Affected by the epidemic in COVID-19, the "house economy" that never leaves home is growing against the trend. Among them, snack consumption has a very bright performance. According to the analysis of the Industry Research Center of New Food Partner Network, the sales of leisure snacks will be close to 3 trillion yuan in 2020, 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.
Snack market expansion
In the past, snacks were considered as children's patents. 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 bought snacks, among which teenagers and young women are the main consumers. The advent of the Internet era and the rise of social platforms have provided more space for snack sharing and planting grass. Many snacks have become "network celebrities". With the expansion of market capacity, many snack enterprises create snacks that cater to their consumption psychology according to the characteristics of different audiences, and the types of snacks are also more abundant.
Mob Research Institute recently released the "In-depth Research Report on Leisure Snacks Industry in 2020", pointing out that leisure snacks are mainly divided into several categories, such as baked nuts, halogen products, baked cakes, puffed food and so on. With the increase of market penetration, the compound annual growth rate remains above 6%. The report shows that with the improvement of the epidemic prevention and control situation, the demand for household snacks has picked up, logistics and related enterprises have accelerated their resumption of work, and the sales of online snacks have rebounded sharply, with nuts, cakes, biscuits, bacon and candied fruit among the top sellers.
According to the snack consumption data of Tmall Supermarket, in the category of zero food, the transaction volume of pastry snacks is in the forefront, such as bread and shortbread, which can be used as instant cakes for breakfast. Second only to puffed food represented by potato chips, shrimp strips and popcorn. The sales volume of meat snacks is also very high, with duck meat, beef and chicken snacks occupying the top ten positions. Among imported snacks, biscuits are the most popular category and the only imported zero food category that has entered the top ten in transaction volume.
In terms of regions, Guangdong is the largest province in snack consumption, while Zhejiang, Jiangsu, Shanghai and Beijing rank among the top five in the country. The consumption potential of snacks in the central and northeastern regions has also been released in the past year, with young users placing orders most frequently. The year-on-year growth rate of snack consumption in Anhui, Shandong, Liaoning, Heilongjiang and Henan all exceeded 10%, ranking among the top provinces in China.
During the ordering period, the most active snack trading time in Tmall Supermarket is from 23: 00 to 0: 00 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 and go" and realize the new consumption demand within 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 snacks recommendations. As a "foodie", she always "can't control her hands" and places an order immediately. "One of the reasons is that I like to read some food recommendations in late-night newspapers, but the purchase method of signing after waking up 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 new brands such as Squirrel, Herb Flavor and Good Shop, but also see old brands such as Pan Pan, 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 first three patterns of good shops, three squirrels and herbs seem to be a foregone conclusion. According to statistics, the number of mainstream brand snacks in the industry is now more than hundreds. For example, there are nearly 1.400 SKUs in good shops, more than 1.000 products in Xu Fuji and Laiyifen, and more than 600 products with herbal flavor.
However, with the gradual disappearance of online traffic dividends, new retail came into being, and head enterprises began to lay out new retail. In the layout of new retail, the marketing strategies of the three companies are also different. Three squirrels attach importance to IP development and make efforts to offline channels; Baicaowei restarts 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 live broadcast army. For example, at the "May 5 th Shopping Festival" held in Shanghai this year, "Laiyifen", as the leading snack and key promotion brand in Songjiang District, participated in the interactive preheating live broadcast with goods. During the live broadcast, the Iraqi anchor displayed recommended products and coupons, which were directly drained to the online platform of Tmall's Iraq flagship store. This live broadcast showed consumers the hot-selling products of 10 from Iraq, such as rock-baked cheese toast, pistachios, duck necks, dried mangoes, etc. At the same time, 300 minus 2 10 coupons were released in the live broadcast, which set off a "shopping" carnival. At the "5 17" Snack Festival, well-known network celebrity anchors Li Jiaqi and Viya simultaneously broadcast live products with the theme of Snack Festival, directly detonating traffic, and finally set a sales volume of 350 million in Li Jiaqi and 390 million in Viya. Snacks such as snail powder, pecans, freeze-dried lemon slices and stone cakes became one of the best-selling snacks in the live broadcast room that day.
The brand needs upgrading.
Although leisure snack e-commerce is in a relatively stable market structure, leading enterprises in the industry are making continuous progress on the road of capitalization, but due to the characteristics of snacks and fierce competition, many snack enterprises still have many problems in their development.
For example, because the taste of snacks changes rapidly, 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 categories of zero food, which cannot satisfy the customer experience. For example, three squirrels mainly eat nuts. They used to get up with nuts, but now they are also trapped by nuts. Compared with other snack brands, the snacks of the three squirrels 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 high-speed growth in previous years, the sales growth rate of Shuang 1 1 dropped sharply in 20 17 years.
And the competition between brands is becoming more and more fierce. At present, there are many brands of snacks, and there are a lot of snacks among online celebrities. At the same time, there are many problems such as the upper limit of online bonus, high cost, high marketing cost, thin gross profit and serious homogenization. With the intervention of cross-border food forces and the addition of Shanchao's own brands or incubation brands, snack enterprises are also facing a turning point: value quality or fight for low prices?
In addition, some snack companies have single sales scenarios and channels, and some established snack companies lack Internet genes, do not know how to revitalize online sales, or rely on a single consumption scenario purchased by stores to meet the shopping needs of consumers 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 channel sinking effect 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 comes first. How to accurately grasp the consumption needs of consumers with changeable minds is a difficult problem faced by 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 just blindly pursue the explosion, 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. Therefore, it is easier to grasp the hearts of these people by introducing some products aimed at ethnic minorities or regional snacks, such as instant hot pot, products with obvious characteristics of food substitution 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, the snack food industry in China will continue to grow at a high speed from 20 15 to 20 19, with the compound annual growth rate exceeding 17%. It is estimated that the industry output value will reach about 2 trillion yuan by 20 19. In this regard, some research institutions predict that the main business income of snack food will reach more than one-fifth of the total income of the food industry in the next five years to 10, which means there will be a potential market demand of one trillion 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.