The kosher market is made up of two groups:
The classic kosher market, which has several characteristics:
- This market is limited to certain urban centers like New York, Chicago, Toronto, Montreal and Los Angeles.
- Most consumers are Jewish, and within this group, most are religious.
- Place of purchase is generally the specialty stores.
- These customers’ attitude is often that shopping kosher means being willing to pay more.
- The growth is modest as compared with population growth in other areas.
The new kosher market-the greater source for growth and which has several characteristics:
- A Jewish population made up of both religious and non-religious Jews, and a certain part of the market that is not Jewish.
- Place of purchase is usually the large chain stores (Albertsons, Ralphs, Trader Joes, Wal-Mart, etc.
- Consumers are in the higher socio-economic brackets and want to buy kosher products identical to parallel products in the general market.
- Most of growth in the U.S. kosher consumer market comes from this section of the customer base.
(The reason for kosher food’s high popularity among the middle-aged in particular stems from this age group’s awareness of the quality of the food they and their children eat. From the age of 30, a consumer’s ethnic identity expresses itself in his buying habits. Incidentally, Molosky revealed quite surprisingly that kosher food purchases decrease after the age of 56).