Traditionally seen as a niche marketing opportunity, superfruits offer great potential in establishing a new category of value-added fruit products that target a mainstream consumer audience, according to the Hartman Group.

A new report from the Bellevue, WA-based research firm suggests there are significant opportunities for creating large branded platforms across the superfruit space, not just one-off, fruit-specific brand extensions or enhanced versions of base products that have the potential to cannibalize a company’s base business.

Very few fruit companies are well positioned to achieve that possibility because they are too narrowly associated with, and financially committed to, specific fruits and fruit supply chains (e.g., Tropicana and orange juice, Ocean Spray and cranberry, Welch’s and the Concord grape).

Still, superfruits are a rich opportunity for companies to align with long-term food trends. The key is to pick an appropriate strategy that avoids a narrow proposition tied to a specific fruit or nutritional fad. The challenge in the superfruit space is to understand which of several distinct strategic pathways should be the foundation of a sound go-to-market strategy.

One key question is which fruit(s) you are trying to sell as a “superfruit,” because all fruits are not equal in terms of consumer associations. Some, like peaches and Concord grapes, are associated primarily with great taste and actually carry a health and wellness stigma of “high sugar” due to their very high sweetness levels. Other fruits, like cranberries, have always had a strong health halo, though not necessarily grounded in nutrition. Some, like blueberries, lie somewhere in between, having neither a strongly negative nor a strongly positive health halo. These fruits are ripe for becoming transformed into “superfruit” through clever product design and marketing, according to the Hartman Group.

Fruit product format also strongly affects how consumers view nutritional or health and wellness claims. The more removed from whole fruit, the less likely the product will be perceived as inherently healthy and the less persuasive explicit quality and/or health and wellness claims tend to be with consumers.

Additionally, the most common routes to “superfruit” status have involved, however subtly or trumpeted, making specific nutritional claims around either antioxidant or other phytonutrient content (e.g., anthocyanins in cranberries). Foregrounding these loudly can quickly transform a fruit product into a supplement in the eyes of the consumer, which narrows the occasions for use, not to mention weakens the power of the brand.

“With answers to these questions in hand, it becomes easier to choose a strategy that is consumer centric and adapted to your business,” the report states.