Completed project
Market research for investigating opportunities for more vegetable meal occasions (VG14026)
Publication date: March 30, 2016
Delivery Partner: Horizon Research Corporation
The objective of this project was to identify new occasions, seasonal opportunities, or ways to consume vegetables that have the most potential to increase demand.
It was found that all 11 vegetables studied in this project had untapped consumption potential, irrespective of their current popularity. The vegetables included carrots, pumpkin, capsicum, broccoli, cauliflower, sweetcorn, cabbage, green beans, leeks, eggplant and beetroot.
The project found that a lack of confidence and know-how are the main factors that restrict consumers’ use of vegetables on meal occasions. To combat this, it was outlined that substantially more vegetable meal occasions can be generated through the application of the following general principles:
The project outlined that more than 50 per cent of consumers will do more with vegetables if they are guided and motivated at critical points in time. Two examples are providing hard copy information at the point of purchase and ideas on incorporating vegetables into existing recipes, and giving realistic time estimates for different vegetable preparations.
Guided by these general principles, a total of nine ideas to increase vegetable use were generated, which take into account consumers’ lack of confidence and know-how with vegetables:
Due to the broad appeal of these ideas, all vegetable industry stakeholders – irrespective of their location, size or the profile of their customers – can use them to increase vegetable sales. In addition, the findings of this project can easily be extended to vegetables that were not investigated in this research.
Read all about the study on page 24 of this Vegetables Australia magazine edition
This project was a strategic levy investment in the Hort Innovation Vegetable Fund
© 2026 Horticulture Innovation Australia Limited.
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