Analysis of Future Development Trends in the Snack Food Industry
In recent years, with the development of China's national economy and the rise in residents' consumption levels, people's consumption patterns have become increasingly diversified and leisure-oriented, and snack foods have become the top choice in Chinese people's daily food consumption. However, no matter how the industry changes, it cannot do without adapting to the consumer market; only in this way can the industry become stronger and more vibrant.
1. Flavor innovation is an inevitable trend
Flavor innovation is the primary factor. If a product does not taste good and cannot meet consumer demand, no amount of promotion and advertising by the company will be effective. Only by keeping pace with the development of market demand and developing new product flavors at the right time can a company's products remain invincible.
In the "2016-2020 China Snack Food Industry Investment Analysis and Prospect Forecast Report," China Investment Consulting pointed out that snack food companies can seek breakthroughs in the following areas:
First, flavor diversification and serialization. Consumer demand is increasingly diversified and personalized, and consumers are especially picky about food flavors. Snack foods with a single flavor will find it difficult to satisfy the vast number of consumers. After gaining an in-depth understanding of consumer demand, snack food companies should further segment target consumers and, according to consumers' different needs, boldly carry out product innovation, expand existing product lines, and launch diversified flavors and personalized packaging. For example, potato chips, a representative category of snack foods, have already successfully developed multiple flavors such as barbecue, tomato, cheese, and original.
Second, regional flavor improvement. Regional specialty flavors have a certain regional character. In order to cater to the different taste preferences of consumers in different regions, snack food companies can make targeted adjustments and improvements to products with distinctive flavors that are popular in one region, and then promote them to the national market to adapt to the taste characteristics of the general public. For example, the popularity of Chongqing-style snack foods and snack dried tofu products is the result of improving regional flavors.
Third, the increase of composite flavors. Consumers' flavor consumption is increasingly trending toward composite flavors, increasingly favoring tasting different flavors at one time, and their choice of flavors is also trending toward composite flavors. More snack food manufacturers are blending multiple flavors together and achieving composite flavors through technological innovation, and this innovation has also been warmly welcomed by consumers.
2. Development trends in product packaging
In order to cater to consumers' consumption needs on different occasions, each snack food manufacturer should carry out differentiated segmentation of target consumers and, based on this, design product packaging of different specifications, such as small packages for individual consumption, large packages for sharing among multiple people, and gift packages for giving to others.
Among these, the most prominent is the emergence of individual small packages. It not only caters to consumers' demand for snack foods that are healthy and convenient, but also provides companies with a marketing opportunity for selling packaged loose products, enabling products originally sold in bulk and focused on volume to be upgraded through small packaging, which both increases corporate profits and meets market demand.
For example, hand-torn beef was the first in the industry to launch kraft paper bag and cloth bag packaging. With a novel appearance and strong practicality, it not only obtained a national patent, but is also environmentally friendly and exquisite, and has been recognized and favored by high-end consumers.
3. Development trends in marketing models
(1) Brand strategy
First, the celebrity endorsement strategy to establish brand image. Most snack food manufacturers focus on celebrity endorsement promotion, hoping to use celebrities' fame and appeal to increase consumer attention, attract industry attention, rapidly increase product awareness under the influence of celebrities, strengthen the product's brand influence and image, and successfully lead the trend of snack food consumption. For example, Copico used Jay Chou as an endorser, triggering a massive following among his fans. Panpan French-style small bread, meanwhile, enlisted Jiang Wenli as its endorser, successfully performing the line "French-style small bread, Panpan is still better."
Second, the cultural endorsement strategy to successfully launch the market. At present, the two most prominent brands in China's snack food sector are Want Want and Hsu Fu Chi. Both use traditional Chinese festivals and blessing culture for brand marketing, seizing the Spring Festival, a golden sales season, for promotion. Taking Want Want as an example, all of Want Want's advertisements revolve around Chinese people's psychology of seeking prosperity and are promoted during the New Year period, firmly grasping ordinary people's psychology of giving gifts for good luck, successfully leveraging the Spring Festival gift market and pioneering cultural marketing in snack foods.
(2) Channel model innovation
In order to resist product homogenization, snack foods can achieve effective differentiation from other competing products through differentiated brand personality, differentiated core product appeals, and differentiated distribution channels.
At present, the circulation channels for snack foods are still relatively single. The main venues for snack food sales are still supermarkets and chain snack food specialty stores, followed by food stores and convenience stores. At present, building a strong marketing platform and enhancing brand creation on the marketing platform have become new needs for the development of the snack food industry.
Snack food companies can develop new sales channels based on the leisure characteristic of the product. For example, baked goods can be sold through dining terminals such as casual restaurants, tea houses, and coffee shops, or product sales activities can be carried out through the internet using e-commerce platforms, or they can go deep into high-end communities to increase target customers' attention.
For example, a honey company in Hangzhou achieved a sales breakthrough by deeply cultivating the community channel. Their approach was: assign each salesperson 3 residential areas, and set up tables in the residential areas every morning and evening and all day on weekends for community sales. Because the products were fresh and of good quality, cheaper than those in stores, and the service attitude was good and the salespeople became familiar with people over time, a stable consumer group was quickly formed.
(3) Multi-party integrated promotion strategy
Today's snack food communication is omnidirectional, with more and more integrated online and offline communication, and multi-party coordination has become a market operation trend. Print media promotion mainly based on television product advertising, combined with radio media, terminal POP design and posting, and further combined with SMS interaction, online game placement and interaction, and other operations, integrated promotion is emerging. Excellent manufacturers are mostly good at multi-party integrated promotion in order to achieve rapid market breakthroughs. For example, from August 2006 to February 2007, Panpan Foods partnered with Tencent QQ Games to jointly launch a prize-winning Dou Dizhu zone, gathering popularity through a casual game competition club and combining it with offline product activities, creating a classic case of integrated promotion for snack foods.
Small and medium-sized enterprises have limited funds and cannot adopt the model of large-scale advertising with celebrity endorsements, so they can seek novel promotion methods to promote products. In addition to terminal promotion methods, cooperating with media or websites and directly contacting target consumers through on-site activities is also a relatively good promotion method.
In brand promotion, snack food companies should focus on cultivating their own unique brand personality. This is the surest shortcut to seizing the mindshare of specific target consumers. At present, more and more companies tend to develop personalized products and shape personalized brand images to meet consumers' demand for brands that can express their own personalities. Personalized brands should be shaped through multiple means, and public relations can be used to demonstrate corporate responsibility.
4. Development trends in competitive strategy
Due to unhealthy eating habits, excessive intake of high-calorie and high-fat foods, and insufficient exercise, obesity, especially childhood obesity, has become a focus of attention in urban families, and the relationship between snack foods and obesity has also attracted more and more attention. Therefore, developing healthy and functional foods will be the mainstream trend of the snack food market in the future.
Because the entry threshold for snack foods is relatively low, many companies often adopt a follow-up strategy when promoting, following competitors in products and differentiating from competitors in advertising. By leveraging the market cultivated by competitors, they successfully push their own products into the market. For example, Crayon Shin-chan imitated and followed Strong, successfully building its own market. Abby, meanwhile, used Huang Xiaoming as an endorser and appealed to "Happiness is defined by me, potato chips are Abby," following Lay's and Copico well and confusing market perception.
It can be said that imitation has spread throughout the entire industry. Effective imitation has reduced market promotion costs and time for many companies, while also helping companies successfully enter the market. However, this kind of following and imitation works in the short term, but in the long term it will lose competitive advantage.
5. Trends in changes to market structure
In the "2016-2020 China Snack Food Industry Investment Analysis and Prospect Forecast Report," China Investment Consulting pointed out that the food industry has entered a stage of complete competition, corporate profits are becoming increasingly averaged, and industry integration and market segmentation are about to be completed. Therefore, snack food companies should seize opportunities, leverage their strengths and avoid weaknesses, and, through new product development, brand building, and market expansion, and through differentiation strategies, embark on a path of rapid, healthy, and sustainable development.
The changes in the snack food industry are mainly manifested in the segmented expansion of consumer groups, the continuous introduction of new developed products, and marketing models that keep pace with the times.
From the perspective of competitive structure, with the increasing number of imported foods and terminals, competition in China's snack foods will face a contest between imports and domestic products in the future; for domestic enterprises, barriers and struggles between regional blocs will also be unavoidable.
From the perspective of consumer groups, the consumer base for snack foods will become increasingly segmented in the future. For example, younger age groups, white-collar workers, and special consumer groups will become increasingly prominent, products developed for children, white-collar workers, middle-aged and older people, and pregnant women will increase day by day, and the span of consumer groups will also become wider and wider.
From the perspective of channel structure, the traditional distribution model of the past will gradually shift to modern sales models. The previous channel structure mainly relying on traditional channels will gradually become a structure placing equal emphasis on traditional channels and modern channels. Enterprises need to walk on two legs: on the one hand, they must use modern circulation to manage brands and profits well; on the other hand, they must also make good use of traditional channels to handle sales and product market share.
From the perspective of marketing models, more OEM-type models will emerge in the future. Enterprises will use their own brand and market advantages and seek contract manufacturers to make up for insufficient production capacity and enrich their existing product lines, and this will receive increasing attention from snack food companies.