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Candy & Sugar Confections Industry Guide

"Sweet" tips and "tasty" resources to help you research and understand the Candy & Sugar Confections Industry

Consumers & Customers

Use these resources to better understand the candy industry's consumers and customers.  These resources will provide consumer demographics, customer trends, buying behavior, and more. 

  • Search for "chocolate," "confectionery," "gum," etc. to find relevant market research reports.
  • You can also browse by category to Food --> Snacks & Confectionery to find all available reports in the category.
  • These reports contain demographics of consumers.
  • The reports also contain psychographic information as well:  buying behaviors, motivations, attitudes, beiefs, etc. for consumers in the industry.

Use Simmons to create demographic profiles of candy consumers. 

  1. Under the "Profile" menu at the top of the page, choose "Quick Reports."
  2. Select the "Composer" button to start your search.
  3. You can either search by brand, e.g. Skittles, or browse by category to "Candy/sweets/snacks" to select a brand or product category.
  4. Select the variable (brand, company, product, etc.) and add it to the middle box on the page. You can drag the varivable, or use the checkbox and "Add" button.
  5. Select the variable from the middle column, and add to Targets. You can drag the variable to Targets, or click the "Targets" button at the bottom of the page.
  6. Click the blue "Create" button in the bottom right of the page.
  7. On the next page, select "Demographics" to create a demographic profile for the consumers of the variable. 

Passport has some incredible content for the candy and confections industry, though the resource can be a bit overwhelming to navigate.  For this industry, I suggest you do the following:

  1. Upon arriving to Passport, select the "Industries" menu at the top of the page.
  2. Select "Food and Nutrition" then "Snacks."
  3. In the drop-down menu on the upper left side of the page, select "Snacks," "Confectionery," and any other categories, then click "Go."
  4. On the next page, click the "Plus (+)" sign next to "Confectionery" then select al of the sub categories.
  5. Next, use the "Select Geographies" tab and choose the countries/markets you wish to research. 
  6. Once at least one geography is selected, click the "View Results" button in the top right of the page. 
  7. The next page provides tabs of information for "Statistics," "Analysis," and "Dashboards."
  8. Have fun using Passport!
  • Use WARC to find information about how companies in the industry are advertising to consumers.  
    • For example, you can find case studies of marketing campaigns, such as the Skittles' "Taste the Rainbow," which discuss how the purpose and results of the campaign.
  • Seach by company/brand
  • Or use the "More" tab in the navigation menu to browse "Categories."
    • Choose "Confectionery" under the "Food" category.