Introduction:

In 219, China's infant complementary food consumption market reached 4.4 billion yuan, with a compound annual growth rate of 23%.

It is conservatively estimated that the market size of complementary food for infants and young children in China should be over 1 billion in the future, with at least 6 billion space to be tapped.

What are the opportunities and challenges hidden in the complementary food track for infants?

From the baby's 6th month, Bao Mamao's parents began to feel anxious.

besides breast milk, what other foods should be added to ensure the healthy growth of children?

Some parents choose homemade complementary food for safety.

But there are two problems in self-made complementary food, one is lack of professionalism, and the other is time-consuming.

In order to solve professional problems, many parents of Bao Ma Bao turned to various gods on the Internet for help.

Make "baby complementary food" a long-term traffic word and hot search word in the maternal and child industry in Little Red Book.

last year, the top2 search term in Xiaohongshu's maternal and child industry, the rate of baby complementary food on the list exceeded 7%.

In addition, self-made strategies and brand evaluation of complementary food have become the most popular maternal and child notes and videos on social platforms such as Xiaohongshu, Tik Tok and Aauto Quicker.

In order to save time and effort and solve children's health problems, Bao Ma Bao's parents turned their attention to major complementary food brands.

As far as the domestic market is concerned, there are few brands of high-quality complementary food for infants and young children, showing a pattern of "demand exceeds supply".

The complementary food for infants has gradually changed from "optional" to "just needed", and the blue ocean market is ready to go.

1. Four types of complementary food help parents to raise children healthily

The main sources of infant complementary food (baby complementary food) are fruits and vegetables, fresh food, dairy products, grain, etc. These raw materials are made into semi-solid foods such as rice flour, fruit puree and vegetable puree for the baby to eat.

According to the product structure, it can be roughly divided into four categories:

First, rice flour and noodles are the main food supplements, and the main eating age is 6-18 months;

Secondly, the auxiliary snacks, mainly biscuits and grinding bars, are mainly eaten for 6-36 months;

thirdly, the main supplementary food is meat paste, fruit paste and vegetable paste, and the main eating age is 1-24 months;

fourthly, nutritional supplements are mainly eaten for 6-36 months.

2. The compound annual growth rate of 1 billion infant food supplement tracks is as high as 23%

The market size of maternal and child industry has increased from 1 trillion yuan in 21 to 4.9 trillion yuan in 22, with a compound annual growth rate of 15.6%. It is estimated that the compound annual growth rate of the industry will remain at around 1% in the next five years.

As a branch of the maternal and child industry, infant complementary food, with the increase of newborn population, the increase of per capita disposable income and the upgrading of infant family consumption, has created a huge potential market demand for complementary food.

According to the data, in 219, China's infant complementary food consumption market reached 4.4 billion yuan, with a compound annual growth rate of 23%.

It is conservatively estimated that with the growth rate of 1% of the overall maternal and child industry, it is expected to exceed 72 billion by 225.

In the future, the market size of complementary food for infants and young children in China should be over 1 billion, with at least 6 billion space to be tapped.

3. The demand for complementary food for infants and young children in China has surged, and domestic and foreign players have poured into it.

Compared with foreign markets, the complementary food market for infants and young children in China started late.

The early infant complementary food market was carved up by foreign brands, which made it difficult for later domestic infant complementary food brands to break consumers' cognition and seize market share.

in the TOP 1 of e-commerce infant complementary food sales in the first half of 219, the top three brands are all imported brands, namely, Garbo (USA), Heinz (USA) and Xiaopi (USA), with sales of 38.59 million, 29.12 million and 16.18 million respectively.

On the one hand, in addition to maternal and infant brands such as Jianhe Group, Beinmei, Want Want Food, and Kissing Food, the leisure and snack industry has also begun to make efforts in the field of zero complementary food for infants.

For example, last year, Want Want Group carried out online and offline omni-channel layout with Babe Mama's "rice cakes for infants" series products.

At the same time, three squirrels, good shops, herbs, etc. swarmed into the market.

after a year's development, three squirrels, a deer, a good food fairy in a good shop, and a herbaceous child, An 'an Tong, have achieved good results.

on the other hand, the power of local emerging baby food brands should not be underestimated, and they have been favored by the capital circles one after another.

As of May, there have been nine brand financing events for baby food this year.

For example, "Baby Hungry" won two rounds of financing in four months this year, and in 22, it became the first brand in Tmall's category of "Baby Snacks".

under the hunting of many forces, the competition of infant complementary food track in China is extremely fierce.

1. Three driving factors

First, the consumer base is huge and the penetration rate is low.

In order to cope with the problem of aging population, the state has successively opened three births, and introduced policies such as double reduction to encourage childbearing.

according to the population planning goal of China, the average number of new students in 22 and 23 should reach at least 22.3 million and 14.55 million.

According to the estimation that the number of newborn children is maintained at about 15 million per year, the number of infants aged 1-3 in China will exceed 45 million in the next three years.

The infant population base is huge, which lays the foundation for the growth of the infant complementary food market.

At present, the penetration rate of complementary food for infants in China is only 25%, which is far from the penetration rate of 8% in Europe and America.

With the gradual maturity of the concept of child-rearing in China and the increasing attention, the size of the infant complementary food market will continue to rise.

Second, consumption upgrade, and complementary food for infants and young children is worth doing again.

in the context of consumption upgrading, all industries deserve to be redone.

complementary food for infants is no exception.

The young group represented by 8/9 has gradually entered the peak of childbearing and become the main consumer in the complementary food market for infants and young children.

This group of consumers are generally highly educated, have a strong sense of consumption and have a more scientific concept of parenting.

They pay more attention to the safety of products, emphasize the quality of life, and are more demanding on the brand, quality and grade of infant consumption.

complementary food aims to provide balanced and comprehensive nutrition for infants and meet the consumption needs of the new generation of parents.

Based on the change of consumers' ideas and habits, the proportion of families buying and using infant complementary food will continue to increase, which will stimulate the development of the industry.

third, policy assistance to standardize the development of the industry.

in 218, known as the first year of complementary food industry in China, the state issued a number of policies and regulations to strengthen and standardize the management of complementary food industry.

with the release of the announcement on the temporary limit value of cadmium in cereal complementary food for infants and young children and the detailed rules for examining the production license of cereal complementary food for infants and young children (217 edition), 8% of the factories were eliminated and nearly half of the complementary food brands withdrew from the market.

stricter product supervision has promoted the development and upgrading of infant complementary food industry, and improved consumers' confidence in domestic infant complementary food.

so as to promote the orderly development of infant complementary food market.

2. Two major constraints

First, the long-term consumption habits are difficult to change, and the competitiveness of domestic brands is low.

According to the survey, about 4% of urban families in China will not choose to buy complementary food products, and this figure is as high as 8% in rural areas.

Most of these traditional consumers will choose homemade complementary food for infants and young children. The homemade products have high cost and good safety.

However, there is a lack of scientific and uniform standards in the selection, processing and production of self-made complementary foods, which is likely to cause problems such as indigestion, picky eaters and partial eclipse, lack of trace elements and malnutrition in infants, which is not conducive to the healthy growth of infants.

It can be seen that the lack of awareness of complementary food products is one of the factors that hinder the development of the industry.

In addition, due to the late rise of domestic infant complementary food products, the market is occupied by imported brands, which leads to the preconceived imported brands have seized the minds of most novice parents.

The top ten brands of online complementary food for infants in China account for over 58% of the complementary food for infants in China.

A notable feature of the maternal and infant consumers is that their consumption habits are relatively fixed, and it is difficult for new brands to replace them after being recognized as a brand.

Second, the R&D strength of infant complementary food enterprises is weak, and the product homogeneity is serious.

the research and development strength of China's food industry is mainly concentrated in food research institutions and food departments of domestic universities, and a small part is concentrated in food enterprises themselves.

due to the lack of a large number of market research, R&D in colleges and universities has a low control over market preferences, and it is easy to ignore market and consumer demand research and development, resulting in products that are not popular with consumers. At the same time, small and medium-sized infant complementary food enterprises are discouraged because of the high cost and long duration of research cooperation with researchers in food departments of colleges and universities.

Therefore, infant complementary food enterprises have to independently research and develop by internal R&D teams.

However, the internal R&D personnel have limited research ability and low innovation, which can't solve the technical deficiencies in current production, making it difficult to qualitatively improve the quality of complementary food for infants.

This has led to many homogeneous products in the infant complementary food market.

For example, most new brand product lines basically contain basic seasonings (all kinds of pork liver powder, shrimp skin powder, seaweed powder, etc.), noodles, rice cakes, dissolved beans, snacks (hawthorn sticks, cod intestines) and so on.

The weak R&D strength, which leads to serious product homogeneity, is another major factor that hinders the development of the industry.

Xiao Mo is a new nanny, and her baby is just one year old.

at the age of 6 months, the baby began to add complementary food, starting with pumpkin, yam and sweet potato, and then gradually adding red and white meat.

At first, Xiao Mo learned from platforms such as Xiaohongshu and Tik Tok, and made various kinds of complementary foods for his baby, which he enjoyed himself.

Gradually, Xiao Mo found that complementary food took more and more time and energy, and the baby either didn't like it or had adverse reactions such as vomiting.

to put it bluntly, it still lacks professionalism.

So, Xiao Mo changed her strategy, and let the baby try to eat the products of infant food supplement brands.

knowing the pain points of consumers, how should brands capture the hearts of consumers?

But Xiaopi is very low-key in the industry, with almost no media publicity and a mysterious veil.

Xiaopi, founded in 215, conquered domestic consumers in five years and became one of the most popular complementary food brands for infants.

There seems to be a unique business logic behind Xiaopi's success.

Next, we will analyze the brand positioning, channel layout, content marketing and social media delivery to uncover the mystery of Xiaopi.

positioning: to be an extremely picky complementary food product.

Because they love their children, every parent is picky about whether to give or choose food.

The two founders of Xiaopi are both parents, and they feel the same way about being picky, hoping to make a complementary food product that satisfies them.

Therefore, it is "erin brockovich" in the chain of raw materials, formula, production technology, packaging and safety traceability.

"picky" is first reflected in food safety. To this end, Xiaopi has been insisting on using only ingredients from organic certified farms in the European Union since it entered the China market in 215.

its products have obtained double organic certifications from Britain and the European Union, cooperated with laboratories certified by the British royal family for testing, cooperated with China Inspection and Certification Group (CCIC) for overseas traceability, and insisted on sampling inspection of each batch of products.

adopting some international certification standards will give consumers a professional and safe feeling, which belongs to the power of making good use of authority in marketing means.

Just like some new brands in the market now, they will also use the import strategy, such as the origin of chocolate in Switzerland and so on.

"picky" is also reflected in the taste. For example, in order to find high-quality blueberry ingredients, the founder took four turns and flew for 26 hours before he found wild blueberries that had been breeding for ten thousand years in Lac-St-Jean, the northernmost part of Quebec, Canada.

a food must have a very strict supply chain management system and quality management system in order to be truly safe and transparent.

channel layout: where consumers are, Xiaopi is there.

Xiaopi has just entered the mainland market of China, which is the first strategy of e-commerce.

On the e-commerce platform, the post-9s mothers have become the core buyers. Where are these people concentrated? It is in Tmall.

Before double 11 in 215, Xiaopi opened Tmall flagship store, continuing the word-of-mouth communication strategy of social media, and then opened stores on other e-commerce platforms.

At present, Xiaopi accounts for 15.79% of the whole market (Taobao and Tmall), among which LittleFreddie Xiaopi flagship store accounts for 52.35%.

through independent management & The agent model opens up the whole market in Taobao, which increases brand awareness while occupying market share, so it occupies nearly 1/6 of the market in Taobao (baby food supplement).

Now consumers are smart and rational, and it must be a brand with good quality to retain consumers.

content marketing: omni-channel layout, reflecting "truthfulness and professionalism".

In 215-217, Xiaopi basically focused on Social media, cooperated with different maternal and child kols, and cooperated with different content channels to communicate the basic information and selling points of products.

after that, the omni-channel layout was started, and besides two micro-blogs, Aauto Quicker, Tik Tok, Xiaohongshu and various live broadcast platforms were launched.

The founder of Xiaopi said: "The key point of our content marketing of complementary food is authenticity."

For example, Xiaopi's overall strategy in Xiaohongshu: sharing popular science knowledge, promoting soft texts and planting grass, and the overall idea caters to the habits of Xiaohongshu customers.

people at waist level and above promote products by sharing their experiences, and bring them into products by product attributes, usage methods, and so on.

Self-operated account to share popular science expertise and product usage to increase customer stickiness.

The media often reports a brush event of a MCN company, but to gain the trust of Bao Mabao's parents, the content needs to be honest, transparent and trustworthy.

pay attention to research and development.

Children's food iterates quickly, which is beneficial to all infants.