New product development activity during the Covid-19 pandemic in the UK

The introduction of new products is a permanent and important part of the functioning of food supply chains and their companies. Companies introduce new products at an increasing rate to enhance their competitive posture or even to survive. The new products that are launched at a point in time can be considered as representing firms’ expectations of what consumers want in terms of different product attributes such as: health, environment, flavours. The Covid-19 pandemic disrupted the operation of supply chains, and the purpose of this paper is to explore what was the reaction of firms (if any) due to the pandemic regarding the introduction of new products. This was done using Mintel’s Global New Product Development (GNPD) data for the UK, for the period 2018-20 and considering 155 food and drink categories. Each category was described in terms of the attributes (i.e., marketing claims) of its products. Same groups in different years were compared using measures of similarity between profiles (the profile being represented by the attributes that were present in a category). The results indicate that the most popular attributes within the products launched after March 2020 were those related to health and nutrition; however, comparison with previous trends indicate that firms may not have change their path when launching new products.