When faced with a business worth entering, brand owners often hope to comprehensively investigate the market through two research directions: First, by targeting the market with specific keywords, then further identifying the key selling points and marketing directions of the product through consumer feedback in the known market to better reach the target audience; Second, since the promotion of selling points and the recognition of buying points do not always fully match, merchants always "ride the trend" in titles to draw traffic, and looking at the market positively can be disturbed by noise. The market in the eyes of consumers may present a different picture, therefore, it is necessary to directly deduce the real market situation from consumer feedback, that is, to lock in products involved by consumer comments on certain keywords and study the market constituted by these products. Moojing's existing products, Moojing Analysis+ and Moojing E-commerce Listening, have opened up these two research directions, making it convenient for brand owners to use a set of product systems to fully assess market developments from both positive and negative perspectives. Next, this article will use the recent hot meal replacement track as an example to show you how to efficiently conduct bi-directional research based on Moojing Analysis+ and E-commerce Listening.
In recent years, with the prevalence of the aesthetics economy, body management has become a "hard need," and the meal replacement track has gained popularity. Searching for "meal replacement" on Xiaohongshu, the hot posts have tens of thousands of likes and are mostly related to fat reduction and other body management needs.
So, how is the actual sales performance of the meal replacement food market? Based on Moojing Analysis+, with "meal replacement" as the keyword and filtering within the snacks/nuts/specialties category, it can be found that the market size for meal replacement food track exceeded 1.4 billion yuan in the first half of this year, accounting for 6% of the snack market, having secured a place in the overall snack market.
Clicking on 【Brand Analysis】, it is found that CR5 of the meal replacement market reaches 27%, compared to the 18% CR5 of the overall snack market, the market concentration is higher. This also means that in this top market saturation, emerging brands need to break through with differentiation. Finding one's marketing selling points in a complex market is difficult to fully assess with sales data alone, at this point, we can face consumer demand directly from consumer feedback, thereby finding the answers.
On the Analysis+ page where we just obtained the sales performance of the meal replacement market, clicking on 【Consumer Observation】 will directly transfer to another product of Moojing, E-commerce Listening, for the subsequent consumer research.
On the redirected page, we can obtain basic information about Tmall consumers' comments on meal replacement products in the first half of this year, such as total number of comments, comment trends, positive and negative voice ratio, etc. In the first half of this year, Tmall consumers published more than 100,000 comments on meal replacement products, with a positive voice ratio of 71.9%, generally quite satisfied. What needs special attention is the 11.1% of negative voice, where potential marketing selling points that directly hit consumer pain points may exist.
In order to further find these potential marketing selling points, clicking on 【Aspects & Opinions】 allows viewing consumer comments from different dimensions and positive/negative perspectives. The biggest pain point for consumers regarding meal replacement food is taste and texture; product development needs to focus more on this aspect, and subsequent marketing should also emphasize the concept of "our product is not only a meal replacement, but also a delicious one," so as to appeal to picky consumers by taste. For example, engaging into multiple scenarios like recipe pairing, DIY homemade, etc., can highlight the delicious attribute to attract consumers to make a purchase.
Besides, we can also find the product's actual audience and consumer usage scenarios through 【Crowd Analysis】 and 【Scenario Analysis】, thus making the marketing selling points more targeted. Clicking on 【Crowd Analysis】, we can find that the weight loss crowd is the main consumer force for meal replacement food, which is consistent with the consumer portrait of meal replacement products. However, groups like children and the elderly, who may not be the typical intended audience for meal replacement, also have a certain mention in the meal replacement market consumer comments, indicating that this group of people with certain demands for food health and nutrition attributes overlaps with meal replacement food consumers. When marketing to different crowds, products can pay attention to these atypical groups to expand their audience while building differentiated advantages. Clicking on 【Scenario Analysis】, we can find that breakfast scenes are mentioned the most, and meal replacement food marketing should focus on sowing the seeds within breakfast scenarios. During product promotion and social media placements, breakfast elements can be utilized.
In addition to the overall consumer feedback for the meal replacement market, we can also focus on individual products for consumer research, observe consumer feedback on hot items, analyze what points resonate with consumers, draw inspiration, and thereby find our own more precise product positioning and marketing focus. For this, we can return to Analysis+, click on 【Product Analysis】, find the of-interest product, and click on the operation column's 【View Comment Analysis】, transferring to E-commerce Listening to conduct single product consumer feedback research. For example, we could select a meal replacement snack from the Baicaowei Pork Floss Cake 1kg package, which had the highest sales on the Tmall platform in the first half of the year, for a corresponding comment analysis.
In the basic information, it can be found that the positive voice ratio for this product is not significantly different from the overall market situation. Clicking on 【Aspects & Opinions】, taste is still the most frequently mentioned dimension.
Conducting 【Crowd Analysis】 can reveal that although the product title includes "meal replacement," the main consumer group is not the weight loss crowd, but rather children and the elderly; consumers purchasing this product tend to treat it as a treat for children at home. From a marketing perspective, such consumer feedback is beneficial for capturing the actual consumer audience and timely adjusting marketing direction. For example, meal replacement food can enrich product attributes, in addition to the demand for body management led by the aesthetics economy, it can also venture into the demand for nutritional supplementation under the health trend, reaching a broader range of needs.
However, from another perspective, hot-selling products marked as "meal replacement" have not actually hit the core audience for meal replacement such as those seeking weight loss and slimming, indicating a mismatch between the market labeled with "meal replacement" and the real market where consumers with meal replacement needs are located. In order to draw traffic, merchants may make products follow various trends, resulting in a lot of noise in the titles; products bearing the meal replacement label may not be what consumers recognize as meal replacement products.If you want to understand the actual consumer market for meal replacements, you need to start with feedback from consumers. That is, by analyzing comments mentioning "meal replacement" from consumers, you can identify relevant products involved and study the market they constitute. Now, through the reverse access function of e-commerce listening and analysis+, we can efficiently achieve consumer feedback → sales performance research in one step.
Based on e-commerce listening, select the Tmall platform, the snacks/nuts/specialty category, and the corresponding time range for your search. On the search results page, select "Scenario Analysis," and you can see the "meal replacement" scenario listed among them.
By clicking on "meal replacement," we can intuitively obtain the sales trends of the meal replacement market on the e-commerce listening page. This meal replacement market is not filtered by product titles but rather selected based on consumer feedback, specifically the market constituted of related products mentioned in comments about the "meal replacement" scenario. The meal replacement market filtered out by title keywords achieved a sales volume of 1.4 billion yuan in the first half of the year on the Tmall platform. Now, the sales volume of the meal replacement market filtered by comments has exceeded 2 billion yuan, showing a significantly larger scale and faster growth, indicating that the demand for meal replacements is growing, and many products not explicitly labeled as meal replacements are gaining favor with the audience. If brands can precisely position themselves in the real meal replacement market, the race remains a business with a broad prospect for brands. Click "Go to Analysis+ to View," and we can further analyze the competition in this real market to find a breakthrough in the market.
After transitioning to the Analysis+ page and clicking on "Brand Analysis," we can discover that the top 10 of the meal replacement market, the top 4 are occupied by familiar all-category snack brands, not specialized meal replacement brands. Bingwang's Cook Squad, Tongue, and Bicuiyuan, which have entered the light meal replacement track with whole wheat bread, have also made their mark in the competition.
Clicking on these brands to conduct a subsequent analysis, it can be seen that nearly all of the explosive products are bread, cake, and similar products. Baking-type meal replacements, with their health and satiety attributes as meal replacements, are favored by consumers.
Besides brand structure, we can also examine the meal replacement market from a blockbuster product angle. Clicking on "Product Analysis," we can see that blockbuster meal replacement products are concentrated in baked goods, such as bread, biscuits, pastries, and are very close to the domestic snack category. Only one mainstream foreign meal replacement category—protein bars—enters the top ten bestsellers. From the consumer end, the difference between local meal replacement foods and leisure snacks is not very clear; it is more like a branch of rest snacks, with health, no burden, nutrition, and other labels being the dividing line. Thus, the market is still dominated by familiar snack brands rather than specialized meal replacement brands; the best sellers are still familiar bread and pastries, not protein bars or chicken breast. Meal replacements, as a concept introduced from abroad, need to integrate with an understanding of the local consumer market to find a precise brand anchor point within the real needs of consumers.
In the process of product innovation, market space, competitive conditions, and consumer feedback are all very important, often needing to be cross-verified to increase the success rate of innovation. However, there has always been a lack of tools to integrate them together. In practice, research on the several parts is usually conducted separately, and the final conclusions of each part may not be solid enough to support the investment decision for a new product.
It is for this reason that Moojing Market Intelligence has established a two-way link between sales data and consumer comment data, enabling us to quickly conduct research such as: What differentiating points can be exploited in a market that is both large in scale and fast in growth? What are the core purchasing decision factors for consumers? How are they ranked? Has a keyword that is widely used by brands truly been perceived by consumers? Which exact products that include this selling point have indeed been perceived by consumers?
This "market + consumer" dual-driven insight model greatly improves the completeness and efficiency of research, also directly enhancing the speed and success rate of enterprise decision-making. Moojing hopes to help a wide range of Chinese brands to have a smoother journey on the road to product innovation, bring more value to consumers, and achieve better business success.
We also welcome exchanges and communications with brand clients. Scan the QR code to receive a trial and immediately experience the dual-driven insights of "market + consumer!"
