The Australian gluten-free market grew by 37% in 2009, having been the world leader in the gluten-free market in 2008!
Trends in gluten-free demand in Australia The previous original analysis of the gluten-free pages shows that Australia was one of the countries with the highest online demand for gluten-free products in the world. The following analysis uses Google datasets. At a value of 4.2 “celiac searches per month” in 2008, Australia had a very healthy GF market. However, another article showed that while its seasonal trend was stable and rising, its growth rate was relatively low compared to other global leaders such as the United States and Canada. In fact, Australia’s linear growth for 2008 was considered to be only 8% compared to the US at 37%.
2009 Australian search volumes
The standard online gluten-free market analysis uses Google data for the top 50 terms associated with GF. These terms are categorized into seven groups as shown in the table below. Although these groups may seem disproportionate, they provide a very useful comparison with the online demand search patterns of developing economies. For example, many developing markets often have the generic GF group at about half the proportion of the top 50 searches, compared to that reported by Australia.
Less developed markets also tend to have a much larger volume allocated to SG specific foods, such as SG bread, beer and chocolate. Last year (2009) gluten-free search volumes for the top fifty terms increased from 470,000 to 655,000 in Australia. This is a dramatic increase of 37% over one year. Of the seven groups, the two main changes were that the generic gluten-free group increased by 50%, while the celiac group decreased by 5%.
For the main GF generic group, there has been an increase in terms from 7 to 9, but the two main GF terms still retain a proportion of 55% of the total generic group. The Celiac group decreased from 7 terms to 3 terms and its volume was similar to November 2008 monthly searches with a November 2009 total searches of 70,800. The table below shows the growth rate of absolute monthly search volumes of the seven associated GF groups:
GF Group……… VOL 2008……… VOL 2009…% increase
Generic GF……… 262,900………… 395,400………50%
Gluten-free diet…………..9,080……………… 17,400………..92%
Revenue GF……… 39,280………….. 71,000 ……….. 81%
Celiac……………… 74,200…………. 70,800………… -5%
Wheat-free…………16,000…………27,600…………73%
Pitches……………… 3,780……………… 4,500………… 19%
Specific foods…35,380……………….68,500…………..94%
Proportions of gluten-free Australian research group
There are now roughly equal numbers of monthly searches for the three groups of “celiac” information, gluten-free recipes, and the third SG-specific food category. The GF recipe group all contained a similar mix of words with all eight phrases (containing recipe or gluten) making up 71,000 searches. One of the most surprising results was the specific food group GF increasing its membership from 16 to 19 of the first 50 terms, and its total volume from 35,380 to 68,500. While the main terms were related to bread (16,200 ) and gluten-free flour (6,500), there were still a few people looking for gluten-free dairy (7,300), cakes (13,500) and chocolate (5,200). The trend of the main generic group remaining relatively stable in its proportion of total terms and the celiac group decreasing in value was seen in the main online GF markets in 2009. This was seen in America, Canada and the UK United (United Kingdom).
This effect is believed to be due to the Celiac Group search terms remaining relatively close to zero growth (as previously reported in previous research on GFP Celiac Market Demand Trends) and most other gluten-free terms are experiencing high growth rates. Growth rates may be caused by increased rates of diagnosis, or recovery from the 2008 global financial crisis and friends and family (non-celiacs, also looking for gluten-free foods) due to gifts, from a restaurant going with celiac or more people finding out they are gluten intolerant. SEARCH TRENDS Google provides data going back to 2004 on some of the most searched terms.
To provide an understanding of general market performance over time, search volumes for the single term “gluten-free” are analyzed and used as a proxy for other related gluten-free terms (except celiac). The long-term growth trend shows considerable volatility in early 2009. To understand seasonal effects, it is best to analyze search volume demand on a normalized plot. As the top 50 rated terms have increased by almost 40%, this individual term “gluten free” is expected to show a good increase, and it has. The linear trend growth rate for “gluten-free” in 2008 in Australia was 16% while in 2009 it was 38%.
When data for the past five years are normalized, all years tend to peak in July (mid-winter) and also in December (Christmas effect). The main difference with 2009 is that the winter peak was much more accentuated and that it also went through a trough from September to November that was more pronounced than usual. Its December peak is 15% higher than where 2007 and 2008 search volumes ended in December.
CONCLUSION
Australian online demand for GF has seen its strongest growth in the past five years. However, this growth was much lower than that seen in America or Canada. It will be interesting to see whether the particularly strong growth at the end of 2009 will continue in 2010 on the Australian market.
