The Spring Festival is approaching, and the snack industry has opened the mode of "preparing for the New Year", striving to make a good start for 2024.
And what to choose for the New Year has always been related to the consumption trend of each generation. As the "Generation Z" has become the main consumer force, traditional milk, biscuits, etc. can no longer meet the market demand, and under the trend of health and fashion, the demand for gifts for products such as nut gift boxes has increased.
According to the "New Year's Goods China Series Report - 300,000 Essence Posts in the New Year's Goods Purchase Data Guide Report" released by Jingdong Supermarket, in the New Year's goods category, nuts have the highest voice, reaching 25%, and more than half of netizens expressed their willingness to buy nut gift boxes to visit relatives and friends.
In the face of strong holiday consumption enthusiasm, related brands are also actively promoting new products, such as Baicaowei's online launch of "Taste of the Year", "Nut Gifts" and three product series of mass sales of canned nuts; BESTORE has launched the "BESTORE is blessed" Wutaishan co-branded nut gift box, etc.
Obviously, the Spring Festival is an important juncture for snack brand competition. However, it is not easy to gain enough consumer recognition. At present, the demand of consumers is constantly improving, and brands can only truly ignite the enthusiasm for New Year's goods consumption by showing real materials.
So, how exactly do snack brands make "real materials" to go through the consumption cycle? On this issue, we may be able to use Baicaowei as a window to get a glimpse of the brand upgrade trend and the future development of the industry.
The snack industry welcomes the "big test" of the New Year, and accurate pulse of market demand is the key
The reason why it focuses on Baicaowei is mainly because it has a certain right to speak in the creation of New Year's products.
It is reported that Baicaowei's "Taste of the Year" series of nut gift boxes has a history of 11 years and has become a typical "standard" for New Year's goods. In addition, according to the "2023 China Healthy Life Trend Insight Report" of CBNDadata Business Data Center, Baicaowei New Year's Nut Gift Box has led the sales of the whole network for 6 consecutive years.
In the fierce competition on the battlefield of New Year's goods, why can it stand out? In view of the market environment, adapting to consumer demand is the key.
On the one hand, under the trend of health, consumers pay more attention to product quality, and thus pay more attention to the industrial chain links such as product origin, processing, and packaging
For example, in terms of product traceability, the "2022 Healthy Leisure Snacks*** shows that consumers' main focus on nuts is high-quality raw materials, and the origin has become one of the main dimensions used by consumers to judge the quality of nuts. For related enterprises, the importance of nut source control continues to be highlighted.
Therefore, it can be seen that the three squirrels have established a raw material planting base, and BESTORE has also launched a series of live broadcasts on the origin of nuts to create an IP of "Seeking Taste and Good Products".
Focusing on the direction of "quality" and "health" product upgrading, Baicaowei has formulated strict standards for raw material procurement, established long-term cooperation with nut plantations and processing manufacturers that meet the standards, and will send product research and development teams to the core nut producing areas of the world to find the best raw materials, which is conducive to providing consumers with high-quality products and reducing intermediate links to ensure product cost performance.
In addition, in nut processing, snack brands often use food flavorings to create a variety of flavors to meet the preferences of different groups, but they also ignore the health needs of consumers.
In order to achieve the goal of both delicious and healthy, brands must undoubtedly do a good job of "addition and subtraction". Specifically, it is manifested in: increasing the nutrient content and types of nutrients; Reduce sugar, oil, salt, calories, etc. For example, in the process of nut processing, Baicao flavor is based on the original roasting, and only the basic seasoning formula such as sea salt is added, which can be said to be a choice that conforms to the trend of health.
In terms of packaging design, considering the long consumption cycle of nut products, the packaging must have strong moisture-proof, oxygen-proof, taste-proof and insect-proof functions to maintain the freshness and taste of the product. In this regard, the practice of baicaowei is actually worth learning from. It is reported that the Baicaowei "Nut Gift" series gift box adopts a canning design with a long threaded can lid + aluminum film seal, which can achieve double-layer moisture-proof and freshness.
On the whole, if you want to create a high-quality nut New Year's gift box, relevant brands need to take into account many elements such as origin, processing, and packaging design.
On the other hand, the traditional festival of "Celebrating the New Year with laughter and gathering together to welcome the New Year", the traditional festival of the Spring Festival contains emotions such as reunion, blessings, peace, gratitude, and longing for the Chinese, which means that snack brands also need to have a high degree of aesthetic and emotional resonance with consumers in terms of communication.
Based on this, Baicaowei carried out illustration designs such as "Little Partner's Firecrackers", "Spring Festival Gala on the Coffee Table" and "Grandma's Stove" on the New Year's gift box, as well as the recent release of the warm short film "Grandma's Pocket" with brand spokesperson Bai Jingting, etc., which are actually key measures to arouse consumers' emotional resonance and realize the scene of grass planting.
On the whole, if snack brands want to firmly occupy the minds of consumers in the consumption of New Year's goods, they need to have a deeper insight into consumers' practical needs and emotional needs. And this is also the way to run through the whole life cycle of the industry.
In 2024, how can leading snack brands continue to highlight their long-term value?
Looking back on 2023, snack companies are still sailing in a red ocean. According to the "2023 Snack Industry Research Report" released by Qince Consumer Research, the scale of China's snack industry is expected to be 1,124.7 billion yuan in 2023, a year-on-year decrease of 35%。
But there are also increments in the stock. According to iiMedia Consulting's report, the market size of China's snack collection stores will be 80.9 billion yuan in 2023, a year-on-year increase of 75%, and it is expected to reach 123.9 billion yuan in 2025.
In fact, the rise of mass selling snacks reveals that the leisure snack industry has the characteristics of "high-frequency non-rigid demand" and "experiential consumption", so consumers' brand stickiness is low. According to a market survey, 51% of consumers' consideration for buying snacks is "**, while "brand" accounts for 32%.
In this case, independent snack brands such as Baicaowei are also standing at a new development intersection. Specifically, it is still facing a promising market. The data shows that the current per capita snack consumption in China is 14kg 500 yuan, which is lower than the global average of 27kg 942 yuan, which represents that China's snack market still has a lot of room for development.
However, as pointed out in the research report of China Securities Construction Investment, the rapid development of the snack industry has had a huge impact on the supply in the snack industry. At a time when challenges and opportunities coexist, facing 2024, leading snack brands obviously need to rethink how to move forward.
First of all, it is necessary to improve the efficiency of chain circulation with the production and marketing linkage strategy to ensure the long-term stability of the product. As mentioned above, the current consumers have higher requirements for the quality of snacks, which also gives independent snack brands a starting point to continue to demonstrate their advantages.
In fact, the secret of the snack mass merchandiser being able to play a low price is that it skips the first-level and second-level dealers, can get the goods directly from the manufacturer, and naturally obtains a lower purchase cost after streamlining and shortening the first chain. However, under this model, the product is not self-produced, and it is difficult for enterprises to do a good job in source control and ensure quality.
In contrast, head snack companies such as Three Squirrels, Baicaowei, and BESTORE basically have a complete chain covering procurement, production, warehousing, logistics and other links, which can achieve a more comprehensive improvement of product quality. However, in order to achieve more efficient and stable quality control, in addition to the fine optimization of each link of the first chain, it is also necessary to take into account the improvement of overall efficiency, and the importance of using digital means is highlighted.
In the future, if we can base ourselves on their respective intelligent and modern production bases, use big data, cloud computing and other technical means to link production and marketing data, improve circulation efficiency, and ensure that raw materials quickly arrive at factories and finished products quickly reach consumers, and the brand influence is expected to continue to expand. From this point of view, Baicaowei is moving towards the above goals by building an intelligent first-chain management platform to realize the sharing of warehouses and goods through different channels such as B2B, B2C, O2O, and offline stores driven by data.
Secondly, it is necessary to keep up with the general trend of shifting the focus of snack channels to offline, extend the broad offline distribution network, and enhance the "community influence".。Some industry insiders believe that considering the needs of consumers to intuitively feel the quality of products, the current snack market has a trend of returning to offline. In particular, the rapid expansion of mass snack brand stores, such as Zhao Yiming's snack stores, has exceeded 2,300 at present, and is expanding at a rate of 200+ per month, the main battlefield of the snack track has shifted to offline, and the seizure of offline traffic has entered a critical stage.
In this regard, Baicaowei began to expand offline channels as early as 2017, and covered more consumers in the form of distribution, direct sales and franchise diversification. Up to now, Baicaowei's offline distribution business covers 31 provincial-level administrative regions across the country, with more than 1,800 dealers and more than 200,000 offline terminals. BESTORE is also continuously promoting its offline layout, and as of the end of September 2023, the number of the company's offline stores has reached 3,344.
In general, at present, independent snack brands such as Baicaowei continue to enhance their influence mainly through first-class chain optimization and channel construction, and the effectiveness of related measures has yet to be verified by the market. However, it is certain that at the beginning of a new round of industry development cycle, following consumer demand is still the first priority for the sustainable development of brands.
Author: Hao Lan Buling.