Thrifty Kiwis opt for budget cereals

More Kiwis are purchasing supermarket-brand cereals to save money. Photo / Thinkstock

A third of Kiwi cereal munchers are waking up to a sluggish economy with a bowl of supermarket-brand cereals to save money.

A breakfast-cereal survey by Canstar Blue has also found that 54 per cent of Kiwis are creatures of habit and buy the same brand of cereal every time.

Supermarket-brand cereals were bought by 33 per cent of shoppers in an effort to save money. Forty-four per cent of respondents said they ate cereal every morning.

The survey asked people to rate 10 brands of cereal in terms of value for money, nutrition, taste, texture and overall satisfaction.

Uncle Toby's Oats scored top marks in all categories, followed by Sanitarium Weet-Bix and Kellogg's Sultana Bran.

Least favoured were Kellogg's Cocoa Pops and Nutri-Grain, which both scored particularly poorly in the value-for-money and nutritional value categories.

Canstar's New Zealand national manager, Derek Bonnar, said the popularity of oats was interesting.

"The simplest and some might argue the humblest of breakfast cereals is still tremendously popular, rating five stars for overall satisfaction and topping all other categories."

Canstar Blue, a division of financial research company Canstar, commissions Colmar Brunton Australia to survey 2500 New Zealanders each month to measure their satisfaction across a range of products and services.