Made by Qi Chao. Com "see column"
Edible oil is an indispensable condiment in China cooking, and cooking cannot be separated from it. With the substantial improvement of living standards of domestic residents, people have new requirements and standards for the quantity and quality of edible oil. In 20021year, the output of refined edible vegetable oil in China was 4973 1 10,000 tons, but the demand was as high as 60.925 million tons, and there was still a big gap.
With the increasing demand for edible oil and the improvement of residents' health awareness, the eating habit of less oil and low salt is being accepted by more people. Therefore, peanut oil with high cholesterol is gradually being replaced by corn oil, sunflower oil and even olive oil. This should have been a great opportunity for Li Duo edible oil, the main brand of healthy oil, but in fact, its development in recent years is really embarrassing.
Food safety problems occur frequently, and Li Duo is still in the recovery stage.
Since entering the China market in 2008, Li Duo edible oil has been called corn oil, sunflower oil and other vegetable oils by consumers. Moreover, its sunflower seed oil, which is known as "rich in 88% unsaturated fatty acids and vitamin E", has always been favored by some healthy families. However, in 2020, Li Duo edible oil was pointed out by relevant departments that ethyl maltol was illegally added, which is a banned flavor improver.
The detection value of ethyl maltol in Li Duo edible plant blending oil (1.8L/ bottle, 20 19/4/ 16) produced by Jiage Food (China) Co., Ltd. and sold by Jiage Investment (China) Co., Ltd. was 50.6 μ g/kg. The detection value of ethyl maltol in Li Duo Zhenbao edible plant blended oil (5L/ bottle, 20 19/5/ 10) produced by Jiage Food (China) Co., Ltd. and sold by Pinggu Supermarket in Beijing Xinhai Yuntong Commercial Building was 78.2μg/kg.
Li Duo edible oil, which was named by Anhui Market Supervision Administration and Beijing Market Supervision Administration successively, had all been removed from the shelves at that time. Since then, Li Duo has not only lost its dominant position in sunflower oil field, but also started to lose its market in edible oil field. Because domestic consumers have always recognized that oil is infallible.
The reputation of condiment market is the most difficult to establish, but once it is known and favored by consumers, it will be passed down from generation to generation. Therefore, although condiment enterprises have low profits, they can take the road of stable small profits but quick turnover. Arowana, the leader of the industry, has also been criticized for allegedly using genetically modified raw materials.
As early as 20021annual report, Arowana owned 17 enterprises with genetically modified processing qualifications, but Arowana claimed that it insisted on not using genetically modified raw materials, which was inevitably confusing. In addition, in recent years, with the skyrocketing price of oil raw materials, Arowana also revealed in the recently released annual report for the first half of 2022 that the brand development has reached a critical value. With the saturation of market demand, the edible oil industry will make steady progress in a relatively dull market.
But this is not the case. Since Arowana was involved in the public opinion storm of carcinogens last year, its share price has been falling all the way: the company's share price has fallen by more than 65% to a high level, and its market value has evaporated by more than 500 billion. It seems that there is no plan to bottom out. However, Arowana argued in the financial report that it was because of rising raw material prices and insufficient market power. But the red line of food safety is the bottom line for consumers to buy.
The safety of edible oil has always been valued by Chinese people, especially after establishing a certain brand loyalty, once there is a public opinion storm, it will quickly lose market share. Li Duo has security problems twice in a month, which makes sunflower oil, which is a minority, even more precarious. Therefore, Li Duo is still striving for the lost market share today, but with little success.
Segmentation of edible oil market, marketing strategy is difficult to work.
According to the White Paper on Edible Oil Industry Trends in 2022 released by Tmall, in the past year, the scale growth rate of corn oil and sunflower oil increased by 22% and 10% year-on-year, ranking the top two in the general edible oil category. Users are increasingly favoring light oil in the choice of kitchen oil, and Li Duo will naturally not miss this opportunity to re-establish brand reputation.
As early as 20 19, Li Duo edible oil began to be multi-category. In 2020, Li Duo introduced soy sauce and sesame oil; 202 1 introduced a variety of seasoning oils such as pepper oil, rattan pepper oil and Chili oil. In 2022, Li Duo Edible Oil announced that it would gradually introduce rice, cooking wine, vinegar and other essential kitchen products, which had a great momentum to comprehensively lay out the seasoning market, but the knowledge was not as simple as expected.
The raw materials of edible oil are complex enough, except traditional peanuts, soybeans, sunflower seeds and tea seeds, as well as corn and olives. Li Duo naturally has a relatively perfect supply chain management in this respect. However, when there are many raw materials such as rice, cooking wine and vinegar, and the brewing formula is similar, it is actually difficult for Li Duo to take care of them. Unless it is OEM, it is very important to build a supply chain system in the early stage.
In addition, Dolly's marketing strategy is not unusual at present. Unlike traditional brands such as Arowana and Fulinmen, which like to put advertisements on fixed TV channels and do offline activities in large chain shopping malls, Li Duo edible oil has chosen e-commerce and peer-to-peer development mode, which is unique in the edible oil industry.
On the one hand, Li Duo cooperates with high-quality restaurants, such as in Beijing, and cooperates with many well-known restaurants to launch a series of "Looking for a Banquet in Beijing" to integrate marketing into the scene; On the other hand, it embraces new retail and reaches strategic cooperation with large e-commerce supermarkets such as Boxma Xiansheng, JD.COM and Tmall, which seems to cover the whole market, but in fact this scheme is more difficult to operate.
According to public data, the channels for consumers to buy edible oil are mostly concentrated in supermarkets or supermarkets. If you buy on the e-commerce platform, you can only accept the purchase mode similar to Park Park and Wal-Mart, because consumers have high requirements for oil quality, which can be seen from the development of bulk oil in the 1990s to hardcover oil today.
Consumers will feel more at ease when using the oil purchased by supermarkets and other stores, because on the one hand, they hope to shop around online and choose brands with higher cost performance; on the other hand, they also trust the quality control in Shang Chao, believing that if something goes wrong, they can find the responsible party. While Li Duo has made great efforts in catering and e-commerce, although it has increased a lot of sales, it has never directly contacted consumers, so this promotion strategy has certain limitations.
Among the consumers surveyed, as many as 50% residents said that the oil used at home has always been those old brands, and it will not be changed easily under normal circumstances, unless there is a food safety problem, so Li Duo wants to win the favor of consumers by relying on the reputation of big hotels and the convenience of e-commerce channels, and I am afraid it will be Waterloo.
Playing the technical card has ushered in a new impact on the industry.
As a daily necessity for 65.438+0.4 billion people in China, rice, oil, salt, sauce and vinegar tea, even if it is 65.438+0% of a category, has become an industry giant. The edible oil market with an annual consumption of 36 million tons only needs a market share of 1%, which is a subdivision giant with sales exceeding 5 billion.
In the new consumption era, under the background of industrial evolution and change, all industries are actually facing the risk of major reshuffle.
In the new consumption era, the impact of emerging brands on traditional enterprises is enormous, and the convenience brought by the prosperity of the take-away industry undoubtedly casts a veil over the future direction of the edible oil market.
The convenience of the take-away industry has reduced the cooking time of all young and middle-aged people working outside the home. Thanks to Meituan and Hungry Dragon, the price of take-away food has also decreased in recent years, which should be a good thing for edible oil enterprises, but not for Li Duo edible oil.
At present, Li Duo focuses on healthier corn oil and sunflower oil. It claims that it has more advanced technology, which can further improve the quality of oil, but it is accompanied by lower cost performance.
Select 100% non-transgenic corn as raw material, and at the same time adopt innovative physical squeezing technology with higher cost and more nature to retain more nutrition. Finally, through the whole process of nitrogen filling and fresh-keeping technology, the "drip lock" was realized. This is the 7-fold refining technology that Li Duo is proud of. "But in the eyes of people in the industry, although edible oil occupies a very important position in China's kitchens, it will be counterproductive to promote it on the scientific and technological level.
Edible oil has a deep historical origin in China, and the traditional ancient pressing method has been recognized by many consumers. It doesn't add any natural value of impurities, and it can attract consumers to pay for it. Especially when additives are gradually known and avoided, Li Duo edible oil is still vigorously promoting its own black technology, which seems to be somewhat contrary to the needs of consumers.
In the take-away industry and the new consumption era, the big oil buyers are basically some chain restaurants, big take-away households, or prefabricated vegetable manufacturers. When buying edible oil, these businesses are more price-sensitive than ordinary consumers. Li Duo, a brand that doesn't promote sales and is cost-effective, will hardly be considered by them, which is undoubtedly a market loss.
There is no denying that there is a special food in the take-away industry, which has high requirements for oil, that is, light food. However, this kind of dinner party prefers to use higher quality oils such as tea oil or olive oil, rather than corn oil or sunflower oil, because these two oils have higher premium space, but obviously Li Duo is not within their purchasing scope.
China people's eating habits are destined to use more cooking oil than westerners. As the saying goes, "oil is not rotten", so oil is also a product that consumers love to hoard. Once they see familiar brands on sale, they will take them underground without hesitation, which has also led many brands to start dumping at low prices in recent years. Without this Li Duo, it is understandable that the market share will be only 3% by the first half of 2022.
In the case of similar products, how to find the bright spot of the brand and gain a foothold in the market is by no means easy. However, when other brands are engaged in price wars, Li Duo's technical cards have to be played in a bit of confusion, especially in the field of oil products. It is really puzzling that the simpler consumers pursue, the less they add, the better.
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Li Duo edible oil is now in a different era than it was when it first entered China. Especially in the case of two safety accidents in Li Duo, it is not enough to win back the confidence of consumers only by upgrading the packaging and inviting spokespersons, but also to be closer to the market demand.