An old snack food enterprise in Chaozhou, Guangdong Province, which started with candied fruit, began to enter other snack food fields without making superior products. More than 60 product specifications, such as pot-stewed series, crispy rice series, roasted seeds and nuts series and popsicle series, have been added. Enterprises are better at making candied fruit, but other products have no advantage. Several newly listed series have a dull response in the market, and the sales volume is less than 10% of the company's total sales volume. But the extension of the new product line has caused a series of problems to the company, such as capital chain, supply chain and management. To this end, the company had to do strain slimming and reduce the specifications of new strains. In order to launch a series of roasted seeds and nuts, the company also bought a county-level food factory in Hubei, which is now in a semi-production state and wastes resources seriously.
Due to the rich consumption levels of snack food, each strain and each market segment has huge market share and consumption potential, which dazzles many snack food enterprises. Most domestic snack food manufacturers want to attack with multiple products, and their products participate in market competition by over-subdividing people, so that they can get a share in every market segment when the east is not bright and the west is bright. From the product variety, packaging specifications, high, medium and low prices, it covers different sales channels such as circulation, distribution and direct supply and different consumer groups at different levels. From hundreds to hundreds of varieties. Lengthy production lines and product lines have made many snack food enterprises lose their way, and their products are not prioritized. As a result, sesame seeds were picked up and watermelon was lost. Increased management difficulty and cost, chaotic marketing, unable to intensively cultivate channels, stagnant sales, weaker profitability and more and more difficult living conditions. If you want to do everything, you can't do anything well, and the enterprise is dragged into the abyss of multi-strain.
Fuzzy brand recognition
Walking into the food areas of major supermarkets, the varieties and specifications of snack foods can be described as dazzling, dazzling consumers. , Shanghaojia, Xizhilang, Kobik, Dove, Pinke, Xerox, Kang Hui, Yashili, Tianwo, Yifa, Jiabao, Want Want, Hsu Fu Kee, qiaqia and other brands are dizzying. However, cautious consumers will find that some brands are single and some brands are rich in varieties. Chocolate and potato chips are the only brands. But some brands have almost all kinds of snack foods in the product display area. These diversified snack food brands make consumers want to know what they are doing.
When it comes to chocolate, consumers immediately think of Dove, rice fruit is prosperous, jelly is joyful, pleasure, taster and good family are potato chips, Chacha and Zhen Zhen are sunflower seeds, Lin is watermelon seeds, and Xu Fuji is candy. These clear brand perceptions can immediately generate exchange associations between products and brands. If you ask consumers what products snack food brands such as Tianwo, Kang Hui, Yifa, Jiabao and Yashili represent, no one may be able to answer immediately. Most domestic snack food brands have such embarrassment. They don't pay attention to brand planning and construction, and have no intention of establishing focus brands. They're just making a big fuss about parent brand. Formulate multiple product specifications, dilute parent brand resources and confuse consumers' perception of brands. Once upon a time, the enterprises producing melon seeds started candied fruit and meat products; Those who make meat products start with candied fruit, and those who sell sweets start with cold drinks. In this way, brand ambiguity is naturally understandable.
Extensive channel construction
At the beginning of the year, we made some surveys on snack foods in some markets. In the primary market, except for well-known brands such as puffing, jelly, roasted seeds and nuts, seaweed, etc., which have formed a monopoly competition pattern, the single-brand distribution rate of other series of snack foods in effective outlets such as schools, Internet cafes, leisure and entertainment places and stations is less than 10%. The secondary market mainly relies on commercial chains and circulation channels, and the average distribution rate of single-brand effective outlets is less than half that of first-class cities. Snack food is a typical fast-moving consumer product. The effective distribution rate of products and the quality of terminal display are two main factors affecting sales. In the channel operation mode, there are generally two modes, namely, stores, chain direct supply, other effective outlets relying on dealers' radiation and exclusive agents (distribution) in first-and second-tier cities. This model is weak in the penetration ability of effective dot. Some snack foods that are being branded are poorly managed in the primary and secondary sales markets, and it is even more difficult to sink in the tertiary and below market channels. In terms of product specifications and channel combination strategy, civilian snack foods such as simple packaging, small packaging, bulk expansion, roasted seeds and nuts, jelly, cold drinks and so on with low target consumer groups mainly rely on wholesale and circulation channels for sales; Additives, pistachios, sour grapes, canned potato chips and other snack foods with high prices and high target consumer groups are mainly sold in first-and second-tier cities, supermarkets and chain stores.
Some small and medium-sized snack food enterprises, especially some medium-sized enterprises with brand foundation and certain sales scale, present three embarrassing situations in channel operation. First, stores and chain stores have high costs. Some brands don't have the strength to be terminals when they enter, and the product display quality is low, so the promotion can't be followed up in time. Sales mainly come from natural sales, the sales scale can not go up, and some simply do not enter the market; Second, there is a serious shortage of market personnel, too many brands, insufficient channel profits, incomplete development of distribution channels, and the distribution rate of other effective outlets other than stores and chains cannot be improved; Third, I also want to be a circulation channel, but I have no advantage in price and profit, so I can only go fishing in the forest garden.
Products can not keep up with the times.
In the development of snack food in recent years, naturalization, health, fashion and functionality have become the new trends of snack food. Small and medium-sized snack food enterprises are unable to conduct market research and variety research and development after falling into the trap of multiple strains. Some enterprises have already adopted canned, canned, transparent and single-particle packaging to meet the requirements of nature, fashion and healthy development, but many enterprises still use closed, rough, sticky and other invisible, unsightly and unsanitary old packaging. On the premise that there is not much difference in prices, the sales competitiveness will obviously be at a disadvantage.
Through tight encirclement
Small and medium-sized snacks are now living like the Eighth Route Army in War of Resistance against Japanese Aggression, which was swept away by the Japanese army. The number of personnel and firepower are at a serious disadvantage. The first thing to be solved is the problem of survival. When you jump out of the encirclement of the enemy and smash the enemy's plot to kill you, you will seek new development and growth. At this time, you need the courage to give up, the careful combination of breakthrough tactics, and the strategic vision of looking to the future.
Product breakthrough
Hsu Fu Kee Food Co., Ltd. was founded by Xu Shi Brothers in Taiwan Province Province on 1992. Its candy business in Chinese mainland occupies more than half of the market share, with a daily sales volume of nearly 800 tons. Similarly, Want Want, Taiwan Province Province, 1992 entered Chinese mainland, mainly engaged in the production and sales of rice fruit in mainland China, and now it is a veritable boss in the puffed food industry; Kobik potato chips of Fujian Dali Food, established in 1989, also occupy about 30% of the domestic market. China has a large population and a large consumption base, so every market segment of snack food has huge market space. Among the small and medium-sized leisure enterprises, there are many enterprises that started earlier than the above-mentioned enterprises, have similar platforms and outstanding industrial advantages in the early stage. Why can't they stand out from the crowd, but they are worried about survival? Judging from the market performance, none of the enterprises with excessively diversified product lines and specifications has achieved good development, and the good sales scale is about 200 million yuan. Most of these enterprises can't figure out where their product advantages are and blindly follow the market. Today, I feel that the cold drink market is big, and I immediately started an popsicle; Tomorrow, when I see that the roasted seeds and nuts market is good, I will fry peanut seeds; The day after tomorrow, I found that the meat market was booming and immediately bought a pot-stewed taste. Lacking the ability to judge the market and losing the ability to control the market, enterprises and markets are actually getting farther and farther away.
There is an urgent need to find competitive products. If you have an advantage in candied fruit, you should make the candied fruit thorough and big. If you have advantages in meat products, you should try your best to innovate products and occupy an important market share in bacon. It is also a good way for enterprises to return to their original advantages. Compressing or giving up unprofessional and poor market response are cumbersome lines and norms for enterprises' capital, inventory, logistics, management and production resources. Don't harm the fundamental interests of enterprises for some petty profits. The blunt knife without front greatly reduces the lethality, and the thick and redundant parts are polished off, making the product a sharp weapon to break through. What if an enterprise has no advantage over its own products? Fragrance can be subdivided into hundreds of millions of yuan from the highly concentrated beverage market; Wang Lao Ji's function of preventing fire subdivides the beverage market scale10 billion, which is worth pondering by enterprises.
Access breakthrough
Wuhan Xudong Food Co., Ltd. may be little known outside Hubei market. Xudong Food is a private enterprise mainly engaged in roasted seeds and nuts in Wuhan. The products of this enterprise are mainly sold through wholesale and circulation. With advanced, high-yield equipment and low-cost advantages of large-scale procurement, it has occupied more than 60% of the market share of Hubei roasted seeds and nuts market, forming an annual sales scale of nearly 200 million yuan. In a province, this sales scale is enough for many medium-sized snack food enterprises that pretend to be national brands, but the sales scale hovers around 200 million.
Judging from Xudong's case, market survival has its own way. The sales channel of snack food is no different from other fast-moving consumer goods. According to the comprehensive analysis of the enterprise's own products, prices, profits, brands and other comprehensive factors, it is the way out to find the best channel choice that conforms to its own products. Looking at the national market, what kind of channel combination to choose; What path combination to choose in a specific area; Some stores and chains in the region form terminal advantages; In regional stores, effective outlets outside the chain, group buying channels, etc. Form an access advantage; Form their own advantages in wholesale circulation; Establish its own sales channels in the form of independent stores and franchise chains. , you can combine your own survival and development needs to create your own channel advantages.
Brand breakthrough
AL Ries once said: The easiest way to destroy a brand is to use the brand name on everything. The positioning of most small and medium-sized snack food brands in China is not clear. Some parent brand (corporate brands) will be confused with sub-brands (product brands), and it is very common to regard parent brand as the brand name of all strains. For example, the business scope of a snack food enterprise involves production and sales: candied fruit, candy, pork and beef breast; Production and sales: non-staple food, paper and plastic materials, building materials, chemical raw materials, general machinery, household appliances, Wujinjiaodian, knitting and textile, metal materials and many other industries, but the brand is only parent brand, which is easy to confuse cognition, and there is no clear brand positioning, which not only dilutes parent brand resources, but also causes serious damage to parent brand. There are more than 30 enterprises named after "Kang Hui" in China, involving snack food, canned food, flooring, tourism, canned food and other fields. Almost every province has enterprises with the same name. It is impossible to have interchangeable associations between corporate brands and products. In Kang Hui, except for the "Zhengyipin" brand of Luwei series, all other series are named after parent brand, which makes the brand more and more vague and weak. This also confirms another sentence of AL Ries: Brands are like rubber bands. Stretching one more variety will weaken it.
The main business of Mars Company in the United States involves the manufacture and marketing of snacks (candy and chocolate), pets, staple foods and electronic products. Among them, the sales of candy chocolate products and pet products rank first in the world respectively. Its different products have established different sub-brands. Dove chocolate, M & amp； Women's chocolate, Snickers chocolate, Lu Bao dog food, Jia Wei cat food. Many well-known sub-brands have established their own images in different fields. After Xizhilang took the lead in the jelly field, the series of seaweed developed was not named after Xizhilang, but launched a sub-brand Good Time, which created a brand-new brand in the seaweed market.
Brand is a kind of consumer cognition and psychological feeling, which cannot be imitated. Once the brand is established, it will become the competitive advantage of the enterprise. Some avant-garde enterprises use brand strategy as a sharp weapon to gain competitive advantage and gradually develop and grow. The homogenization of snack food is serious, and it is difficult to form core expertise in production technology and product innovation. Small and medium-sized snack food enterprises lack systematic ability in brand building and management, so brand building should be included in an important strategic category and competitive brand advantages should be established within a certain range based on product advantages. If you don't have the ability to build a brand advantage on a large scale, you will build your own brand advantage in a regional or local scope; Unable to achieve the ability to establish multiple sub-brands, we should establish our own brand advantage on a single brand and achieve the goal of breaking through with brand sharp weapon.