Gluten Free – What People Want! This Article Looks at the Rise of Gluten Free Demand in Usa and Australia, and How Similar the Requirements are
Bruce Scott Dwyer asked:
State of the GF Market, Report 1 - GFTECH report
This report considers the differences in the Australian and US gluten free markets by analysis of consumer e-demand, or internet searches.
Basic macro economics suggests that markets are governed by principles of supply and demand. It would appear that increased ‘gluten free food’ searches (over the last year) are quickly beginning to be mirrored by increased suppliers of products and services.
While the gluten free production side of the market is well under way in the US and Australia it still remains a niche market with many celiacs unaware that they have the disease. While Australia often follows US trends this article analyses the difference between the countries regarding search habits and therefore demand for gluten free products and services.
Firstly there is obviously a difference in the spelling of the disease in each country. Australia spells it as ‘coeliac’, while the US use ‘celiac’. During this research it was found that while most Australians use the celiac spelling a large number still use the American version. Americans only search for the US spelling.
While Australians look for products that are gluten and ‘gluten & dairy free’, the US does not associate the two.
In both countries people search for topics such as ‘gluten recipes’. While this logically may not seem like they are searching for ‘gluten free recipes’, gluten free recipe sites dominate the search results confirming that this is a ‘learned shortcut’ that people are using.
The top 20 or so terms (excluding spelling differences) searched for by both countries is very similar. As individual terms will vary from month to month it is less instructive to compare individual terms rather than GROUP terms. For this reason the top search terms are group in the following manner:
GROUP Number of terms
· Gluten free foods = 6
· Gluten diet = 2
· Gluten free recipes = 3
· Celiacrelated = 2
· Wheat free related = 4
Group Composition:
Gluten Free Foods: This group of search terms all involve the word gluten free and is to do with phrases with respect to gluten free foods.
Gluten Diet: These are terms that are related to the specifics of gluten free diets.
Gluten Free recipe: Searches and website related to cooking gluten free meals.
Celiac related: For Australia, there four terms considered: two each for the celiac/ celiac spellings. In the US while the same two terms are compared (celiac spelling only), a third celiac related term is included in the total volumes. Except for the specific term ‘gluten free’, the celiac related terms have by far the highest search volumes.
Wheat free group: For both Australia and the US these terms all fall outside of the top ten search volumes for gluten related terms.
Analysis of Search Volumes
The Australian search volumes are multiplied by ten so that easy comparison between groups for the Australia and US volumes can be made on one graph. The first point is that Australia’s population is near 20 Million while the US is near 300 Million. Thus the US is near 15 times the Australian population and yet the Australian search terms only need to be multiplied by 10 to be very comparable. This suggests that per population Australians have a 50% more interest in searching for gluten free terms.
It is amazing how similar the keyword groups compare for Australia and the US. While Australian and US foods and culture are similar this shadowing of groups is phenomenal.
Although the ‘Gluten Free foods’ Group contains six phrases, it is easily the most commonly searched group of all gluten free related searches in the top 20 searches. The major celiacphrases Group accounts for only half the search volumes of ‘gluten free foods’ Group volumes, however the group is only composed of two terms. This suggests that per phrase, in both Australia and the US, there are is an almost equal interest in people seeking information on ‘gluten free foods’ as there are searching for information on the disease.
By comparison, there is an overall relatively low interest in ‘gluten diet’ grouping and ‘gluten free recipe’ group, as judge by how few deviations of the terms exist. However the three Australian ‘gluten free recipe’ terms cluster together in the top ten of searches and nearer the top of the searches compared to the US terms. Both of these groups could be considered as a niche area and subgroup of what people would find by using the search terms in the large ‘gluten free food’ group anyway.
The ‘wheat free’ group is composed of four terms. Two of the terms are substitutes for ‘gluten free food’ terms, and two are based on allergy related issues. This shows that most people prefer searching directly for ‘gluten free foods’ rather than ‘wheat free’. Also for issues relating to the disease, most people still search for information on celiacs rather than wheat intolerance.
For November the total Google searches for the main ‘gluten free food’ related terms was 316,000 in Australia compared to a little over 3 million in the US. Again this is a factor of 10 whereas the US is nearer 15 times more populous than Australia.
If the population of the US is considered to be approximately 300 Million, and 1 in 100 people are coeliac. That would mean that on average there is one gluten free term searched for every celiac in the US. In Australia a population of 20 Million would mean that about 1.6 searches per coeliac.
However another article on Gluten Free Pages in the section ‘Articles from Other Sources’ titled “More USA Coeliac Disease Facts” suggests that different races have difference susceptibilities to acquiring the disease, which in the US would reduce the overall rate of CD to 1 in 133. Even if this is so, CD typically has very low rates of diagnosis. In fact from a recent show we exhibited at in Melbourne, it appeared that there may be as many people who are gluten intolerant or just choose gluten free for health reasons as there are diagnosed people with CD.
Google says that for ‘Food and Drink’ sites, a benchmark rate of New Visitors is 71% of all visits. From our observations and these facts it would appear that only a small amount of celiacs and gluten intolerant people are searching for information on gluten free food but that they do it reasonably regularly per month.
For more information on gluten free issues and trend analysis, see www.glutenfreepages.com.au
By Bruce Dwyer
GoLeftfield Marketing
State of the GF Market, Report 1 - GFTECH report
This report considers the differences in the Australian and US gluten free markets by analysis of consumer e-demand, or internet searches.
Basic macro economics suggests that markets are governed by principles of supply and demand. It would appear that increased ‘gluten free food’ searches (over the last year) are quickly beginning to be mirrored by increased suppliers of products and services.
While the gluten free production side of the market is well under way in the US and Australia it still remains a niche market with many celiacs unaware that they have the disease. While Australia often follows US trends this article analyses the difference between the countries regarding search habits and therefore demand for gluten free products and services.
Firstly there is obviously a difference in the spelling of the disease in each country. Australia spells it as ‘coeliac’, while the US use ‘celiac’. During this research it was found that while most Australians use the celiac spelling a large number still use the American version. Americans only search for the US spelling.
While Australians look for products that are gluten and ‘gluten & dairy free’, the US does not associate the two.
In both countries people search for topics such as ‘gluten recipes’. While this logically may not seem like they are searching for ‘gluten free recipes’, gluten free recipe sites dominate the search results confirming that this is a ‘learned shortcut’ that people are using.
The top 20 or so terms (excluding spelling differences) searched for by both countries is very similar. As individual terms will vary from month to month it is less instructive to compare individual terms rather than GROUP terms. For this reason the top search terms are group in the following manner:
GROUP Number of terms
· Gluten free foods = 6
· Gluten diet = 2
· Gluten free recipes = 3
· Celiacrelated = 2
· Wheat free related = 4
Group Composition:
Gluten Free Foods: This group of search terms all involve the word gluten free and is to do with phrases with respect to gluten free foods.
Gluten Diet: These are terms that are related to the specifics of gluten free diets.
Gluten Free recipe: Searches and website related to cooking gluten free meals.
Celiac related: For Australia, there four terms considered: two each for the celiac/ celiac spellings. In the US while the same two terms are compared (celiac spelling only), a third celiac related term is included in the total volumes. Except for the specific term ‘gluten free’, the celiac related terms have by far the highest search volumes.
Wheat free group: For both Australia and the US these terms all fall outside of the top ten search volumes for gluten related terms.
Analysis of Search Volumes
The Australian search volumes are multiplied by ten so that easy comparison between groups for the Australia and US volumes can be made on one graph. The first point is that Australia’s population is near 20 Million while the US is near 300 Million. Thus the US is near 15 times the Australian population and yet the Australian search terms only need to be multiplied by 10 to be very comparable. This suggests that per population Australians have a 50% more interest in searching for gluten free terms.
It is amazing how similar the keyword groups compare for Australia and the US. While Australian and US foods and culture are similar this shadowing of groups is phenomenal.
Although the ‘Gluten Free foods’ Group contains six phrases, it is easily the most commonly searched group of all gluten free related searches in the top 20 searches. The major celiacphrases Group accounts for only half the search volumes of ‘gluten free foods’ Group volumes, however the group is only composed of two terms. This suggests that per phrase, in both Australia and the US, there are is an almost equal interest in people seeking information on ‘gluten free foods’ as there are searching for information on the disease.
By comparison, there is an overall relatively low interest in ‘gluten diet’ grouping and ‘gluten free recipe’ group, as judge by how few deviations of the terms exist. However the three Australian ‘gluten free recipe’ terms cluster together in the top ten of searches and nearer the top of the searches compared to the US terms. Both of these groups could be considered as a niche area and subgroup of what people would find by using the search terms in the large ‘gluten free food’ group anyway.
The ‘wheat free’ group is composed of four terms. Two of the terms are substitutes for ‘gluten free food’ terms, and two are based on allergy related issues. This shows that most people prefer searching directly for ‘gluten free foods’ rather than ‘wheat free’. Also for issues relating to the disease, most people still search for information on celiacs rather than wheat intolerance.
For November the total Google searches for the main ‘gluten free food’ related terms was 316,000 in Australia compared to a little over 3 million in the US. Again this is a factor of 10 whereas the US is nearer 15 times more populous than Australia.
If the population of the US is considered to be approximately 300 Million, and 1 in 100 people are coeliac. That would mean that on average there is one gluten free term searched for every celiac in the US. In Australia a population of 20 Million would mean that about 1.6 searches per coeliac.
However another article on Gluten Free Pages in the section ‘Articles from Other Sources’ titled “More USA Coeliac Disease Facts” suggests that different races have difference susceptibilities to acquiring the disease, which in the US would reduce the overall rate of CD to 1 in 133. Even if this is so, CD typically has very low rates of diagnosis. In fact from a recent show we exhibited at in Melbourne, it appeared that there may be as many people who are gluten intolerant or just choose gluten free for health reasons as there are diagnosed people with CD.
Google says that for ‘Food and Drink’ sites, a benchmark rate of New Visitors is 71% of all visits. From our observations and these facts it would appear that only a small amount of celiacs and gluten intolerant people are searching for information on gluten free food but that they do it reasonably regularly per month.
For more information on gluten free issues and trend analysis, see www.glutenfreepages.com.au
By Bruce Dwyer
GoLeftfield Marketing
