Insights and marketing strategies for the maternal and infant industry

When those born after 1995 start to become parents, new consumer demands and catalyst habits are giving rise to maternal and child products. In addition, the online traffic dividend has disappeared, and reconstruction has become the core keyword in the changes.

Amid the intertwining changes of opportunities and challenges, how can brands seize new opportunities with precise marketing?

Recently, Xinchao Media released the " Maternal and Infant Industry Insights and Marketing Strategies" report (hereinafter referred to as the Report), which combines macro data to analyze the development trends of the maternal and infant industry.

According to the report, the domestic maternal and infant industry has gone through four major stages of development :

The first stage is the start-up period, which started in the 1990s. The main sales places for maternal and infant products were department stores, and brand stores were very rare.

The second stage was a period of rapid development. With the rise of Internet technology in the first decade of the 21st century, maternal and child communities and portals emerged;

The third stage is after 2011, when e-commerce exploded across the board and online maternal and infant industry platforms experienced a major explosion, especially from 2014 to 2018. With the development of mobile Internet, the maternal and infant industry entered a period of wild growth, and vertical maternal and infant e-commerce stood out from many tracks. 2011~2018 was the golden explosion period of the maternal and infant industry;

The fourth stage is from 2019 to the present. With the rise of new social media, offline platforms have begun to vigorously develop private domain traffic with the help of physical stores and membership systems. Deeply exploring diverse user needs, differentiated management and refined operations have become the industry's main business model.

The maternal and infant industry, which has entered its mature stage, has established its own professional omni-channel shopping scenarios, and the shadow of refined operations can be seen everywhere from advertising to sales.

The report shows that with the relaxation of birth policies in recent years, the increase in income, the change in parenting concepts and the improvement of technology, the improvement of supply-side products and services in the maternal and infant market, the industry scale is expected to exceed 7 trillion yuan by 2024.

1. Biggest Opportunity: Population Change + Consumption Upgrade

Although population growth has slowed down, "population iteration + consumption upgrade" is the biggest opportunity for the maternal and infant industry.

When those born in the 1960s became parents, they generally did not spend too much on maternal and child products due to material scarcity and low family income. By the time those born in the 1970s became parents, their material conditions had improved and the share of maternal and child products had increased. The post-80s generation advocates science and believes that children are everything in the family. They rely on foreign brands. The middle class is especially willing to spend money on their children, and the share of maternal and infant products is relatively high.

The new generation of parents, those born in the 1990s and 1995s, have a strong sense of autonomy and their consumption concepts are very different from those of their predecessors. They pursue personalized and refined parenting. With the change of population and the upgrading of consumption, the market for maternal and infant products is accelerating its segmentation, showing a trend towards high-end, personalized and fashionable products.

The fundamental reason for achieving consumption upgrading comes from the stable growth of residents' income. Data from the National Bureau of Statistics over the past seven years show that per capita disposable income of residents has increased from 16,367 yuan in 2015 to 26,265 yuan. Even in 2020, amid the epidemic, it still showed an upward trend, but the growth rate slowed down.

Survey data in the report show that the maternal and infant consumer group is mainly composed of highly educated women aged 25 to 35 living in middle- and high-income families in second-, third- and fourth-tier cities. The desire to have children in low-tier cities is stronger than in high-tier cities, and the younger age of users also makes new parenting concepts, consumption ideas and channels easier to accept.

The proportion of monthly expenditure on maternal and infant products in household income is also increasing. By the post-95 generation, this proportion has risen to 30%. Compared with affordable price, more and more maternal and infant consumers believe that health and quality are the most important. They are willing to share their experiences or feelings with others on social networking sites/communities, like to keep trying, actively accept new things, and pursue refined parenting.

The so-called refinement actually refers to specialization. Under the premise of high-quality life, increased demand for quality, and the increasing popularity of the concept of eugenics, new parents/future parents have gradually changed their ideas about pregnancy. The stratification of mother-infant groups in terms of knowledge acquisition is more obvious, and the information they mainly browse is closely related to the stage they are in.

As the stage of maternal and infant information acquisition and product consumption moves forward, the demand for tiered learning and consumption among maternal and infant groups becomes increasingly obvious.

The report stated that more than 90% of mothers and babies will obtain relevant information from mother and baby communities, and 66% of mothers and babies use mother and baby communities as an APP that they use frequently in daily life. For mothers and babies, mother and baby communities are more scientific, comprehensive, professional, and easy to understand than social platforms and content sharing platforms, so they are more trustworthy.

In terms of exclusivity, the three platforms with higher exclusivity in the maternal and infant community are Mama.com, BabyTree and Qinbaobao, among which Mama.com has an exclusivity rate of 40.5%. The leading maternal and infant community platforms have comprehensive and continuously updated parenting and product selection information, so "planting grass" through the maternal and infant community platforms can help women and mothers shorten their decision-making path.

Based on its traffic advantage, the "community + e-commerce" business model quickly gained market recognition. As the leading e-commerce shopping guide, the maternal and infant community has a certain stickiness for consumers.

2. E-commerce is the trend, and investment enthusiasm remains high

Comprehensive maternal and infant e-commerce platforms have become the main shopping channel for consumers. Almost all maternal and infant consumers have the experience of purchasing maternal and infant products online. Among them, 73% of consumers use online platforms as the main consumption channel for maternal and infant products, and the proportion of people who mainly use offline consumption of maternal and infant products is less than 10%.

The report shows that the transaction volume of China's maternal and infant e-commerce industry in 2020 was 1 trillion yuan, and it is expected to reach 1.1 trillion yuan in 2021. In recent years, the scale of maternal and infant e-commerce users has grown rapidly. In 2020, the scale of maternal and infant e-commerce users reached 245 million, and it is expected to reach 250 million in 2021.

The epidemic has strengthened the online consumption habits of mothers and babies. Affected by the epidemic, more than 80% of mothers and babies have strengthened their online purchasing behavior of maternal and infant products, among which mothers and babies born after 1995 have a more obvious tendency to shop online. The epidemic has relatively weak impact on the shopping channels of mothers and babies in low-tier cities.

Capital has a relatively positive attitude towards maternal and infant e-commerce. According to data from Zhiyan Consulting, from 2015 to 2021, the number and scale of investment and financing in China's maternal and infant e-commerce declined in 2017 and 2019, and were on an upward trend in other years. Driven by the three-child policy in 2021, the fertility rate is expected to increase. The implementation of the policy and related supporting measures will lead to new growth in the maternal and infant consumer group, and investment in China's maternal and infant e-commerce is booming.

From the perspective of major maternal and infant consumer purchases, food, clothing and daily necessities are still the main consumer categories. Although the penetration rate of medical health, maternal and child care and other services among the current mother and child population is low, young parents are more inclined to choose them, and there is great potential for future development of these categories.

In terms of the milk powder market alone, the scale of my country's infant milk powder market increased from 187.3 billion yuan to 257.8 billion yuan from 2017 to 2019, with an average annual compound growth rate of 17.32%. It is predicted that the scale of my country's infant formula market will reach 354.6 billion yuan in 2022. The market size of complementary foods, which also belongs to the "eating" category, is equally impressive. It is conservatively estimated that the size of China's infant and young children market will maintain a compound average growth rate of 10%, and the scale may exceed 50 billion yuan in 2022.

Maternal and infant products are highly phased and have short group cycles. In addition, although people born in the 1990s and 1995s have become the main force in childcare, those who have two or more children, represented by those born after 1985, have not yet left the market. Under the fusion of the old and the new, differences in parenting and consumption concepts, attitudes towards and demands for first/second child consumption all have an impact on the maternal and infant products market, and will further intensify the market segmentation.

Taking the early childhood education market as an example, compared with mothers born in the 1980s, mothers born in the 1990s are more positive about sending their children to early childhood education. The number of mothers born in the 1990s who plan to send their children aged 0-1 to early childhood education exceeds that of mothers born in the 1980s by 6.1%. Young mothers have a stronger awareness of early childhood education and a more positive attitude.

The younger generation has more fashion pursuits. For example, when choosing diapers, in addition to basic needs such as material and comfort, more and more young parents are willing to pay for appearance. IP collaboration is a popular new way for diapers to attract consumers in terms of appearance.

The phased nature of maternal and infant products themselves and the differences in consumer concepts have led to differentiated and refined marketing strategies. By vertically breaking down marketing scenarios and efficiently harvesting content touchpoints, a resonance can be created with maternal and infant users who need to be more "heartfelt" in order to build a chain of trust.

3. From content communities to lifestyle communities, which is the favorite media for maternal and infant advertising?

Internet community communication has gradually become one of the most relied-upon information exchange channels for mothers, and leading maternal and infant brands have a large user base and brand awareness, and enjoy a significant advantage in the field of social media communication.

The advantage of leading brands is that once consumers have the motivation to consume, they will actively "look for brands", just like when buying a used car, they will think of Guazi Used Cars. At this time, online traffic alone can no longer support the brand to go further, and offline outdoor media including elevator media is needed to achieve stronger brand exposure.

Brand advertising brings increased popularity and recognition, which can increase the conversion rate of traffic-based advertising by more than 2-3 times, thereby reducing the overall cost of acquiring customers. Once a brand penetrates into the minds of users, it becomes continuous free traffic and can function as a long-term mechanism.

Offline, the community, as the intersection of family reach and public reach, is an indispensable scenario for brand marketing. Marketing reach can be achieved in multiple scenarios such as parking lots, elevators, and community access control.

According to the results of an online quantitative survey of community media, community media is the outdoor media with the highest reach rate in the community, with a reach rate of 92% and a reach frequency of 89.5%. The second is community access control, small parks and leisure areas.

The dissemination form of elevator advertising is also changing, from the earliest frame advertising era to the LCD network era, and then to the smart screen era. While the cost continues to decline, better dissemination effects have been achieved.

Kantar’s report points out that the daily reach of elevator advertising is second only to Internet advertising, but its average daily exposure time ranks first among all advertisements. In addition, due to the characteristics of elevators, which are necessary, compulsory, closed, and with little interference, elevator advertisements have the highest memorability, followed by Internet media.

"Two Weibo, one Douyin, and one media platform " efficiently combines online and offline, content and scenario, and public and private traffic complement each other. It is the most effective way to detonate brands in the future!

Author: Community Marketing Research Institute

Source: Community Marketing Research Institute