Innovation helps build good brands

After more than 40 years of development, China's snack market has maintained a steady growth trend
.
21st Century Business Herald and PhD Strategic Consulting recently released the "Addition, Subtraction, Multiplication and Division of Zero Food Innovation - 2022 China Zero Food Innovation Report" (hereinafter referred to as the "Report"
).
Wang Chongyang, founding partner of Dr.
Strategy Consulting, said that according to the analysis of the dietary structure and consumption habits of Chinese and foreign consumers, it is found that there is still a big gap between the current average snack consumption in Chinese and the markets of Japan, the United Kingdom, the United States and other countries, and the proportion of per capita snack consumption in per capita disposable income is also much lower than that of the above countries and regions, and it is expected that in the next 10 years, China's snacks will create another trillion market
.

The "Report" shows that in the more than 40 years since the reform and opening up, China's snack market has experienced three waves, which have had a profound impact
on the development of China's zero food category.
Now, with the third wave, China's zero food category has entered the era of mind, and only through category innovation can it win
.

The report believes that category innovation is more conducive to building one of the best brands
.
The core purpose of category innovation is not only to produce new products, but to differentiate and open up a new category in the minds of consumers, and whoever takes the lead in defining this category has a better chance of becoming the best in this category
.
The huge strategic value contained in it stems from the operation law of consumers' minds, that is, "thinking about supplies, expressing with brands"
.
The report believes that successful category innovation needs to meet three basic conditions: product innovation, meeting new needs or solving pain points, and category names
that meet cognition.

The "Report" predicts that as the most healthy cognitive subcategory, nuts are more likely to form a growth trend under the general trend of health; Sugar candied fruit is currently the largest segment of China's snack market, but the growth rate is significantly lower than that of other categories under the general trend of health, and it is expected to lose the throne of the first category soon; Casual marinated snacks have the most Chinese characteristics, are the fastest growing sub-category, and will become the largest sub-category
in the future.
The "Report" believes that the domestic snack channel is showing a trend of rapid differentiation and fragmentation, and the channel change period will be accompanied by new strategic opportunities
.
Taking the good shop as an example, it is not only subject to competition from other snack brands, but also from emerging snack channel brands such as snacks that are very busy and sweeping snacks, and faces the situation of "two-sided attack"; Although the three squirrels have seized the wind of traditional e-commerce, the growth of traditional e-commerce has slowed down, and online and offline channels have shown a trend of fragmentation, and channel layout and expansion will be the strategic key
of the three squirrels in the future.

The "Report" concludes that if snack brands want to succeed, they must follow the "three from three", that is, "follow the trend, follow the cognition, follow the category innovation" and "do not blindly follow competitors, do not blindly follow inherent experience, and do not blindly follow mainstream products"
.
China's snack market will usher in a broader space for development, the core of development is category innovation, change is the product, unchanged is the internal driving force - consumer mind
.
Tapping into the mind and actively carrying out category innovation is a must-have
to compete in the future trillion market.

(Dong Jingyi)

China Food News(2023.
01.
03.
07)

(Responsible editor: Zhu Meiqiao)