Now, in addition to having three meals a day, people tend to eat some snacks between meals or after dinner to satisfy their sudden appetite. This trend has become obvious. According to the data report of “2019 Snack Industry Interpretation" launched by MobTech Research Institute, the scale of China's snack market has increased from less than 400 billion yuan in 2012 to 500 billion yuan in 2018. As the living standards improve, the compound annual growth rate will remain above 6%. The market size is expected to exceed 500 billion yuan by the end of 2019 and will approach 600 billion yuan by 2020.
In terms of selling channels, snacks accounted for more than 30% of all online food sales in the past three years, ranking No.1 in the online food category. Imported snacks, of course, contributed a lot to this. The report, “Online Snack Consumption Trend in China”, released by CBNData in 2017 pointed out that imported snacks have become the major trend of online snacks. The report also demonstrated that biscuit and other puffed food, chocolate, candy and jelly became the most important sub-categories of online imported snacks.The sales proportion of these sub-categories increased year by year. Snacks from head countries such as Thailand, Vietnam, Malaysia and other Southeast Asian countries as well as China Hong Kong, China Taiwan are among the top ten sales in all importing countries and regions.
These imported snacks have considerable influence among foodies. However, consumers’ impression for different snacks that come from different countries is hard to change. In other words, it’s fixed. For example, in consumers’ impression, imported ready-to-eat packaged seaweed from Korea and Thai are superior to the same products from other countries. Most of the ready-to-eat dried seaweed produced in Korea is only seasoned by oil and salt, so the taste is light, while the seaweed from Thailand are crispy and rich in Southeast Asian flavor with relatively sweet and spicy taste. When it comes to chocolate, there is no doubt that chocolates from European coutries, like Italy, Belgium, Switzerland, Germany and Russia, etc.,are most known by Chinese. Although there are a small number of chocolates from the United States, Japan, South Korea, China Taiwan and other countries and regions, they are not as popular as European chocolates.
However, beyond seaweed and chocolate, Southeast Asian countries are also good at manufacturing biscuits, dried fruit and other snacks. China’s imported snack market is now mostly occupied by these countries. Thanks to the pleasant climate, Southeast Asian countries are rich in fruit production, which makes them extremely easy to manufacture dried fruits, such as dried durian, dried pineapple, dried banana and other mixed dried fruits. They are almost exclusively from Thailand, the Philippines, Vietnam and Indonesia,etc. Moreover, Southeast Asian countries also have a place in confectionery. The fruit flavored candies which taste strong sweet and sour are addictive and praised by candy lovers.
Generally speaking, imported snacks from Southeast Asian countries have rich and complex flavor--salty, sweet and spicy, which are suitable for Chinese appetite, so they are highly accepted in China. In addtion to the low unit price and good quality, snacks from Southeast Asia have incomparable advantages compared with snacks from developed countries.
