In the past year, the food and beverage industry has undergone tremendous changes from the inside out.
The global trade pattern is being reshaped, the domestic retail business environment is also undergoing major changes, and a new zero-supply relationship with Chinese characteristics is about to take shape, and the consumption classification is more obvious. Driven by factors such as technology and the Internet, global information flows, supply chains, and channels are being presented in front of each stakeholder in a flat way, and the boundaries of space are gradually narrowing or even being broken.
In the new food era, the structure of the food and beverage industry has become more complex, and the competitive situation has become more and more treacherous and changeable. What challenges will changes in consumer demand, great changes in channels, digitalization of industries, and the development of the global market bring to the industrial ecosystem? How can brands adapt to the changes in the situation, achieve steady development and even break through the growth dilemma?
From May 9th to 11th, the Foodaily FBIC2024 Global Food and Beverage Innovation Conference hosted by Foodaily Food (concurrently with Foodaily Expo) was held at the National Convention and Exhibition Center in Shanghai. With the theme of "Breakthrough of the Industrial Chain and Co-creation of the Bureau", the conference hopes to serve as a field for innovation exchanges and resource links, and the core decision-makers of the industry will gather here to discuss how enterprises should take innovation as the core driving force in the second half of new food consumption and find an effective path to break through from the complex industrial chain ecology and create a new situation.
On May 9, the summit invited representatives of outstanding enterprises in the industry and highly influential industry leaders to discuss hot topics such as retail industry reform, digital intelligence innovation, scene creation, and national brand going overseas, and discuss new solutions for domestic food and beverage brand innovation breakthroughs.
Highlights Sneak Peek:
1. In the context of major changes in the domestic retail environment, how should brands respond to opportunities and challenges?
2. With the rapid development of technology and AI, and the new ecology of digital and intelligent development, how can brands break through the industrial chain and create a new situation?
3. In the era of information fragmentation, how to effectively use scenario marketing to quickly reach users and achieve efficient links?
4. In the complex and changeable international environment, how can overseas brands effectively reach overseas consumers and successfully open up the business increment of overseas markets?
01
Opening remarks
Foodaily每日食品CEO王晓玲:
The food and beverage industry is still complex and challenging. Complex consumption stratification, consumer demand, relatively surplus supply chains, rapid digital technology, as well as dramatic changes in channels and fragmentation of global collaboration.
In this regard, we have put forward the theme of "Breakthrough in the Industrial Chain and Jointly Create a New Bureau" this year. The industrial chain mentioned here includes the front-end industry supply chain and the back-end channel chain. In the complex industrial chain, we give the solution of "co-innovation bureau" from the perspective of observers: to build a friendly collaborative organization form of the whole industry chain and an enterprise ecology of global experience, innovation, resource exchange and benefit sharing, and build a brand matrix and product portfolio around user needs, so as to make the success rate of innovation higher.
Discovering and screening products from the perspective of the media, seeing through products, disseminating, commending and linking products is the original intention and persistence of Foodaily. We are committed to integrating the "Global Innovative Product Experience" with the "Food Developer Conference", so that everyone can deeply feel the concentration of new products and innovation inspiration in this field, and make it a vane of industrial innovation. We hope to become a position for new concepts, new products, new technologies, new brands, and new marketing releases, so that the resource link of China's food industry is more efficient.
Rao Zheng, Managing Director of Ipsos China Business Group (David Sr.): In the new consumption era, we are witnessing significant changes in consumer groups.
Generation Z, which is greatly influenced by the Internet and social media, is more inclined to pursue a fast and personalized consumption experience, and has higher requirements for brand social responsibility and environmental awareness. The rise of singles has led to the development of the convenient and high-quality food market, pursuing a more segmented consumer experience and the connection of emotional value. The energetic middle-aged and elderly population continues to push the boundaries of healthy food. The rise of the circle consumer has opened our eyes to the potential of market segments around specific interests and lifestyles. In addition, consumers in the sinking market are worth paying attention to, and their rise has not only brought new growth points to the industry, but also provided valuable opportunities for brands to further expand the market and consolidate consumers.
The change in the structure of the consumer group has brought about the diversification and segmentation of consumer demand. On the one hand, high-end consumers are more mature, driving the development of high-quality products and customized services. On the other hand, more and more consumers pay more attention to cost performance, downgrade consumption, and pursue replacement. At the same time, consumers have more expectations for the emotional value of food and beverages, and demand products and services that can provide a deeper emotional connection and personal identity.
From the B-side, corporate strategies and playing styles are also undergoing significant changes. The integration of online and offline has become the standard configuration of new retail plays, such as the front-end planting of online social platforms, offline pop-up stores, and even new shopping experiences created through technologies such as virtual reality.
02
Under the transformation of the consumer industry chain and the upgrading of the model
The way of enterprise innovation and development
Xiaolong Liu, Global Partner of A.T. Kearney Consulting:
China's consumption trend has experienced four major inflection points: consumption foundation, consumption upgrading, diversified consumption and consumption restart. In the post-epidemic era, China's consumer market will move from an era of rapid growth to an era of delta growth characterized by intensive cultivation and incremental capture.
DELTA增长时代表现在五方面，D是Diversifled，代表需求分化；E是Evolutional，更替加速；L是Linked，边界突破；T是Transformed；还有AI—powered，科技赋能。
Diversified demand differentiation: The traditional E-type consumption pattern has changed, and in the future, China's consumption will show a trend of K-shaped demand differentiation towards high-end luxury and low-end cost-effectiveness.
Evolutional Replacement Acceleration: From a dynamic point of view, China's consumer market is in a critical recovery period, and the transformation and replacement of the industry pattern are accelerating.
Linked Boundary Breakthrough: In the stock era, it is difficult to increase the inherent business market, and enterprises have begun to take the initiative to break through the boundary, either by circumventing the wall nearby, or by reducing the dimensionality, in order to find new users and create new categories.
Transformed Chain Reconstruction: The challenges at both ends of supply and demand in the industrial chain are intensifying, and the overall price increase ability of the industrial chain is weakening and profits are thinning
AI-powered technology empowerment: Consumer goods companies have begun to embrace AI technology to empower and improve the efficiency of product chain segments to ends.
Based on the five major trends of the Delta era, A.T. Kearney put forward 15 core recommendations to help enterprises navigate the cycle and achieve sustainable and resilient growth, including accelerating demand satisfaction, activating growth levers, exploring consumption scenarios, and improving corporate resilience and technology value.
According to A.T. Kearney's research, the growth of the consumption era will take a year and a half to fully recover, and in a year and a half or even longer, it will be the era of DELTA growth, and growth will be under pressure.
03
The big changes in the retail industry and the response of brand owners
Gu Guojian, professor of Shanghai Business School and director of Shanghai Chain Management Research Institute:
The retail industry has changed dramatically in recent years. The impact of the epidemic has caused changes in the division of labor and management of the international supply chain, the competition of different regional models and the difference in values have caused geopolitical conflicts, consumer confidence is insufficient, and the market and retailers have brought more pressure to brands, requiring product quality to improve but not to raise prices.
In this mode of moving the left of consumption with rising quality and lower prices, we must be determined to adjust and improve all aspects of the supply chain. Many decision-makers in product development will pay too much attention to the concept of Internet celebrities and explosive products, but I think what is more important is the improvement of supply chain efficiency and cost control, and China's retail industry still needs to carry out the new retail revolution to the end.
There are also several major changes: the domestic retail model is shifting from the shelf rental business model to independent operation; Retailers' brand management is rapidly changing to the development of their own brands; Commodity management and category management have shifted to consumer and consumption scene experience; The premise of discounted low price is that the quality is highlighted, and the satisfaction of consumer emotional value is highlighted; The price band management changes to the number of products allocated to the price range of core customers; The design of commodity structure has changed to reduce products and reduce the number of SKUs; The wholesale system is changing.
Based on the transformation of retail business, brand owners can adopt the following strategies:
1. Consumer research should develop in depth and breadth;
2. Enterprises should set up special research institutions for consumer digitalization for organizational reform;
3. Make the right products;
4. Choose the right channel - the standard is high efficiency;
5. Optimize and adjust the sales policy - to change the KA system;
6. Promote the transformation of dealers, agents and wholesalers into distribution service providers;
7. Multi-brand strategy to deal with retailer customization;
8. Distinguish between incremental retailers and stock retailers, and formulate different sales policies;
9. Obtain diversified channels of trending and stereotyped data and information for product development.
For Chinese food companies going overseas to the U.S. market, the U.S. retail market has the characteristics of "offline-based", "food retail formats are expanding international food categories", "basic sales of Chinese food scale", etc., domestic brands should consider local legal restrictions when entering the U.S. market, and on the basis of differentiated and complementary brands, form a brand alliance to provide them with a broker in-depth service model, quickly enter and penetrate the U.S. mainstream market, and achieve sustainable development.
04
Digital intelligence drives the in-depth evolution of brands
Shang Zhihu, General Manager of Digital Technology Center of Yili Group:
In a market environment full of uncertainties and challenges, as a national brand, Yili adheres to the consumer-centric concept, adheres to the innovation-led thinking, and is committed to continuously seeking breakthroughs in products and services by strengthening innovation variables, and at the same time making full use of big data and intelligent technology to enhance brand competitiveness with digital and intelligent increments.
For brands, the continuous change of consumer needs and consumer structure is a challenge, and all of these challenges are pregnant with abundant opportunities, and Yili hopes to achieve a healthy consumer relationship that can be identified, analyzed, reachable and operated.
In the face of rapidly changing consumer needs, brands need to build real digital and intelligent capabilities, be consumer-centric, and continuously create value for consumers and enhance brand experience. Yili maintains the pace of innovation in all links of the industrial chain and continues to create value for consumers: first, product and service innovation, second, marketing interaction innovation, third, consumer purchase experience, and finally quality and supply chain innovation, continuously improving the digital intelligence capability in various key fields, and continuously building a "digital intelligence Yili" that provides consumers with higher quality products and services.
In terms of product and service innovation, Yili has established an efficient system to achieve real-time market scanning of e-commerce platforms and key categories. The second is to build a DTC system that is directly connected to consumers, directly connecting 150 million consumers. In the innovation chain of products and services, AI capabilities are fully implanted at multiple nodes, including generative AI capabilities and decision-making AI capabilities, which not only significantly shortens the product innovation cycle, but also enables the launch of new products that truly meet the needs of consumers.
Serving global consumers is difficult to accomplish by a single enterprise and requires more business partners, so Yili continues to weave a digital ecological network, take consumers as the guide, and realize consumer value, business value and ecological value.
05
Round Table | How to break through the industrial chain and create a new situation together?
Gejian Zhang, Partner and Managing Director, Greater China at Sullivan:
After experiencing a period of soaring growth and a period of cooling down, how should new consumer brands return to the core value of the industrial chain ecology and achieve a breakthrough?
Su Qiang, Vice President, President and Managing Director of General Mills International, China:
There are huge opportunities for demographic and product segmentation in the Chinese market, and for new consumer brands, this is an opportunity brought by the uniqueness of the Chinese market. In the face of opportunities, it is necessary to dig deep into the pain points and needs of consumers, whether it is cost-effective, quality-price ratio or convenience advantages, we must have a mental connection with consumers. But the most important thing in making food is to keep the bottom line of food safety and quality.
General Mills' purpose is to "create food that the world loves" and is guided by the values of continuous innovation in the midst of growth. In particular, we attach great importance to cost management along the entire value chain. While maintaining core competitiveness such as high-quality raw materials and ingredients, we can make products cost-effective in today's market environment by focusing on consumers and eliminating low-value-added activities in the overall operation.
Jiang Xiaobai's founder Tao Shiquan:
The essence of consumer goods is three things: delivering the product, being user-centric, and connecting the product with the user. Brands, operations, organizations, channels, and other things just connect the two, and the key is to shorten or become more efficient in the chain connecting products and users. If consumer goods companies do not have sufficient capabilities at the source end, or do not shorten the chain between production and consumption to improve efficiency, it will be difficult to gain a foothold in the market.
At the beginning of the development of the enterprise, it is necessary to have a long-term development vision that begins with the end in mind, and dare to have imagination, otherwise it is easy to temporarily cling to the Buddha and only solve the immediate problems forever. I hope that everyone will face the future with unparalleled confidence and determination, and the food and beverage industry will always accompany the whole cycle of mankind, no matter how other industries develop. As long as we can make products that are better and more distinctive than others, we can embrace the future.
Wang Bing, co-founder and chairman of October Paddy:
We started to make the "October Rice Field" brand in 2010, because agricultural products should be branded and have added value. It is difficult for our kind of products to enter supermarkets, so we seize the opportunity of the Internet to do the deep cultivation and operation of online channels. In 2016, we caught up with China's consumption upgrade and Internet channel reform, and built a brand image in the rice category in the minds of consumers, and the pre-marketing greatly fed back to the production of the supply chain. I believe that the breakthrough of the industrial chain should pay attention to branding and global marketing, and rely on brand promotion to complete the breakthrough and opening up of the whole link.
Today's FMCG companies are very difficult to do in terms of channel, informatization and organizational capacity building. Informatization has indeed brought opportunities and challenges, but also brought huge room for growth. October Paddy has come to the fore and achieved results thanks to the accumulation of deep cultivation and continuous penetration of all channels.
Chairman of Mo Xiaoxian Wang Zhengqi:
The channels of many industries are monopolized, and the change of new channels is needed to give birth to new brands. However, the product life cycle of new channels is often very short, and how to take advantage of the opportunities of channel change and how to gain insight into consumer demand are full of challenges for the development of cutting-edge brands. The ability of products to be made is not only a matter of the supply chain, but also a system of organization and management of all links.
It is difficult for a new brand to build a supply chain without volume, and it is also a difficult choice whether to establish a supply chain after it has volume. Because the life cycle of Internet products is relatively short, perhaps after the supply chain is established, the products will not be easy to sell.
While it's hard for small businesses, there are opportunities for small businesses to grow. Many large enterprises are reluctant to do too much subdivided business, serious internal friction, it is difficult to balance short-term and long-term interests, these large enterprises to seize the market problems and dilemmas, but small brand opportunities. Small brands can seize opportunities in multiple channels.
06
Blockbuster|Foodaily Daily Food Annual Consumption Scene Released
Foodaily每日食品创始人曾新：
We have just announced the 2024 Annual Food Consumption Scenario, which is the sixth consecutive year that we have announced the forecast of China's annual food and beverage consumption scenario, and we look forward to working with industry decision-makers and product innovators to discover innovation opportunities and business growth points.
Over the past six years, we have witnessed the ups and downs of China's food industry, from the emergence of a large number of new consumer brands to the rapid liquidation, the industry is fully supplied and consumers have become more rational. In the face of many uncertainties, we believe that we should eventually return to human nature, return to the essence of the industry, and find new solutions for innovation and marketing from the changes in human needs, which is also the origin of our continuous research on China's food and beverage consumption scene.
The needs and pain points under different time, space, emotions and emotions give birth to different category innovation opportunities. It is the source of opportunity for category fission. Breaking the inertia of category thinking and awakening consumer demand by discovering, creating, and grabbing new consumption scenarios is an effective way to form brand increment.
In the top ten annual consumption scenarios in 2024, we have dismantled several core insights from the four dimensions of population structure changes, the mood of the times, social relationships, and new health:
1. Changes in crowd structure superimpose demand grading, bringing new incremental scenarios. The continuous pursuit of a better life, the emotional needs of these main consumers, and the upgrading of the health needs of daily diet categories will bring new opportunities for categories such as healthy prepared foods and diets for the elderly.
2. The consumption scenario of food and beverage has evolved from functional and purposeful needs to emotional and experiential needs. We believe that young people's demand for emotional catharsis will be reflected in new consumption scenarios such as anti-fatigue charging, crazy healing, and outdoor fun, which will give rise to the attention of energy-based food and beverage, emotional food and beverage, and outdoor atmosphere food and beverage.
3. Changes in social relationships have brought about new demand for food and beverage scenes, contemporary people are building a new festival system, experiential social consumption has attracted attention, and party-based food and beverages and themed customized food and beverages will gradually become a trend. In addition, the traditional gift-giving culture is more routine, and categories with novelty, health, and cultural identity, such as baked snacks and local products, will become a new gift-giving category.
4. The interpretation of a healthy lifestyle presents two consumption scenarios, the concept of healthy eating penetrates into the daily "light food and slow maintenance", and the "serious nutrition" dominated by efficacy and science. Referring to the development path of the Japanese market, there are highly segmented track opportunities for the development of daily healthy diet categories and the development of health management foods.
07
Scene Creation - Open the new marketing of Xiaohongshu's "food" power
Mi Ou, general manager of Xiaohongshu's commercial FMCG industry group:
As of this year, Xiaohongshu has 300 million monthly active users, and a large number of young users are active on the platform. These young users share their lives on Xiaohongshu, and through the sharing of high-quality content, they have promoted the popularity of trends such as dopamine and citywalk.
At present, the demand of food and beverage consumers relies more on "scene stimulation", and scene marketing has become the key to breaking the competition of food and beverage brands. As the source of trends in hot scenes, Xiaohongshu not only continues to meet consumers' food inspiration, but also drives the majority of food and beverage brand partners through a long cycle, excavates, rides or co-creates hot scenes in Xiaohongshu, and joins hands with the rising Xiaohongshu food and beverage user group, leveraging the unique advantages of Xiaohongshu community content that can efficiently respond to trends and quickly increase the value of scenes, and continue to gain insight and practice more possibilities for future scenario marketing.
In order to accurately hit consumers in the scene, you need to grasp the following core factors:
1. Deep user insight, with the help of young people's analysis and deconstruction in the direction of content and trends, find the real motivation for users to buy products.
2. Break the circle with the help of the advantages of the core population, and combine the needs of the core population with half the result after finding the motivation.
3. Link the core value of the product. The link of core values should be combined with the needs and trends of the population. A more detailed link between the needs of the population and the trend and product demand can amplify the value of the product. Xiaohongshu is such a field, which can better link people, trends, and products, help good food and beverage products achieve good product marketing, and do a good job in breaking through the track.
08
Return to consumer value
Create resilient growth
Shanghai Jiangqi Glico General Manager Kato Qiao:
Glico's main brand, Baiol, was able to stand out in the market dominated by sandwich biscuits at that time, and achieved positive sales growth from its launch in 2005 to 2015. However, we found in 2017 that Glico has three biscuit brands, Baiqi, Baiol, and Bailiz, and the general perception of consumers only stays at the fact that Baiqi's exterior has a chocolate coating, Bailiz does not have a chocolate coating, and Baiol is a chocolate-infused stick biscuit, and there is rarely a clear brand awareness of the brand itself, especially Baiol, except for the form.
This is a very important topic for what kind of people and what kind of positioning the brand should be. We have designed the positioning of "Relax Time" for Baiol, which is aimed at people aged 16-34 who are busy and under pressure, and have the need to relax. After clarifying the population, it is easier for us to see the needs of the population, pay attention to the importance of young people to dietary health and the pain points of gastrointestinal health, and make a new upgrade of the brand from the health upgrade, adding whole wheat flour to make the product rich in dietary fiber, and adjusting the packaging design according to the preferences of target consumers.
Consumers are also often unconfident about the condition of their skin when it comes to health issues. In this regard, we selected niacinamide ingredients as a product countermeasure, and cooperated with Tmall Innovation Center in flavor development, combined with the taste needs of product groups, and launched a sub-brand of "Huaguo Baiol".
In addition, we also focus on working women, who have a stressful life and emotional and emotional problems are the main health problems. Based on this, we added GABA ingredients to our products, combined with relaxing matcha ingredients and flavors, and launched the Tea Wind and Wind series in 2020. With the increasing insomnia caused by the stress of modern life, we will launch the "Mellow Sleeping Cat" series in 2023, adding nearly 10 times the GABA ingredient of the Tea Wind and Wind series, as well as tea theanine with sleep aid, to improve consumers' problems of effective sleep and lack of deep sleep time.
In the face of changing consumers, we aim to respond to corresponding products and communications; However, the core value that I always want to convey through Baiol is that I hope that consumers will use Baiol to give themselves a reward in their busy lives.
09
AIGC reconstructs a new ecology of brand content
Pan Weiqian, VP of Tezign Solution Business of Tezan Technology:
In the past few years, we have made some new observations from the perspective of brand management. From the perspective of consumption, consumers know more about brands and products through content; From the brand side, content touchpoints are expanding from offline stores to online, and many brands are also laying their own touchpoints on overseas social media. You can see that both the content touchpoints, the types of content, and the speed of content are growing exponentially.
Through the digitization of content, we can know the relationship between products and content, and the relationship between content and people, so as to better support the business expansion of the brand field with such a digital infrastructure. In this process, we need the involvement of artificial intelligence to help content digitization tools become faster and more efficient.
In the process of content production and circulation, how to better involve artificial intelligence?
By engaging in structured content creation through AI, the images and videos needed by brands across channels can be scaled in a more efficient way, and ultimately reach consumers on different platforms.
Generative AI is involved in the production process as a more efficient workflow that extracts a brand's past content experience, reorganizes the design, and ultimately produces new content. Not only that, in addition to creative scenes, channel publicity, and new content on products, we will also have more content in marketing scenarios that can be presented in an intelligent production way, and the whole cycle is more efficient and less costly, which can save brands a lot of time.
In addition to the production process, we also need to pay attention to whether the content supply can keep up with the product supply when the product is supplied to consumers. From the massive content produced by the producer to the internal corresponding review, to the data formed by the consumer's feedback on the content, and then back to the production team to form new ideas and strategies, the closed loop from production to flow to experience is finally completed.
Among them, the connectivity of data is very crucial. When brands associate the data of products, content, and people in the same scenario, they can not only manage and deliver them more efficiently through tags, but also clearly present consumers' feedback on content.
In the past seven years, we have built content ecological infrastructure with more than 200 leading enterprises in the fields of food and beverage, beauty, footwear and clothing. Our product capability matrix also continues to revolve around content and artificial intelligence. We believe that the digital intelligence of the content ecosystem is an area that every brand needs to continue to build for a long time.
10
Intelligent e-commerce under the wave of AI
Zhao Chen, head of Baidu e-commerce merchant strategy:
With generative AI in full swing, what kind of changes are there for e-commerce?
In December 2022, under the background of the large model in full swing, Baidu e-commerce was officially established, hoping to raise the banner of smart e-commerce.
In the past, traditional e-commerce mainly relied on decision-making AI technology, which only had the function of identification and judgment. With the advent of large models, decision-making AI has made a leap to generative AI with deductive and creative functions. The core of e-commerce is to improve the efficiency of both ends: one end is the user experience, which improves the user's purchase efficiency and decision-making efficiency; At the other end of the spectrum is the merchant side, which will help them increase the scale of their operations and reduce costs and increase efficiency. Therefore, we focused on these two ends, and launched the core products of conversational shopping guide and new digital human last year.
In the past, the process of consumers learning about goods was tedious and laborious, but smart shopping guides can significantly improve the efficiency of this process. For example, if consumers want to buy drone products, from drone knowledge to adapted models, various subdivided needs, relying on intelligent shopping guides can accurately and quickly lock the products that ultimately meet their personalized needs, provide 1v1 selection comparison, and help users make efficient decisions in the end.
From shelves to content, to AI-powered smart e-commerce shopping guides, it is the future of AI shopping changes. In order to realize this way of shopping, the construction of a system is needed behind it. For example, behind natural language understanding, it is supported by knowledge graphs that have been precipitated for many years such as Baidu search and Baidu Encyclopedia. In addition to the C-end experience, on the B-side, Baidu digital human anchors can improve the efficiency of the live broadcast room and help merchants reduce their live broadcast operating costs by more than 80% through natural language expression, comprehensive product display, 24-hour uninterrupted live broadcast, and fully managed automatic interactive Q&A.
Baidu's highly competitive e-commerce strategy can fully support the operation of high-quality merchants and help brands find new growth points in a "volatile and difficult" business environment.
11
New Battlefield: Break through the global island chain, and the national brand goes to sea in the second half
Zheng Shenghao, co-founder of 36 Krypton to the sea:
In recent years, brand going overseas has become a hot spot in all walks of life, would you like to invite the guests to share their views on going overseas?
Ma Endo, Chairman of Jinduoduo Food Group:
From a macro point of view, food products going overseas will face the impact of politics, epidemics, tariffs and other aspects in the process of globalization. From a micro point of view, products going overseas need to do a good job in local localized marketing. Whether it can take root in the local area, make local consumers repurchase, and build a good localized talent requires a lot of work to be done in advance. At the same time, when doing cross-border e-commerce, unlike 3C products, food needs to be inspected and quarantined. The shelf life of food during transportation, as well as the cost of international logistics, can create challenges.
For the methodology of brand going overseas, I think we should think about the layout of globalization from the beginning, and the end of brand going overseas is localization. If a brand wants to go overseas and take root locally, it can choose the overseas market with the largest category, and Jin Duoduo chose the United States, which has the largest candy market, and has become the only Chinese brand in the mainstream market of the United States. Localization in Southeast Asia can be implemented as soon as possible.
Ren Guang, Managing Director of Jiayu Capital Consumption Overseas Fund:
Going to sea is something we have to do. The competition in the domestic market is too fierce and too fierce, and there is a market of more than 5 billion consumers overseas, and the richness of goods is not as good as the domestic market.
But at the same time, the threshold and barriers to going overseas and doing overseas business are also much higher than those in the domestic market. In addition to international political risks, domestic brands will also be involved in local competition rules when doing overseas business. Taking cross-border e-commerce as an example, merchants doing business on Amazon must follow Amazon's platform rules, and cannot swipe orders or ask consumers for praise. There are a lot of rules on the Amazon platform that protect merchants and protect fair competition. In 2021, many Amazon Chinese sellers have violated the rules of the platform, resulting in store closures or cash inventory seizures.
In addition, overseas operations should also fully consider the living habits and consumption habits of consumers in different regions, and make targeted management and marketing actions. For example, it is difficult to do cross-store full reduction and platform promotion in China overseas, and they are most accepting of direct discount and full reduction marketing activities. Overseas, consumers may prefer to hear the brand's story.
日日煮CMO Herbert Law:
Most people understand that going overseas is to push Chinese brands abroad, but I think using technology and supply chains from China and other parts of Asia to improve operational efficiency or control costs, and to open up the supply chain is also a kind of going overseas.
The type of pre-made dishes made by DayDayCook in overseas markets is Asian cuisine. While Chinese companies are certainly more familiar with Asian food categories than foreigners, overseas product development still needs to be re-learned. Just as the pizza that Chinese like is different from the pizza that Italians like, the dumplings loved by overseas consumers are also different from the dumplings loved by the people. So we have to adapt our products accordingly to local consumers, local cultures.
Our overseas presence is focused on the U.S. market, as Asian cuisine has become more popular in the North American market in recent years, and at the same time, it is more receptive to Asian cuisine due to the rise of Asian culture.
Zhang Mingchi, CEO of Puff Media:
There is still a lot of overseas market space that has not been covered by brands, and I think it is time for brands to go overseas.
Whether it's content, e-commerce, or platform play, China's business model is relatively leading at the global level. In the food industry, the market share of overseas brands may pose a certain threat to Chinese brands, but from the perspective of business models, traffic content monetization and other dimensions, Chinese brands are already very high-level. Making good use of China's model in the current overseas outlet can share the big cake of overseas markets, which is also an opportunity for us to help enterprises achieve business transformation overseas.
When entering the overseas market, you can't directly adopt the conventional thinking from e-commerce to content. Things that are taken for granted in China, such as WeChat Pay, seem unfamiliar in overseas markets.
Secondly, in the choice of countries and regions, many brands will think that the European and American markets have greater profit margins. However, based on the cases we serve, in Southeast Asia, taking Vietnam as an example, Vietnam is the country with the highest share of smartphones in Southeast Asia, and the consumption power, consumption level and consumption habits of young people in the whole country are more in line with China's e-commerce style and the continuation of brand going overseas.
12
Special Curated: A Global Tasting of Innovations
"Global Innovation Tasting" is the core creative planning section of Foodaily FBIC, which is highly praised every year, and has been rated as a "nugget of inspiration" by countless brands and product decision makers.
This year, Foodaily continues to select more than 3,000 innovative products from more than 220,000 annual new products in 28 countries and regions based on the concept of "global vision, local landing, and innovative solutions", and divides the site into five sections: category innovation exhibition group, trend insight exhibition group, new XIU brand exhibition group, consumption scene exhibition group, and hot theme exhibition group. Help everyone gradually learn from innovative inspiration.
At the site of the Global Innovation Tasting Exhibition Group, we and Xiaohongshu jointly immersed in the top ten consumption scenarios of the year, deeply dismantled and gained insight into the consumption needs of the scenes, and brought 300+ global innovative product cases and local innovative brand cases to provide ideas for brand product innovation and marketing, and help brands discover category opportunities and scenario marketing ideas under trend scenarios.
The logic of taking the product as a starting point to gain insight into global innovation trends can only be seen in the Foodaily Global Innovation Tasting.