UNDERSTANDING THE PLANT-BASED MARKET IN CHINA - CONSUMPTION TRENDS AND CUSTOMER PERSONAS (GoodGrowth.io)

This report contains an executive summary, which is reproduced here exactly.

Executive Summary

What are Chinese consumer attitudes towards plant-based products and the relationship with their current food consumption habits?

This report is intended for entrepreneurs, companies and ecosystem builders in the plant-based industry. We conducted a mixed-methods consumer study with focus groups, diary studies and a national survey to understand how plant-based products can better appeal to different customer segments in China.

We discovered 5 different customer personas, where 84.2% of respondents identified with at least one of the five: Concerned Parents, Convenience Junkies, Social Foodies, Nutrition Optimizers and Vegetarians & Vegans. While "Social Foodies” were most promising for plant-based meat (PBM) because of their high trial and retention rate, “Nutrition Optimizers” followed as those who prioritize the nutritional contents of their food over other considerations.

We encourage readers to use these key insights, personas and industry recommendations as a starting point for strategic planning when developing PBM products for the Chinese market.

OUR RECOMMENDATIONS
Align PBM products with specific consumer needs, behaviours and drivers.

• Short-term activation opportunities include increasing product trials, using novelty campaigns to engage Social Foodies, and attracting Nutrition Optimizers with macro-nutritional advantages.
• Retention and broader adoption in the mid-term requires genuine competitiveness with animal products (e.g. price, taste, mouthfeel); see Convenience Junkies
• Mass adoption in the long-term will likely require shifting entrenched beliefs of PBM, meat consumption and plant-based nutrition.