a 10% year over year increase, indicating an increased demand for online recipes. At the same time, visits to Food and Beverage - Restaurant websites are flat year on year.

The podcast also suggested that the types of recipes that consumers were seeking had also changed toward recipes with lower cost ingredients and one-pot recipes. I looked at variations of searches for "recipe" and "recipes". We have seen an increase in searches for "apple pie recipes", "soup recipes", "banana bread recipe", "sugar cookie recipe" and "chocolate chip cookie recipe".

Recipes may in fact be a recession proof category and offers an excellent example of a content opportunity for marketers in the food and kitchenware industries.

Posted by Heather Hopkins at 08:29 AM | (1) | (1)
In Categories Food and Beverage

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