Food for thought
Three key questions for snack brands
Navigating today’s snack landscape requires more than just surface-level metrics like brand awareness or sales figures. They are valid KPIs, but using these metrics alone to measure brand success will leave considerable gaps in the picture. Awareness won’t necessarily lead to sales, while winning sales today won’t guarantee sustainable success: people might try your brand once, and never come back.
To accurately determine whether your current growth is sustainable, you need to know if your brand has the potential to capture more buyers, or more purchase transactions.
This means the metric that matters most is the moment when the consumer decides to buy your brand, rather than a competitor’s brand, or something else entirely. Understanding the full picture of consumer behaviour – including what motivates their choices, or why they shift to other categories – will provide the clarity needed to identify what drives that ‘moment’, and craft more effective long-term strategies.
New product development (NPD) and innovation bring excitement to the snacks market, and can drive category growth as well as brand growth.
Unlike the home care or personal care sectors, snacks brands can easily encourage additional consumption by introducing new variants. Adding an extra bag of chips or a pack of candy to a shopping basket often requires minimal deliberation on the part of the shopper, as long as the price remains within an acceptable range. Brands must simply ensure that the perceived benefits are worth the cost in the consumer's mind.
In addition to determining what shoppers buy, you should zoom in on what prompts their choice, the occasion behind the purchase, and how they consume the snack.
Of course, consumer preferences and habits never stand still. It’s important to understand these shifts and how they influence your strategy, and gain the insights necessary to anticipate changes. This will enable you to predispose people to buy.
You need clear visibility of where you stand in your own category, but also in relation to other categories and the brands within them. Why should consumers buy your product? What needs do you satisfy?
Alongside finding the right price point, this will help you to identify possible white space for innovation, as well as strengthen your differentiation, and possibly uncover opportunities for collaboration.
In summary, the key to unlocking growth in Thailand’s snack market lies in asking the right questions, and using the right data to guide decision-making. As the snack industry continues to evolve, those brands that stay informed and adaptable will be best positioned for sustainable success.
