What should the milk aisle look like?

Messaging and imagery around the natural nutritional benefits of milk performed strongly in aisle, significantly outperforming the baseline aisle for purchase intent, with 25% of consumers claiming they would purchase more milk than usual.

% of consumers who claimed they selected more milk than usual

Source: AHDB/Linney re-thinking milk research 2025. Note: Hybrid was a combination of nutrition and farming

The nutrition focussed aisle, which featured the 7 vitamins and minerals message, was also seen to significantly boost key equities, helping to shift consumer perceptions around milk as a progressive and aspirational category. With this aisle, milk was perceived as higher quality, more inspirational, exciting, modern and healthy compared to milk presented in the baseline aisle.

The nutrition aisle performed strongly across all channels, and it is therefore AHDB’s recommendation for the majority of stores to lead with this. It was found to be particularly relevant for mainstream, premium and convenience stores.

The farming aisle, which communicated world class farming standards, grazing and fair prices, was next in terms of performance. It was seen to reinforce category heritage and drove more positive perceptions around dairy farming and production. However, it struggled to improve equities or purchase intent to the same extent as the nutrition aisle. This aisle did perform strongly for discounters, so it could be dialled up here, as it reassured on quality, sustainability and dairy farming positivity, and showed better fit with the discounter value proposition. For more detail on retailer channel splits, please contact the team.

The hybrid aisle had a similar claimed purchase intent to the farming aisle. However, during the virtual reality purchase exercise, it was the only aisle to see a significant decline in milk volumes purchased, and it drove the least equity shifts. For this reason, we do not recommend mixing themes in aisle.

% equity uplifts versus baseline

Source: AHDB/Linney re-thinking milk research 2025. Note: Hybrid was a combination of nutrition and farming (Key: *Significantly higher than baseline @ 95% confidence interval)

% agree strongly/somewhat statements versus baseline

Source: AHDB/Linney re-thinking milk research 2025. Note: Hybrid was a combination of nutrition and farming (Key: *Significantly higher than baseline @ 95% confidence interval)

Heat maps showing consumer attention within the aisles

Heat maps from the virtual milk aisle navigation exercise helped to pinpoint which areas of the aisle captured consumers’ attention. Results showed that consumers were almost twice as likely to pay attention to an aisle when it was fully dressed in point-of-sale (POS) communications compared to aisles which were not fully dressed, emphasising the need to be comprehensive in POS communication delivery. The results also showed that banners were the most effective individual POS communication to draw attention, particularly when viewed face on. Banners are consistently visible and legible from multiple angles, unlike ceiling hangers and aisle fins. Floor vinyls drew as much attention as other POS. For both nutrition and farming aisles, the heat maps showed that a mixture of messages and images were important to disrupt at the shelf.

The optimum design

Therefore, AHDB’s optimum milk aisle (shown below) combines all the insights learnt in the research, clearly conveying the natural nutrition message “Milk naturally contains 7 vitamins and minerals – vitamin B12, B2, B5, calcium, iodine, potassium, phosphorus”. This has been bought to life through showcasing the seven vitamins and minerals alongside supporting messages of milk “being a powerhouse of nutrients”. This is complemented by fresh colouring and images of children enjoying milk.

So how does that translate on pack? 

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