Text/"New Sankei Shimbun" Zuo Yuqing
Affected by the epidemic in COVID-19, the "house economy" that never leaves home has achieved a contrarian growth. Among them, snack consumption has a very bright performance. According to an analysis by the Industry Research Center of New Food Partner Network, the sales of leisure snacks will be close to 3 trillion yuan in 22, and leisure snacks have become the "fourth meal". Some insiders said that the growth of snack consumption is not only the result of special environment catalysis, but also the long-term trend of consumption upgrading in recent years.
expansion of snack market
In the past, snacks were considered as children's patents, and in traditional snack advertisements, most of them were children. However, with the economic growth and consumption upgrading, more and more groups began to enjoy the taste pleasure brought by snacks. Almost all consumers have had the experience of buying snacks, among which teenagers and young women are the main consumers. The arrival of the Internet era and the rise of social platforms have provided more space for the sharing of snacks and planting grass. Many snacks have become "online celebrity". The expansion of market capacity has led many snack enterprises to create snacks that cater to their consumption psychology according to the characteristics of different audiences, and the types of snacks are also enriched.
The In-depth Research Report on Leisure Snacks Industry in 22 recently released by MOB Research Institute pointed out that leisure snacks are mainly divided into several sub-categories, such as roasted nuts, halogen products, baked cakes, puffed food, etc. With the increase of market penetration, the compound annual growth rate remains above 6%. The report shows that with the improvement of epidemic prevention and control situation, the demand for home snacks has picked up, logistics and related enterprises have accelerated their resumption of work, online snack sales have rebounded sharply, and sales of nuts, cakes, biscuits, preserved meat and candied fruit are among the top performers.
according to the snack consumption data of tmall supermarket, among the zero food categories, the transaction amount of pastry snacks ranks first, such as bread and shortbread, which can be used as instant cakes for breakfast. Only followed by puffed food represented by potato chips, shrimp strips and popcorn. Meat snacks also rank very high in sales, with duck, beef and chicken snacks occupying three places in the top ten. Among imported snacks, biscuits are the most popular category and the only imported zero food category that has entered the top ten in transaction amount.
regionally, Guangdong is the largest snack consumption province in China, and Zhejiang, Jiangsu, Shanghai and Beijing rank among the top five in China. The consumption potential of snacks in central and northeastern China has also been released in the past year, and young users place orders most frequently. The year-on-year growth rate of snack consumption in Anhui, Shandong, Liaoning, Heilongjiang and Henan all exceeded 1%, ranking among the top provinces in China.
during the ordering period, the most active snack trading period in tmall supermarket is from 23: every night to : the next day. Many buyers like to order snacks before going to bed, so that they can receive them immediately the next day. Other consumers prefer to "buy as you go" and achieve new needs for consumption in one hour. Xiao Wang, who is still a college student, told New Sankei that she often likes to browse social platforms before going to bed, and inevitably she will see various snack recommendations. As a "foodie", she always "can't control her hands" and immediately place an order. "One of the reasons is that I like to read some food recommendations from late-night newspapers, but the purchase method of waking up and signing before going to bed also makes me feel more satisfied." She said.
compared with traditional offline sales, online shop is the fastest expanding sales channel in recent years. When you open Taobao, you can not only search for a new brand like Squirrel, Herb Flavor and Good Shop, but also see old brands like Panpan, Gangrong, Master Kong and Uni-President. Nowadays, "online retail+brand chain" has become the focus of brand building layout, and from the current statistics, the top three pattern of good shops, three squirrels and herbs seems to be a foregone conclusion. According to statistics, at present, the number of mainstream brand snacks in the industry is more than hundreds. For example, there are nearly 1,4 SKUs in good shops, more than 1, products in Xu Fuji and Laiyifen, and more than 6 products with herbal flavor.
However, with the gradual disappearance of online traffic dividend, new retail emerged, and head enterprises began to lay out new retail in succession. In the layout of new retail, the market strategies of the three companies are also different. Three squirrels attach importance to IP development and make efforts to offline channels; Baicaowei restarted offline, focusing on product upgrades and taking into account entertainment marketing; Compared with the other two brands whose focus is still online, the focus of good shops is more on offline expansion, trying to build smart stores and carry out omni-channel integration.
with the rise of live broadcast, snack sales have also joined the army of live broadcast. For example, at the "May 5th Shopping Festival" held in Shanghai this year, "Laiyifen", as a leading snack and a key promotion brand in Songjiang District, participated in the interactive pre-heating live broadcast with goods. In the live broadcast, the anchor in Iraq showed the recommended products and coupons, and directly drained them to the online platform of Tmall flagship store in Iraq. This live broadcast showed consumers 1 hot-selling products from Iraq, such as rock-roasted cheese toast, pistachios, duck necks and dried mangoes, and at the same time released 3 MINUS 21 coupons in the live broadcast, detonating the "buy-and-buy" carnival. At the "517" Snack Festival, well-known online celebrity anchors Li Jiaqi and Viya sold goods live with the theme of Snack Festival at the same time, which directly detonated the traffic, and finally set a sales volume of 35 million in Li Jiaqi and 39 million in Viya. Snacks such as snail powder, carya cathayensis sarg, freeze-dried lemon slices and stone cakes became one of the best-selling snacks in the live broadcast room that day.
Brand needs to be upgraded
Although the leisure snack e-commerce is in a relatively stable market structure, and the leading enterprises in the industry continue to advance on the road of capitalization, due to the characteristics of snacks and fierce competition, many snack enterprises still have many problems in their development.
For example, due to the rapid change of snack tastes, consumers like the new and hate the old, and like to pursue new tastes such as online celebrity food and cross-border food, the continuous supply of products has become a problem, and some enterprises have incomplete zero food categories, which cannot satisfy the customer experience. For example, three squirrels, who mainly eat nuts, used to rise with nuts, but now they are also trapped in nuts. Compared with other snack brands, the three squirrels' zero food categories are too single, which makes them somewhat stretched to cope with the changes in the taste characteristics of the target consumers. Finally, after experiencing double-digit rapid growth in previous years, the sales growth rate in double 11 dropped significantly in 217.
and the competition among brands is becoming more and more fierce. At present, there are many brands of snacks, and there are a large number of snacks in online celebrity. At the same time, there are many problems such as high online bonus ceiling and various costs, high marketing cost, thin gross profit and serious homogenization. With the intervention of cross-border food forces and the addition of Shangchao's own brand or incubation brand, snack enterprises are also facing a problem at the turning point: value quality or fight for low price?
in addition, some snack enterprises have single sales scenarios and channels, and some established snack enterprises lack Internet genes, and they don't know how to revitalize online sales, or they rely on a single consumption scenario of store purchase, which can't meet consumers' shopping needs anytime and anywhere. At the same time, with the trend of consumption upgrading, the consumption potential of second-and third-tier cities with huge population has been tapped again, and the effect of channel sinking has become more and more obvious, and it has gradually extended to third-and fourth-tier cities. How to grasp this market space is an important opportunity for many snack enterprises to seize market share.
At present, many snack brands have begun to adjust their strategies. As a snack product, quality is the first priority, and how to accurately grasp the consumption demand of consumers with changeable minds is a difficult problem for snack enterprises. Some insiders believe that the value of head flow is important in developing snack brands, but the potential value of long tail is self-evident. If you only blindly pursue explosive items, you will lose the consumer groups in the big circle. Because of the differences in eating habits and taste preferences in different parts of China, the snack market has obvious regional characteristics, so it is easier to grasp the hearts of this group of people by introducing some products aimed at minority people or regional snacks, such as instant hot pot, products with obvious characteristics of diet replacement circle or obvious regional preferences. In this way, taking into account the explosion and the long tail, snack brands can seize the stomach of consumers.
According to the forecast of China Food Industry Association, China's snack food industry will continue to maintain a relatively high growth rate from 215 to 219, with a compound annual growth rate of over 17%, and the industry output value is expected to reach about 2 trillion yuan by 219. In this regard, some research institutions predict that in the next 5 to 1 years, the main business income of snack food will reach more than one-fifth of the total income of the food industry, which means that there will be potential market demand of trillions of yuan. In this competitive red sea, whoever can grasp the market and take the lead in the road of change will usher in the next new growth space.