After the rapid growth period of flood irrigation, the maternal and infant industry has officially entered the era of refined operation, and the charm of short-term contact on the narrow road is getting stronger and stronger. From the user's point of view, the new generation of maternal and infant consumer groups after 95 and 00 have entered the market, and the demand for high-quality and safe parenting, exquisite hedonism and self-pleasing exists at the same time, which means that the survival rules of the brand are bound to change, first, from fully meeting the user's product demands to actively responding to the user's emotional value, and second, from the fierce competition for instantaneous sales and business share to providing one-stop parenting solutions to truly realize the user's mind occupation and long-term brand growth.
A few days ago, the maternal and infant industry observation and Douyin e-commerce Douyin Baby Plan released the "Maternal and Child Industry Trend Report - High-quality Parenting and Parent-Child Safe Purchase" (hereinafter referred to as the "Trend Report"), in-depth dismantling of the current situation of the maternal and infant market and user behavior characteristics, and striving to clearly present the development trend and evolution direction of the maternal and infant category, helping brands quickly grasp the deterministic growth opportunities in the new maternal and infant consumption era.
It starts with product safety and ends with consumer peace of mind
Four category trends guide the new direction of the industry
The market consumption environment is changing rapidly, and consumer needs are also being affected and reshaped simultaneously, such as the continuous change of parenting concepts, the increasingly fragmented and diversified parenting scenarios, and the evolution of parenting consumption demands in the direction of safety, science, high quality and efficiency...... Looking at the development and changes, climbing and leapfrogging of the maternal and infant industry in recent years, how to explore the category consumption trend through the advanced needs of users, and further lock in their own deterministic growth?
Combined with the development status of the industry and the insights of user behavior, the "Trend Report" anchors the changes in the product cycle and summarizes the trends of four major categories:
01
Safety bottom-up: Beginning with safety and ending with peace of mind, parenting is the first to support
In view of the particularity of the infant group, from the baby's ration milk powder, fart food diapers, to the baby's feeding bottle and a bottle of cream, the safety of the product is always the first place and the benchmark. On the one hand, infants and young children have incomplete physical development, the cost of trial and error is high, and the safety and quality requirements for eating and using products are relatively higher; on the other hand, infants and young children are still immature and often need the care and assistance of adults.
"Trend Report" around milk powder, diapers and baby products three categories of "safety" has been fully extended, taking milk powder as an example, pure milk source, scientific formula cast a can of good milk powder safety genes, in the Douyin e-commerce platform, the new national standard, A2 milk source, nutrients, raw milk, etc. are the most searched keywords for milk powder categories by maternal and infant users, at the same time, in recent years, more and more milk powder brands have begun to cooperate with Douyin e-commerce to open quality traceability activities, so that consumers can more intuitively feel the safety and quality of milk powder from the source to the finished product.
Focusing on the sub-category of baby bottles, the "Trend Report" mentioned that users search for baby bottles on Douyin e-commerce, and the popularity of "PPSU" continues to rise, which shows that the current maternal and infant users are more focused on whether the raw materials and materials are safe when buying baby bottles.
Focus on users' multi-dimensional demands for product safety, and shake in baby plan | In the season of peace of mind, we joined hands with the China Eugenics Association to jointly launch the "Thousand Days Feeding Plan", focusing on high-quality parenting in the first 1,000 days of life. At the same time, Douyin e-commerce also makes efforts from two aspects, one is based on the selection of real users on the platform, after strict selection and ranking, screening high-quality products, and releasing the gold list of Douyin Mall, and the other is also specially launched services such as "food safety insurance" and "allergy refund", so that parents can buy with more peace of mind.
02
Efficacy first: formula strengthening, function upgrading, and working towards effect
However, as the user group tends to be younger and more personalized, and user demands are becoming more diverse and refined, "learning parents" and "ingredient parents" have gradually become the dominant market, and the intensive research and development of the product side has begun to move more towards "safety first, efficacy first".
The "Trend Report" pointed out that the awareness of scientific feeding is prevalent, and the functional ingredients become the key decision-making point, and continue to push up the "gold content" of infant food formula, specifically looking at the nutritional category, in all stages of pregnancy, pregnancy and baby growth, safety is the top priority of consumers, on top of this, easy absorption, efficacy, and a variety of nutritional comprehensive supplements have also become the focus of attention of young parents, and began to "national standards or authoritative certification", "core nutritional element content" as product purchase standards. At the same time, the functionalization trend of the diaper market has been clearly visible, among them, functional ingredients and cutting-edge black technology are "rolling" out of a new height of product innovation, continuing to promote the development of subdivided categories, such as more professional and effective special diapers continue to explode on the Douyin e-commerce platform, with a year-on-year growth rate of 70% in Q1 of 2024.
03
Scene occupancy: focus on subdivision, exquisite parenting, born in response to demand
Based on the complexity and continuous advancement of user needs, "building the bottom with safety and moving towards results" or just completing a stage of product innovation, in-depth dismantling of the new demands of high-quality parenting for newborn mothers and infants will find that the ultimate segmentation of products and accurate satisfaction of needs under the extension of multiple scenarios have become another path for category evolution.
The "Trend Report" has sorted out the differentiation characteristics of the two categories of diapers and baby products, and summarized the two corresponding category growth opportunities, one of which is that due to the "local" conditions and accurate purchase, on the Douyin e-commerce platform, the scene-based demand of the new generation of young parents for baby diapers has gradually subdivided into broad daylight, nap, night, kindergarten, primary school, training pants, sleeping pants, Second, it fits the scene and meets the needs, whether it is baby care or travel bulky items, many innovative products adapted to differentiated scenarios are gradually launched on the market, fully giving users an immersive experience, such as, "children's special, autumn and winter creams, summer models, spring and summer, moisturizing and hydrating" and so on are the search words of maternal and infant users when buying baby care products on the Douyin e-commerce platform.
04
Value satisfaction: Lying flat with peace of mind, easy parenting, and parenting is getting better
Due to the uniqueness of the track, the target customer group of maternal and infant products naturally has strong emotional needs, therefore, from the extremely revealing product external function needs to meet the value supply of deep digging into the potential emotions of users, the current maternal and infant consumption needs of the new generation of young parents are progressing from shallow to deep.
The "Trend Report" elaborates on "safe purchase and easy raising" based on intelligent feeding, bulky travel and maternity-related categories. Focusing on intelligent feeding of babies and children, scientific and technological parenting and convenient science have begun to be reflected in more and more product designs, such as feeding medicine artifact, pacifier, thermostatic sleeping bag, milk shaker and other keywords The search index of keywords is in the forefront of the Douyin e-commerce platform, which has improved the efficiency of young parents with babies.
In addition, the "Trend Report" also sorted out and summarized the search keywords of pregnancy products on the Douyin e-commerce platform, among which pregnancy wear, confinement clothes, and maternity clothes reflect the self-pleasing needs of the maternal group in the dimension of "wearing", and the special skin care products for pregnant women and pregnancy oil during pregnancy have strengthened the concept of exquisite maternal maintenance from the dimension of "use".
Embed a mind of trust and strengthen the sense of security
Unleash the tension of business growth with marketing upgrading
Under closer examination, behind the four deterministic category trends, the Douyin e-commerce platform has taken the lead in meeting the high-quality parenting needs of emerging maternal and infant users, and has deeply established a one-stop, safe purchase, and parenting mentality and place. Especially in the current new marketing environment where user attention is scattered and channel diversification is intensifying, the agglomeration effect of short video platforms and content e-commerce is becoming increasingly prominent, which further confirms that in 2024, the intensive cultivation of the Douyin e-commerce platform is bound to become the preferred path for maternal and child brands to pursue long-term operation and business growth.
1. User cognition: fully establish trust with high-quality content output, strengthen mental occupation with the ultimate product supply, and "go both ways" between the platform and users, so that safe shopping becomes the norm.
It is true that at present, short videos, live broadcasts and other forms are highly sought after by maternal and infant users, especially on the Douyin platform, the search volume of maternal and infant related content continues to grow, from basic food, clothing, housing and transportation to advanced high-quality parenting, from in-depth content planting to instantaneous transaction conversion, based on the new demand of product peace of mind, more and more maternal and infant users are accelerating their migration to Douyin e-commerce.
According to the data of the Douyin e-commerce platform, the number of payment users in the maternal and infant food products industry in Q1 2024 will increase by 33% year-on-year, and the number of payment users in the category of single milk powder will increase by 90% year-on-year. As we all know, milk powder is a food that just needs to be eaten, and maternal and infant users have higher requirements for products and brands when purchasing, and are more picky in safety, formula and product quality.
2. Brand marketing side: Establish a brand image with the authoritative endorsement of the platform, enhance industry awareness with diversified marketing methods, and "two-way empowerment" between the platform and the brand, so that trust can be fully established.
In the past two years, the marketing rules are being rewritten, compared with the self-communication of the brand to spend a lot of money, taking advantage of the advantage of the platform to strengthen the subtle brand influence and brand image shaping has become the common choice of a group of players, including Pigeon, Jinlingguan and Pampers.
Dismantling the advantages of the Douyin e-commerce platform, the huge and accurate traffic coverage, user mind occupation and trust word-of-mouth building have shown incomparable commercial value, which can give the brand rich communication resources and super professional endorsement. For example, Douyin e-commerce has taken the lead in establishing the mindset of parent-child shopping through the "Douyin Baby Plan: Peace of Mind Traceability Season", a series of IP activities in the parent-child life industry. At the same time, the Douyin e-commerce platform also continues to innovate and iterate marketing gameplay, from the warm-up period, the detonation period to the long-tail period, layer by layer, step by step, and step on every communication rhythm, such as joining hands with CCTV to jointly release brand customized traceability blockbusters, supplemented by the talent parents group planting grass and unboxing, and authoritatively releasing the parent-child peace of mind trend gold list, etc., which invisibly amplifies the brand potential energy and helps good goods to go out of the circle in an all-round way.
Standing at the height of the industry, the competition in the maternal and infant market has moved to a higher dimension, and the focus of brand success has also changed from "pursuing single sales growth" to "becoming the first choice of users". At present, the new consumer trend of "parenting begins with safety, and the more self is finally at ease" has become more and more emerging, and brands that want to take advantage of the trend and break through the growth must first choose the main attack position and then complete the intensive cultivation and value shaping of users.
The "Maternal and Child Industry Trend Report - High-quality Parenting and Parent-Child Purchase" summarizes and refines a series of forward-looking and up-dimensional thinking and growth practice strategies around this, which strongly helps maternal and infant enterprises to open up new ideas and harvest new increments.
Pay attention to the official account of the maternal and infant industry observation, click to read the original article to view the full report