What? The Yogurt Assassin is here too!

The high price of yogurt marketing may be because the brand has put a lot of effort into product quality and taste, or it is positioned in the high-end market, so the price is relatively expensive and attracts a lot of attention. So, why is yogurt so popular? This article describes the relevant content and hopes it will be helpful to you.

The Evolution of Consumer Assassins: Ice cream is out, will yogurt take over?

This summer, when the "Ice Cream Assassin" finally showed signs of hiding, yogurt freedom was drifting further and further away from us.

Once upon a time, you could buy a whole bar of yogurt for just over ten yuan, but nowadays, yogurt on convenience store shelves costs over ten yuan per cup.

As early as 2021, the question of "Why is yogurt getting more and more expensive" became a hot search. In 2023, high-end freshly made yogurt once again dominated the screen with its high price, and the price has even soared to a high of 30 or 40 yuan, becoming a "category dark horse" worthy of attention this summer.

So, why does yogurt expand?

1. Analysis of premium capabilities from technology iteration to marketing innovation

It’s not an illusion that yogurt has become more expensive.

According to a research report by China Research and Development, the average annual compound growth rate of domestic yogurt sales volume from 2020 to 2022 was 9%, and the average annual compound growth rate of sales revenue was 11.67%. The average unit price of yogurt is indeed rising.

The expansion of product price ranges is inseparable from product innovation, and the same is true for the high-end development of yogurt.

The upgrade of low-temperature technology is an obvious driving force behind the high price of yogurt.

Public data shows that before 2013, the domestic yogurt market was dominated by ambient temperature yogurt, but with the entry of some new brands and the entry of foreign brands, mainly Japan's Meiji Bulgarian-style yogurt, into China, high-end yogurt began to explode.

With consumption upgrading, more advanced technologies are driving the continuous evolution of products.

The ordinary yogurt, which used to be "watery and easy to digest", has become thicker and fresher. After the 1-2 yuan affordable yogurt, Bright Dairy's Mosilian and Yili's Anmuxi brought a wave of high-end room temperature yogurt.

Soon after, fresher low-temperature yogurt became popular. Compared with room-temperature yogurt, low-temperature yogurt only undergoes one pasteurization process. While retaining the mellow taste of raw milk, it also retains a large amount of active probiotics, which is beneficial to maintaining the balance of intestinal flora.

With the continuous influx of capital and the flourishing of brands of all sizes, low-temperature yogurt has become a "regular" in convenience store refrigerators, selling for 10 yuan a cup.

In addition, the disappearance of "one yuan yogurt" also reflects the superimposed effect of supply chain transmission.

The main raw materials of yogurt are milk and sucrose. The increase in commodity prices worldwide in the past two years is obvious to all, and the price pressure is naturally passed on to end consumers.

Of course, from a brand perspective, the “soft culture” of marketing has played an important role in the price increase of yogurt. It can be said that it is with the close coordination of brand strategy and marketing strategy that users can accept higher-priced yogurt from the perspective of cognitive coordination.

For example, the dark horse brand Jane Eyre has taken a step further in marketing insight. It launched the "Father's Love Formula" series of products, cleverly defining the product base with emotion. The subtraction-style marketing of "raw milk, sugar, lactic acid bacteria, nothing else" makes the minimalist product image distinctive and unique, becoming a "clear stream" in the yogurt industry.

The clean blue and white color scheme is full of design sense, creating a "reliable" sentiment value as a whole, occupying the mind with a pure image. Another example is Lechun yogurt, which grew from an Internet celebrity brand and is also good at telling stories with its products.

Its product concept is different from competitors, with the slogan of "rejecting chemical additives" and the vivid description of "every bite is like licking the lid", which accurately hits the taste pain point. The product also returns to the segmented innovation of Greek yogurt, "three cups of raw milk can produce one cup of yogurt; three times the protein content required by national standards; three times the whey concentration process to produce a thick taste", which is full of gimmicks.

The packaging of products with various flavors also has an aesthetic style that returns to the raw materials, capturing the hearts of consumers from the inside out.

As 7-11 founder Toshifumi Suzuki said, there is only one reason for the slow sales of products and the depression of business, that is, the current working methods can no longer meet the changes in the times and consumer needs. High-priced yogurt is better than change - implanting brand building into the product, bringing a different brand narrative with perceptible innovative changes, creating a sense of scarcity and freshness in experience, and then accumulating the brand's personality temperature and value height.

2. Differentiation Anchor Point Dismantling Perception is the Key to Narrative

The high-end development of yogurt has become a steady and continuous action. A fact that may be overlooked is that high-priced yogurt has become the main force in the leap of yogurt market size, which is reflected in the fact that yogurt sales have surpassed milk.

According to Euromonitor data, in 2010, the national sales of yogurt were only 33 billion yuan, less than half of milk; but in 2017, yogurt sales began to exceed milk. Compared with milk, yogurt has a natural advantage in terms of high-end categories. Similar to "Ice Cream Assassin", yogurt has multiple dimensions of variation and combination, such as overlapping flavors, ingredients, strains, etc., which makes it easier to form a differentiated strategy.

Simply put, innovation in the yogurt category can be more easily perceived by consumers. Tangible innovation is more helpful in telling a product story that is more deeply rooted in people's hearts.

In the innovation space supported by high prices, differentiation has become the key to marketing success. The yogurt category, with its abundant differentiation potential, has become a "concept show" for many brands to hit consumer demand.

Diversity is one of the anchor points of differentiation.

When materials are no longer scarce, diversified product configurations can enhance the uniqueness of products.

This is reflected in the rich combination of yogurt products, with all kinds of trendy combinations that are even more overwhelming: yellow peach oatmeal, white peach pomegranate, black kohlrabi almond, blueberry elderflower, hazelnut vanilla, caramel pecan, thick milk box coffee, Madagascar vanilla, strawberry cranberry chia seeds, osmanthus wine, jasmine tea, caramel nut brownie...everything is possible, and the compatibility of yogurt is well presented. Additive cumulative innovation continuously provides inspiration for product iteration and has also become a unique marketing strategy.

Functionality is the second anchor point of differentiation. Catering to the trend of health and targeting consumer pain points, the yogurt category has "made a big splash" from the perspective of functionality. In contrast to the diversified ideas, "0 additives" is another secret weapon for the yogurt category to improve its status under the health trend. The key to the emergence of emerging high-end yogurts such as Kashi, Beihai Ranch, Le Pure, and Jane Eyre is to demonstrate "high quality without additives" with a simple and clean ingredient list.

Focus strategy, labeling has become a powerful tool for differentiation of health trends. On the yogurt shelves, high-sounding keywords such as "no additives", "low sugar", "0 sucrose", "7 kinds of probiotics", "Greek flavor", "highland pasture" and so on directly occupy our vision.

The key to breaking through the label lies in the various hidden pain points of traditional yogurt. Taking high sugar as an example, Beihai Ranch pays great attention to sugar control when developing products. No sucrose is added to the entire product line. In the end, erythritol and stevioside were selected as two natural sugar substitutes with zero/very low calories, higher quality and higher price.

Kashi has seized the pain point of sugar and launched the "Sugar-Free Diary" series of products; it has also magnified the digestive function of yogurt in people's cognition and launched the "One Hour After Meal" series of products. The brand narrative logic of high-priced yogurt has also become clear - grasping the key concerns of consumers, consolidating the healthy brand mind, paying attention to scenarios, providing solutions beyond products, and telling the brand story in more depth.

3. What is the end point of high-endization? The sustainability of the trend remains to be seen

Outside supermarket shelves, the trend of freshly made yogurt in offline stores is even more intense. Especially in the past one or two years, the popular freshly made yogurt is even more expensive than Starbucks. For example, Blueglass, with a starting price of 29.9 yuan and a maximum price of 40 yuan, is called the "Hermes of yogurt." The slogan is even more concise and direct: "A cup of high-quality yogurt that makes you look better", and promises "100 billion active probiotics per cup".

Blueglass is currently a direct-operated business model. In contrast, the franchise-based Jasmine Yogurt represents another school of freshly made yogurt.

Mo Yogurt was founded in 2014, and has only attracted attention since 2022 with a rapid expansion of 30+ stores per month. The price is more compatible in the 30 yuan range, and avocado yogurt shake is the flagship product, which is fresh and healthy at first glance.

A greater improvement in premium capability must have satisfied user needs in more dimensions and provided value in a wider dimension beyond basic functional attributes.

First of all, it is the super high appearance that attracts the soul at first sight. Appearance is a great weapon for freshly made yogurt. Basic yogurt can only meet the functional attributes, but a cup of good-looking yogurt can bring its own traffic. When yogurt is innovatively combined with various variables, the visual effects created are rich and varied.

When a product is created that is attractive enough to inspire users to post to their Moments on their own initiative, the connective properties of social currency will naturally be brought into full play.

Secondly, it is the "stacking" addition operation that echoes the new tea beverage track.

Compared with ordinary yogurt, freshly made yogurt not only guarantees the basic value of freshness, but also adds a lot of additional value as a purchase benefit point. For example, Blueglass's popular "Lemon Avocado Barley Grass Plant Coconut Oatmeal Burst Bead Active Probiotic Yogurt" is priced at 43 yuan per cup.

Breaking down the keywords, the yogurt category is placed last, from the main ingredients of avocado, barley, and young leaves, to the auxiliary ingredients of coconut and oats, to the fun of popping beads, and the functional finishing touch of probiotics... Strong additive innovation has found reasons for high prices from all angles, and deeply anchored consumers' deep-seated needs of "becoming thinner, more beautiful, and more good-looking." Freshly made yogurt can be sold at a high price and good quality, and this winning logic has also attracted many disruptors.

In addition to Blueglass and Mo Yogurt, freshly made yogurt brands such as A Yogurt Cow, K22 Yogurt Strawberry, and Lanxiong Fresh Milk are representative players in the offline new consumer track of the yogurt category. Just looking at it horizontally, the products of each company are generally similar, with yogurt + fruit forming milkshakes, diversified topping modes, "low-calorie" and "0 sugar" health labels, and even added nutritional elements such as VC, anthocyanins, and collagen.

On the other hand, there is no absolute threshold for freshly made yogurt. The yogurt category has welcomed many cross-border players. Haagen-Dazs announced that it will launch new yogurt products this summer, and new tea drink players are also eager to try. Tea 100, Gu Ming, Shanghai Auntie and other milk tea merchants have launched new yogurt products.

Low-temperature yogurt on the shelves faces a similar dilemma. The core capabilities wrapped in the story, such as sugar control, health, and topping logic, can all be copied.

High-priced yogurt, which relied on a differentiation strategy to push up prices, ultimately fell into the trap of competitive homogeneity.

What is more worrying is the underlying logic of industrial development. The consumption chain of checking in upon hearing the news cannot guarantee more sustained consumption behavior. High-end yogurt is destined to be trapped in the "small and beautiful" circle, and it is difficult to open up the situation in terms of market penetration; the high-priced yogurt brands on the shelves have to face the basic challenges of milk source construction and deep cultivation of the supply chain. If the high-end price band leap is the first step in the dimensional upgrade of yogurt, then whether it can stand firm in the high-end price band is a growth test that brands need to consider more carefully.

After all, it is not easy for consumers to pay. Healthy strategies and high-priced configurations also have a certain "shelf life".

The pursuit of novelty, fun and fashion is just a passing fad. High-priced yogurt products still cannot guarantee long-term repurchase status. How to find more loyal consumers? Yogurt is becoming more and more expensive and is participating in the elimination round.

Author: Black Little Finger, Source: WeChat public account "Shock Copywriting"