The University of Southern Maine’s Center for Business and Economic Research (CBER) and the Atlantic Corporation recently released MapleMAPS, short for Maple Market Assessment and Planning System. MapleMAPS provides access to over 20,000 survey responses from across the United States focused consumer preference data for maple syrup and other maple products. According to the MapleMAPS website, MapleMAPS provides “tools that all maple syrup producers can easily use for business planning and forecasting based on specific market opportunities in their respective and neighboring states and regions, and will lead to benefits such as increased consumption of domestic maple syrup and increased sales and better profit margins for producers.”
Digging in a bit on this end, Ohio was nested with 4 other states – Indiana, Illinois, Michigan, and Wisconsin – to form the East North Central region. While we work more collaboratively with the states of Pennsylvania and West Virginia, it is important to note this distinction when examining the results.
From high level data, such as how much money the average maple customer spends annually…
…to much more specific information, such as this little nugget. Of all the specific maple products evaluated, Ohio customers ranked maple water as LEAST available – a market opportunity perhaps?
To give you a taste of some of the other data available, here are just a few other bits of information pulled from the MapleMAPS searchable database.
Container material preference – most folks prefer glass and opaque plastic jugs were least popular from a desirability standpoint.
One more – 86% of survey respondents said they consumed at least 1 maple product during the summer, but use was relatively infrequent for most, only about once or a couple times per month.
The MapleMAPS tool is a deep well that can be explored for as long as you have time to dedicate to the database. And I don’t believe the collaborating partners over-promise on the value of the resource – it is thorough and user friendly and certainly useful. This is the exact sort of information that can make us all better marketers of our maple.