Background
The organic food global market has been growing in 2021 because people increase their health concerns due to COVID-19. This market is expected to increase 9.7% at a compound annual rate globally (The Business Research Company, 2021). In Hong Kong, the organic market also increases approximately 10% to $7.67 billion in 2020 (Topick, 2021). The report shows that near 60% of interviewees pay attention to food safety, and 30% of them increased their organic food purchases last year.
HKJEBN is a famous food retail brand in Hong Kong, and their brand belief is to provide high-quality products and promote the Healthy Diet lifestyle to their customer. To achieve this goal, HKJEBN has provided 12 packaged organic food products imported worldwide. However, these organic products have been divided into different product categories that make customers difficultly aware of them (Figure 1).
Given this situation, the HKJEBN marketing team thoroughly investigates the Hong Kong organic food market phenomena and the organic customer behaviours, wants, needs, and motivations to carry out the market segmentation and questionnaire to design the marketing strategy for the specific market segmentation.
Figure 1. HKJEBN Organic Food Products (Photo source: HKJEBN Website)
Targeting Segmentation
Segmentation by VLAS Framework
To learn more about the Hong Kong organic food customers’ psychographic traits and key demographics to drive them to buy products at HKJEBN, the marketing team uses the hybrid segmentation method VALS (“Values and Lifestyles”) market segmentation. There are three primary motivations which are ” Ideals”, “Achievement”, and “Self- expression”, to understand consumer behaviour.
Organic food customers desire to live a healthy lifestyle and seek knowledge of health and safety. They are enthusiastic about promoting a healthy diet and natural food principles. The “Ideals” is the attitude to motivate theirs anticipates behaviour.
According to the organic food customers behaviour report (Topick, 2021), the monthly consumption of organic food between $701 to $1,000 section grows significantly. It shows that citizens are more willing to spend money on organic food products. Organic food customers have “High resources” to fulfil their healthy lifestyle. Base on the VALS framework (Figure 2), the “Thinkers” is suitable to be an early-adopter target for segmentation because it represents the “Ideals” motivation and “High Resources”.
Figure 2. VALS Framework of Hong Kong Organic Food Customers Segmentation
Primary and Secondary Segmentation
According to the organic product consumer behaviour report (Hong Kong Organic Resource Centre, 2018), 71.3% of interviewees expressed that their purchasing purpose was “For their family members’ health”. This insight supports defining the Primary Target Audiences as the organic food product customers, and the Secondary Target Audiences is their family members. Therefore, there is a need to include the secondary audience in the HKJEBN marketing campaign to attrack their intentions.
Market and Customer Segmentation
In addition, the report (Hong Kong Organic Resource Centre, 2018) shows that 68% of interviewees have bought organic food in the past year. The reason causing this societal phenomenon is that Hong Kong people are more concerned about health and food safety nowadays. As the Facebook insight report, there are 1.8 million potential target audiences interested in Healthy Diet and Organic Food in Hong Kong (Figure 3). Among 25–35 Female is the majority group. Combining the VALS segmentation result, the selected customer characteristics are Female, Thinkers, 25–35, Married, Have Children and Healthy Organic Food Interested. This group of customers is identifiable and sufficiency. They are growing stable and accessible by Social Media platforms like Facebook and Instagram. Figure 4 is the graph to describe the market and customer segmentation.
Figure 3. Facebook Audience Insights of Organic Food and Healthy Diet in Hong Kong (photo source: Facebook)
Figure 4. Marketing and Customer Segmentation of Hong Kong Organic Food Market
Customer Persona
To better understand the selected segmentation and recognize the critical traits within them. The marketing team builds the customer persona (Figure 5) to anticipate customer buying behaviour, personal background, and living situation to plan the appropriate marketing tactic for communication and building relationships.
Figure 5. Customer Persona of the segmentation
HKJEBN Brand Personality
In developing the brand personality to be resonated with the target consumers, the marketing team applies the “Big Five” dimensions by Jennifer Aaker (1997) to determine the brand’s typical personality. HKJEBN philosophy is that “customers and quality always come first” (HKJEBN, 2021). Promoting “Better Dining” and “Rainbow Diet” is their mission. Therefore, HKJEBN is Sincerity, Honest, Family-Oriented (Figure 6).
Figure 6. HKJEBN Brand Personality by “Big Five” dimensions
Design the questionnaire
To collect the valuable data from the primary research, the HKJEBN marketing team designed the questionnaire to assess their retail store customers and Facebook followers’ organic food consumption habit. Participants will be given a one-time “25% off discount” SMS-Coupon to enjoy one of HKJEBN’s organic products. For retail customers, they can do the questionnaire by the iPad at the cashier counter after purchase. For their Facebook Followers, the team will publish the Facebook post to invite them to do the online questionnaire. The followers can click the link in the Post, and it will redirect to the questionnaire on the HKJEBN website.
Figure 7. HKJEBN Organic Foods Questionnaire Demo
Questionnaire
The first purpose of the questionnaire is to verify the hypothetical market and customer segmentation that come from secondary research data. The second is to utilize data analysis to discover the improvement of communication and marketing strategy.
Q1. Have you purchased organic foods in the past three months?
Answer:
Yes, I have.How many times in the past three months?
__________*
What is the average amount of every purchase?
__________*
(To Q3)
Answer:
No, I have not.
(To Q2)
Q2. What is the reason you do not buy organic food?
(Can choose more than one answer)
Answer:
• Price too high
• Quality irregular
• Less choice
• Lack of retail shop
• Not interested
• Other: __________*
(To Q8)
Q3. Who do you share organic food with? (Can choose more than one answer)
Answer:
• My husband
• My wife
• My children
• My parents
• None
• Other: __________*
(To Q4)
Q4. Have you bought any Organic Food at HKJEBN?
Answer:
Yes, I have.
(Can choose more than one answer)
• Organic Snacks
• Organic Drinks
• Organic Dried Fruits
• Organic Beans and Grains
• Organic Frozen Seafood
(To Q6A)
Answer:
No, I have not.
(To Q5)
Q5. What is the reason?
(Can choose more than one answer)
Answer:
• Less choice
• More expensive
• Low Quality
• No online shop
• Other: __________*
(To Q6B)
Q6A. Where do you usually buy organic food?
(Can choose more than one answer)
Answer:
• HKJEBN
• Another brand retail shop, the brand is: __________*
• Online shop
• Supermarket
• Other: __________*
(To Q7)
Q6B. Where do you usually buy organic food?
(Can choose more than one answer)
Answer: • Another brand retail shop, the brand is: __________* • Online shop • Supermarket • Other: __________* (To Q7)
Q7. Where do you receive organic food information?
(Can choose more than one answer)
Answer:
• HKJEBN Facebook
• HKJEBN Instagram
• Organic Food Brand Facebook, the brand is: __________*
• Organic Food Brand Instagram, the brand is: __________*
• Healthy topic KOL
• Friends
• Other: __________*
(To Q8)
Q8. What is your occupation and monthly income??
Occupation Answer:
• Student
• Employee
• Businessman
• Housewife
• Other: __________*
Income Answer:
• Less than $15,000
• $15,001 - $25,000
• $25,001 - $35,000
• $35,001 $45,000
• $45,001 $55,000
• $Above $55,000
(* open-ended question)
Figure 8. The Questionnaire Flow
The data collected by the questionnaire, such as occupation, income, and family members, can verify the hypothetical market and customer segmentation (Figure 9). The analyzed customer insights can help the marketing team revise the segmentation and marketing strategy that is more suitable for the target audiences.
Figure 9. The description of questionnaire data to verify the segmentation
The information of demographics, Psychographics and Customer Behavioral provides the different combinations to generate valuable customer insights. For example, the answer of Q1, Q3, Q5 and Q7 can create the understanding about “Do we need to invite the healthy topic KOL promoting our Organic food on Facebook for the mother group who is the organic food regular customer?” (Figure 10). This insight can help the team to improve the effectiveness of communication to their target group.
Figure 10. The insight generation example
Critical Reflection
In the segmentation process, it is difficult to determine which customer group is the critical target audience. For example, the Organic Food market is growing recently. However, the product costing is relevantly expensive. Therefore, I think that an excellent segmentation plan needs to consider both market and business aspects.
In addition, planning the simple but plentiful questionnaire is challenging. I need to balance the number of questions and adequate data for research analysis to generate valuable insights. I believe this experience can help me better use the learned knowledge and skills in the subsequent project.
Bibliography
Hong Kong Organic Resource Centre (2018) Consumer Behavior Investigation Report of Hong Kong Organic Products 2018. At: http://www.hkorc.org/wp- content/uploads/2020/05/%E6%B6%88%E8%B2%BB%E8%80%85%E8%B3%BC%E 8%B2%B7%E6%9C%89%E6%A9%9F%E7%94%A2%E5%93%81%E7%9A%84%E8% A1%8C%E7%82%BA%E7%A0%94%E7%A9%B6- %E5%B8%82%E5%A0%B4%E8%AA%BF%E6%9F%A5-2018_final.pdf (Accessed 05/08/2021).
Jennifer, A. (1997) ‘Dimensions of Brand Personality’ In: Journal of Marketing Research 34(3) pp.347–356.
The Business Research Company (2021) Organic Food Global Market Report 2021: COVID-19 Growth And Change To 2030. At: https://www.thebusinessresearchcompany.com/report/organic-food-global-market- report (Accessed 05/08/2021).
Topick (2021) News:Consumer Behavior Investigation Report of Hong Kong Organic Products 2020. At: https://topick.hket.com/article/2984568?r=cpsdlc (Accessed 05/08/2021).
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