How does Macaron enter China snack market?

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This year, many Chinese people get interested in a special snack from France, Macaron. It almost became famous over one night. How it becomes famous? What may help you in your business from macaron’s China adventure?

A macaron is a sweet meringue-based confectionery made with egg whites, icing sugar, granulated sugar, almond powder or ground almond, and food colouring. The macaron is commonly filled with ganache, butter cream or jam filling sandwiched between two cookies.

It has another sexy name in Chinese: “少女的酥胸”(literally “soft bosom of young ladies”). However, this soft bosom snack is way less popular than real bosom of young ladies. It was only sold in some foreign bakeries until the Spring Festival this year.

Trendy snack

Liu Qian is performing a magic with a macaron in hand

In the “Spring Festival Joint Celebration Evening Gala” (watching the Spring Festival Joint Celebration Evening Gala is kind of must for most Chinese families when celebrating Chinese New Year, especially in the north), the most famous magician in China, Liu Qian, practiced magic with a box of “soft bosom of young ladies”.

From this chart, we can see a skyrocketing increase of search for macaron around “Spring Festival this year”. It shows that people’s passion for macaron decreases steadily in the following month and then stimulated again in June. Because in June 29, there was a very famous entertaining TV program, the popular hostess “Xiao S” who has 22 million fans on weibo tasted macaron and gave a positive comment on it.

Xiao S: one of the most popular stars in China

No matter whether some macaron companies do this on purpose or not, these two programs have set off a rush among Chinese. As shown in the same chart, the search increases a lot after that.

Macaron is lucky because two celebrities who have big number of young fans introduce it to Chinese. And it is young people who are the potential customers for western snacks.

Luxury snack

In China market, macaron is branded as high class snack, or luxury snack. It can be seen in several ways:

History

Unlike those snacks whose origin nobody knows, macaron is introduced as a snack that French, Henri II, made for his Italian wife. The exotic royal family background is a strong increase of value to Chinese consumers.

Making process

From selection to tools preparation and special baking process, the making process of macaron is described as a extremely complex and technical demanding work. As a result, it helps macaron leave consumers a feeling that to get a macaron is not so easy. As a result, the high price is acceptable.

Gift

Many macaron stores in China put sell their macaron as gift at a high price. It works because once a kind of snack is packaged as gift in China, it means its appearance, package and name will be more important than price and even taste.

Indigents

In China, high-class filling is a very effective way to support the price of these luxury food items, even taste is not so important. As in most descriptions, almond inside is often put aside and introduced as a magic nut is very helpful for beauty and body fitting for female.
As a western snack who’s positioning is luxury high end market, the experience of macaron about how they enter the market and how to position their brand as luxury snack brand can be helpful.

See also Chinese high class food market

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About the author

Philip
Philip passionated about Marketing and Web, I like to share with my foreign friends my knowledge. I am a citizen of the world and my dream is to dicover the world. I really appreciate people who interact with my article, exchange different point of view.

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