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Investing.com -- Barclays analysts believe that the "rapid proliferation of food and personal care scanning apps such as Yuka could well be playing a role in the outperformance of emerging brands" within U.S. consumer staples.
This trend is occurring "at the expense of some of the legacy packaged food and personal care brands owned by our covered companies," said the bank. This suggests it could be impacting companies such as General Mills (NYSE:GIS), Kraft-Heinz, Kellanova (NYSE:K), ConAgra Brands and more.
While consumers striving for healthier eating and "better-for-you personal care products is perhaps nothing new," Barclays (LON:BARC) notes that historically, "it has historically proven somewhat difficult for the average consumer to decipher ingredient labels."
Now, apps like Yuka are changing this, providing "an instant 0-100 rating and an overview of a product’s health and environmental impacts."
Barclays argues that the increasing popularity of product scanning apps has and could continue to change the game in consumer understanding and accelerate what has been a long-time, slower-burning shift towards better-for-you food and personal care products.
The bank notes that data from Apptopia, analyzed by Barclays’ Investment Science team, indicates that the Yuka app "has been downloaded well over 75 million times since the start of 2021, with just under half of those downloads based in the U.S."
App usage has accelerated, with average daily downloads increasing significantly.
Barclays suggests that the use of these apps "may be part of the reason many of our covered large-cap companies have underperformed relative to their categories in recent years."
They point to packaged food companies consistently "losing share within their respective categories."
While not appealing to everyone, Barclays concludes that "the matriculation of product scanning apps into the mainstream is a trend worth tracking for both companies and investors."
