Analysis of Milk Consumption in America

Across the world milk is considered one of the most essential and perishable foods. Also, in the food pyramid counts as part of one of the most important foods of a well-balanced diet of your five a day to eat. Milk contains a high percent of calcium and other vital nutrients that the body needs. Although milk is in the food pyramid and has its benefits, since the 90s it has not been a favorite product of many people and the consumer behavior has dramatically changed a lot with reports of other drinks such as soft drinks, sports drinks and different types of waters. Although these drinks have sugary ingredients, they covered their trace with natural offerings such as vitamins. Since milk is a perishable good it does have a volatile market meaning that it has the tendency of a market to rise or fall rather quickly in a short period of time. Since 1990 to today milk has had a significant number of policies to market it and as well consumer change has been drastic.

In the early 1990s milk has been produced almost entirely by 10 states and those 10 states was covering two-thirds of all milk that was being produced in the United States. In the decade of 90s milk went into heavy marketing because it was not getting the attention it was needing from consumers as they thought it should have and continuing to insist it was the healthiest drink option on the shelf was no longer working so this led to the creation of the Fluid Milk Promotion Act in the year of 1990 and was not approved until 1993. This act was to promote the sale of milk and allow generic milk advertising only. In this act they preached that milk was in the category of primary foods one needed as a source of nutrients. In the act it also stated that Congress in the interest of the public needed to keep carrying a coordinated program of research and consumer information about milk. As well this promotion act was created for milk because although milk is used to make many products, in the dairy industry milk in its current state form is the back bone and heart of the dairy industry and does not take much to keep it in its current state of form meaning it takes way less money to keep it a liquid than to convert it to a solid such as cheese or ice cream.

Following the Fluid Milk Promotion Act in 1993 was the creation advertising campaign of the ‘Got Milk?’ slogan. This advertising campaign is also one of the most widely known of them all. This slogan also got registered as the federal trademark by the dairy board and it went national getting 90% nationally recognition and it is known as the most successful campaign in history. Everyone and their grandma knew about this campaign. This advertising campaign came to be because milk was not (still isn’t) an item of very high interest to people’s lives and so how would you get people to pull it out of their refrigerators and drink it more often? Get celebrities to wear milk mustaches on their face. Although milk is not a go to drink for people when it is gone you notice it is missing and realize it is an essential because you find yourself going to the store and buying it, so with celebrities endorsing the ‘Got Milk?’ ad, it helped bring up or stable the numbers of sells for milk as it was on a steady decline by consumers. For example, to show how successful this ad was, in 1994 in the state of California milk sales was at 755 million gallons when in 1993 the sales were at 740 million gallons.

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Although the advertisement of ‘Got Milk?’ was successful and increased milk sales, or basically help slow down the decline of milk, people were still not consuming enough of it and were drinking less and less of it. What was at about 240lbs of milk consumption per person in about 1985 in about early 1990 that number was about 235lbs of milk consumption per person slowing down the decline because in previous years it was dropping from about 10 to 15lbs. This was showing the effect of the promotion act of 1990 and the ‘Got Milk?’ advertisement campaign of 1993. But if you take the trend of milk and follow it from 1996, it had dropped back down and slightly more than previous downward slope of about 20lbs of consumption per person. Although milk sells were still going down, dairy men were still pumping out the same numbers of milk or even slightly more since data shows that every year dairy men are pumping more and more milk into their tanks.

Now fast forward almost a decade after the ‘Got Milk?’ slogan, milk was still on a downward slope but in 2000 milk was at slower declining slope almost staying the same. In 2005 another ad campaign was made ‘3-A-Day. Burn more fat, lose more weight’. But this advertisement did not stay long or even make a dent in the consumer eye catcher to make them want to buy milk. Ironically in the following months the sales of milk had dropped by 8 percent because organic milk became a popular thing. People wanted milk from cows that were grazing in fields the majority of their life and following that they were better than regular cows. People were paying $5 or a little more for a gallon of organic milk while nonorganic milk was at about $2 and half. Part of the effect of this was the fault of the FDA approving hormone use in the cows as ‘safe for consumption’ in the 90s so helped organic milk grow in popularity and nonorganic lose sells to them.

In the year of 2005 the consumption of milk was at about 186lbs of consumption per person and following the years up to 2014 milk consumption was down to 159lbs of consumption per person. Which means that every year since 2005 people were consuming about an average of 3lbs of milk per consumption every year. As well in 2014 the slogan ‘Got Milk?’ was dropped and was changed to ‘Milk Life’ for the advertisement campaign. This new slogan was set to focus on the protein content found in milk (which milk has high protein) and the nutritional benefits it came with. Since the belief was that a lot of people did not know milk had a lot of protein and that was all you saw on the news and around consumers ‘we have to get our protein in’ making the connection of milk in protein was a big deal. As the connection of protein was getting made to milk for the consumers attention, in 2015 plant based or non-dairy milk products were making a fast-growing market for themselves in the consumer choice for drinks at home since people believe it is milk (when in theory it is not) and it holds less calories than your traditional milk. This caused traditional milk to drop about 7 percent of sales and non-dairy alternatives to grow up to about 9 percent. In order to combat the growth in popularity of non-milk products, brand companies are finding ways to infuse flavors to attract consumers to the taste of milk. An example of that is when you go to the store you will find banana flavored or vanilla flavored milk drink. As the years continue milk consumption or sales has not gone up or seen numbers that it has seen in the past and each year it is less. It was reported that in 2017 and 2018 people only consumed about 148lbs of milk yearly since now there is a wide variety of soft drink products to choose from.

As of today, in 2020 milk consumption and sells are set to drop and it is not due to people choosing other alternatives to milk, but because the farmers are forced to dump milk down the drain due to the Covid-19 pandemic. Dairy farmers across America are predicted as a whole to dump around 3.7 million gallons of milk down the drain. With schools and restaurants closed, the demand for milk has dropped, but the wild thing is that a lot of cities and towns are seeing empty refrigerators and it is raising questions as to why if there is an ‘excess’ of milk in the industry. Dairy farmers are meeting production limits that are imposed on them do the result of dumping which is going to result to a shortage of dairies, although the farms are going to get bigger and more milk will get pumped into the market since every year growth of milk production has been seen. Will this be the new normal for dairy farmers if the cap is still in place to prevent milk from flooding the market and help stabilize milk sales to consumers? Or will the dairy industry find new marketing tributes for milk as the government tries to protect the milk industry with its new policies to help them stay afloat until all this clears up?