High End, Healthy, Personalized And Parallel Enterprises To Tap The Trillions Of Leisure Food Market

In recent years, leisure food companies have been listed one after another, and the rise of online live with goods has also accelerated its development.

At present, the market scale of leisure snacks in China has exceeded one trillion yuan. According to the public data, domestic leisure food sales reached 1029.7 billion yuan in 2018, with a compound annual growth rate of 11.5% from 2013 to 2018. However, in 2019, China's per capita snack consumption is 6.3kg/person, only 36% of Japan's per capita level and 58% of South Korea's. According to the forecast of food partner network industry research center, the scale of leisure food market will reach 1250 billion yuan in 2020.

Chen Wen, an analyst at Wanlian Securities Research Institute, pointed out: "there is still room for growth in the leisure food industry in the future, and the expansion is expected. The upgrading of consumer demand promotes the quality, healthy and personalized development of industry products, and the integrated development of channel line and offline. "

Recently, Wang Qi, CEO of Ye Amei's salt baked chicken feet, said in an interview with 21st century economic reporter: "the high-end trend of leisure food is the inevitable result of consumption upgrading. Young white-collar workers have gradually become the main body of market consumption. Many brands are looking for different ways to narrow the distance with this group, but these paths will eventually be shown through high-end. People are less and less sensitive to the price of high-quality commodities, which is an opportunity and a challenge for the leisure food industry. "

Homogenization dilemma

In fact, the rapid development of leisure food industry, product homogeneity and low entry threshold are still the industry pain points. The snack industry leaders such as liangpin shop and three squirrels lay out the market in a large scale, and show an obvious high-end trend in the process, enabling the leisure food industry and promoting the market layout and industrial development.

At present, the product portfolio of liangpin shop has exceeded 1000, and laiyifen, the leader in East China, has more than 800 SKUs. Even though the product category is relatively small, the product portfolio of three squirrels has exceeded 500. With the diversification of product categories, the product homogeneity is serious, and even if a new category is launched, it will be copied and promoted in a short time.

Take daily nuts as an example. In 2015, Voron launched a series of "Meiri nuts" snacks. After vigorously promoting them in 2016, qiaqiao quickly responded to the situation. Subsequently, baicaowei, three squirrels, liangpin shop and COFCO launched their own brand of "daily nuts". According to incomplete statistics, at present, there are more than 300 enterprises in the market producing "daily nuts", and even HEMA and convenience bee have their own brands of "daily nuts".

At the same time, serious homogenization brings about price war. Low price war will not only cause vicious competition of enterprises, affect the healthy development of industry, but also cause low quality of product production and processing, increase of food safety risk, and even damage the health of customers.

Product differentiation is the key to solve the problem of homogenization. Creating products with high quality and high characteristics to improve the competitiveness of products has become an important way to open the gap. In this process, high added value and high bargaining power have become the industry trend, and the trend of high-end leisure food is becoming more and more obvious. The new relationship between subdivided groups, leisure food and consumers comes into being.

For a while, high-end brand building seems to be the key to breaking the situation. Taking liangpin store as an example, since 2019, the company has focused on making high-end snacks, and has made it clear that in the future, healthy and nutritious and functional snacks will be customized according to the different needs of pregnant women, lying in women, children, silver haired people and fitness people. In 2020, it will enter the field of fitness substitute food which is considered by the industry to be in the "blue ocean" of rapid development.

"Four problems must be solved in order to deepen the market segmentation: the overall market planning ability of brand new categories, the challenges brought by the overall R & D capability, the supply guarantee ability, and the whole process quality control ability." Yang Hongchun, chairman of liangpin store, said publicly that the core premise of promoting high-end strategy by subdividing sub brands and products in the market is to do well in product innovation with technical support.

In this regard, Yang Hongchun talked about the de homogenization layout of liangpin stores and said: "from the high-end snack strategy to entering the market segments. Product competitiveness is the core problem, and product innovation is the biggest pain point. The "moat" of differentiated competition must be R & D innovation. "

In fact, high-end can not replace differentiation as a panacea to open up the industry competition gap.

It is undeniable that high-end can play a certain role in avoiding homogenization risks. On the other hand, the increasing high-end trend and the collective high-end tendency of industrial peers lead to the continuous rise of product prices. Whether the consumer groups are willing to pay for high-value-added products has become a key issue. When 21st century economic reporter interviewed consumers randomly, most of the interviewees showed that they could only accept the price increase within a reasonable range of certain space, but if the price changes too much, it will directly lead to giving up the purchase.

High end has its upper limit of development. It is realistic to comply with the level and law of economic development and consider the overall consumption level and consumption ability of consumers, which means that high-end can not become a long-term development strategy to replace differentiation, and it is a deviation in direction to replace differentiation with high-end. "Homogenization corresponds to differentiation, not to high-end. It is impossible for high-end to replace differentiation, especially for high-end extension of added value." An analyst in the food and beverage industry put forward risk aversion opinions on the trend of high-end replacing differentiation.

Card healthy snacks

With the trend of consumption upgrading, the consumption of staple food is reduced, and leisure snacks which satisfy the taste pleasure but do not produce satiety are favored.

In 2020, the financial and economic center will focus on the health of the first generation of food consumption, which will be the focus of the health function of the market. In 2019, the number of online catering customers soared by 60%, and the market penetration rate has reached 40%.

At the same time, according to the third-party data such as "China sports nutrition analysis report", the global market size of fitness snacks market is US $15 billion, with the largest market in the United States and the fastest growth in Asia. The Chinese market is expected to reach US $4.5 billion in 2020 and us $1.4 billion in 2017.

Under the guidance of this product idea, the idea of good products shop is to quickly complete the construction of fitness product series "good products flying". The target group is the pan fitness group, followed by professional fitness professionals, to meet the weight management, nutritional supplement, sugar control, muscle building and other functional needs.

International giants are also blocking ahead of time. In June 2020, PepsiCo's Quaker brand launched "smart calories low card control" substitute milk shake products, which was the first time PepsiCo launched substitute food products in the Chinese market.

Zhu danpeng, an analyst of the food industry, pointed out: "the epidemic will have a great impact on the consumption thinking and behavior of Chinese consumers, and some industries related to big health will be favored and sought after. This trend will appear in industries and sub categories with the new generation as the mainstream consumer group. "

But at the end of the competition of product diversity, the competition on the track of leisure snacks is still the competition of market share. In 2019, the industry concentration ratio of the top five enterprises in China's leisure food industry is only 16.3%, and the industry is relatively scattered. In this case, through the continuous innovation of the product, advance card position, improve the market share has become the industry consensus.

"This is mainly due to the fact that it is difficult to have a full range of leisure food and nationalization," Chen said. Therefore, I think that the product research and development ability is strong, the ability to grasp the consumer taste demand and product development trend, and the brand building ability is strong. The food leader with omni-channel layout online and offline is expected to seize the market share relying on its own mode advantages and enhance the industry concentration. "

In addition, the layout of leisure food industry will further promote the development of large circular economy industry in China. Healthy food will accelerate the digital transformation of brand by using network platform, catalyze the development of online economy, and expand domestic demand of leisure food consumption. In the process of scientific and technological innovation, quality improvement and high-end evolution, it will promote the improvement of China's leisure food industry chain 。

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