Savory, Quality, and Freedom: The Ultimate Romanticism of Snack Food
Reporter: Zhang Zhibo, Securities Times
From "the first cup of milk tea in autumn" to "expensive ice cream assassin," consumers have been exhausted by the endless branding stories and excessive packaging from businesses over the past few years.
When we talk about "free snacks," what are we actually pursuing?
On one hand, it's to eliminate the excess pricing of goods. Snacks are not luxury items displayed in shop windows, nor are they durable products with a long lifespan. The over-the-top marketing tactics and channel fees only obscure the functional quality of the product. To some extent, the quantity-based model allows snacks to shed their capital-imposed labels and return to their original essence as plain consumer goods. Consumers no longer need to pay for unnecessary added value; they can simply pay for the genuine production costs and reasonable sales profits.
On the other hand, it's about seeking emotional value. In modern society where physique anxiety and health anxiety are commercialized, the concept of "free snacks" itself acknowledges the temporary rebellion against mainstream values, the pursuit of instant happiness brought by dopamine, and a legitimate demand. Quantity-based stores have built a theme park called "Happy Place" that caters to those who need comfort. Many quantity-based stores even provide social traffic design and social media platforms to further enhance consumers' shopping experiences.
Su Chun, chief analyst of food and beverage at East Asia Securities, points out that in the snack food quantity-based model, each link has a reasonable profit space. Channels are essentially using more efficient modes to replace some inefficient ones, providing C-end consumers with more value-for-money products; in addition, scale effects allow quantity-based platforms to spread fixed costs more effectively, enabling them to invest in branding and provide emotional added value. Quantity-based enterprises working with upstream manufacturers will also become smoother and able to offer high-quality and affordable products.
Of course, snack food quantity-based sales are not a universally applicable retail model; they face issues such as low profitability, severe homogenization, price stickiness, and poor quality control. However, the advantages of "high-efficiency supply chain for price leadership" and "matching demand for down-market needs" in reorganizing the value chain for snack food quantity-based sales have immense significance for the development of the retail market.
As traditional channels are still struggling to balance quality and price, snack food quantity-based sales have already returned the power of choosing affordable, high-quality products to consumers. As product prices gradually return to their true value, consumer experiences will also gradually become more authentic, and the market will eventually realize that the joy of eating snacks should not be bound by excess pricing; buying should be a peaceful and effortless experience. Perhaps this is the ultimate romanticism of snack food consumption – allowing tongue-tingling experiences to become the standard for measuring value.