Tapping into Tropical Tastes

Using social intelligence to track rising and falling food and beverage flavors

Check out the dashboard we used to analyze this insight in Infegy Starscape. Dashboard available here!

Tropical flavors and seasonings have surged across beverages, candy, nicotine products, and regular food. Based on research by Pinterest's trends team in early 2024, the researchers argued that Gen Z ''...are driving this escapist aesthetic complete with hibiscus prints, tasty mocktails, and hot, hot, hot pink." We evaluated their research mid-year to see if their prediction panned out using Infegy Starscape, our breakthrough social listening data analytics tool.

Figure 1: Pinterest's Predicts screenshot.

Social listening represents the aggregate voice of billions of people across the planet, making it the perfect tool to gauge society's past, current, and future tastes. People's palates, like the words they use, the clothes they wear, or the music they listen to, constantly change, and social listening tools can help measure and validate those tastes.

Brand strategists and food researchers constantly look for new or developing tastes when developing new products, flavors, or brands. Let's jump into tropical taste trends and see whether Pinterest's researchers got it right.

Examining Pinterest's 2024 research

Pinterest's predictions centered around tropical flavors, aromas, and style. Within their prediction, they featured pineapple and coconut as growing tropical scents, along with mocktails and tropical baking.

Figure 2: Pinterest's predicted hashtag growth for their 2024 Predictions.

We dove into their specific flavor research around pineapple and coconut. Both coconut and pineapple volume remained roughly constant when normalized by collection volume This discrepancy highlights two key research attributes: the importance of time frames when conducting trend research and the importance of a multi-platform approach.

Figure 3: Dropping Pineapple post volume with increasing Coconut post volume (July 2021 through July 2024); Infegy Social Dataset.

First, instead of looking at just the lead-up to 2024, a better approach might have been zooming out multiple years to examine post volume growth in context. 

Second, the pineapple stagnation occurred, on aggregate, across the dozens of platforms that Infegy collects from, highlighting why a multi-platform view is so critical when examining social media. Pinterest researchers look at Pinterest data, while Infegy's tools can scour a much wider breadth of research.

Observing unique flavor growth

Although we found discrepancies with their picks (pineapple and coconut), we agree with the thrust of their argument. We saw enormous post-volume growth in other tropical flavors, which were more under the radar than traditional pineapple. We looked at dragonfruit, guava, ube, and tamarind, and found sharp increases in post volume for each of these over the last three years. While each flavor had differing post volume (i.e., guava had more than 4x the post volume versus dragonfruit), each subtropical flavor appeared correlated. This correlation shows where Pinterest research got it right - that some tropical flavors seem to be surging. Let's dive more into the demographics to see whether they got the Gen Z focus correct.

Figure 4: Growing post volume of dragonfruit, guava, ube, and tamarind (July 2021 through July 2024), Infegy Social Dataset.

A look at trending demographics

Remember, Pinterest's other claim was that Gen Z social media users comprised a large percentage of this growing tropical post volume. Being able to anticipate age demographics can be crucial for brand researchers, as it enables them to build specific audiences and craft resonating content well before a surge of interest. Based on our research, Pinterest nailed this prediction. Gen Z cross-platform users comprised most of the dragonfruit and guava conversation. Interestingly, Pinterest also predicted a higher Gen X percentage of conversational share—we found this true specifically with tamarind-related conversation.

Figure 5: Age demographic histogram for dragonfruit (July 2021 through July 2024); Infegy Social Dataset.

Figure 6: Age demographic histogram for tamarind (July 2021 through July 2024); Infegy Social Dataset.

A level deeper - Topic analysis

So far, we've examined broad aggregations and trend-based data. Before we close, let's discuss the actual linguistics of what people say. Using Infegy AI, our best-in-class natural language processing engine, we can isolate people's most important words when mentioning these new tropical flavors and fruits. Interestingly (and not surprisingly), each fruit's most critical use cases rise to the top of each word cloud. For dragonfruit, we see a high concentration of cocktail-related keywords. On the other hand, we see a heavy association between tamarind and baking/cooking. Social listening tools are especially good at isolating new and unique use cases that brand strategists and product researchers might need to learn about.

Figure 7: Topics associated with dragonfruit (July 2021 through July 2024); Infegy Social Dataset.

Figure 8: Topics associated with tamarind (July 2021 through July 2024); Infegy Social Dataset.

Takeaways for your brand

Social listening tools like Infegy Starscape are invaluable for brand strategists and food researchers aiming to track evolving flavor trends and consumer preferences. These tools provide a comprehensive and dynamic view of societal tastes by capturing and analyzing the collective voice of billions across multiple platforms. These tools' insights enable researchers to validate predictions, such as Pinterest's 2024 focus on tropical flavors, and discover new opportunities, ensuring their strategies and product developments align with real-time consumer interests.