Casual snacks industry background

Casual food can reduce people's psychological pressure, and can help consumers to ease their emotions, to maintain a happy mood. In the future, with the continuous improvement of consumers' consumption level and purchasing power, more and more consumers will have higher demand for casual snacks. The whole industry is developing towards the direction of flavor, nutrition, health, enjoyment and even function.

Size and forecast of snack food market in China from 2011 to 2020

At present, China's casual snack food market has a huge capacity and is in the early stage of maturity after rapid development. The market size is about 570 billion yuan, and with the improvement of living standards, the annual compound growth rate is maintained at above 6.5%, and the market size is expected to exceed 600 billion yuan by 2020.

Size of the retail casual food market in different categories (Unit 1 billion)

From the perspective of category structure, casual food includes candy and chocolate, nut stir fry, dried meat and preserved fruit, etc. In China's casual food industry, different categories of products have different development rates. It is estimated that by 2020, the retail market scale of leisure brine products in China will exceed 120 billion yuan, and the market scale of candy and preserved fruit is expected to exceed 400 billion yuan

In 2019, Tmall's "singles' day" trading volume was 268.4 billion yuan, exceeding the total trading volume of the full day of 2018 by 54.9 billion yuan. According to the sales situation of singles' day over the years, daily necessities, food and other consumer products are high frequency, among which the transaction performance of the snack industry is particularly eye-catching. The total online sales of snack food on singles' day reached 3.62 billion yuan, accounting for 0.9% of the total online sales, with overseas purchases accounting for 2.1%, and domestic snack brands also launched a fierce competition.

As ordinary consumers, when faced with any kind of snacks, there are more and more brands to choose. In addition to a series of classic mainstream brands, new "web celebrity brands" keep emerging. As Consumers in pursuit of new tastes, imported snacks are also gradually becoming "foodies" items.

Consumers’ familiar snack brand map

In October 2019, machimo research institute conducted a special online questionnaire survey on consumers' "how to choose casual snacks"

Special survey results about how to choose casual snacks

The final research results show that when consumers choose a certain product, they lack core judgment, cannot judge the product quality, and are easy to follow suit. 26% of people feel that it is more reliable to buy with the advertisement, 25% of people feel that the products recommended by relatives and friends are safer and more reliable. However, the comprehensive quality of food purchased in these ways is not optimistic, even not the one that you want. Therefore, consumers began to constantly try various channels and change brands, which is forming a vicious circle, and consumers’ "harvest" feeling is more and more strong. Distrust of the product, the market, and the environment has reached an extreme.

Consumers' core needs are changing and upgrading, and high-quality and healthier snacks are the trend of choice

Under the background of rapid economic development, consumers' consumption concept has changed from simple material to physiological upgrade, from physiological demand to health and psychological transformation, and from high price consumption to health-oriented consumption concept. Simple material consumption can no longer satisfy the new social consumer. At the same time, consumers begin to pay attention to the quality of products, and gradually increase their demands for healthy food, and pursue a healthier lifestyle. Consumers are more likely to choose healthier, more nutritious foods that are lower in calories, fat, sugar and sodium.