Question

What are the alternative responses available to confectionery companies like Cadbury, Haribo or Hershey, assuming they want to stay relevant to customers interested in healthy eating?
How different is the adult confectionary food industry in your home country compared to Europe?
Are there distinct sub markets within it?

Answer 1

The contemporary customer has now become health conscious and critically examines the intakes of all edibles especially snacks with respect to the calorie intake of each unit. The change in trend has had a massive impact on the confectionary industry dealing with chocolates and the volume has started going down in the recent financial years. Due to this, the confectionary companies like Cadbury, Hershey need to switch the way they used to approach the customers and how they marketed the products.

When we talk about chocolates, we usually imagine it filled with excess sugar catering to the kid; something that the parents have been disapproving, causing numerous diseases starting from a simple tooth ache to complex diseases like Obesity leading to diabetes. This narrative of the chocolate needs to be changed as an alternative option for the chocolate industry to sustain themselves in a healthy society.

1) Bringing up the healthy substitutes – People engaged in healthy living have a high reliance on the health benefits of the cocoa. Instead of prioritizing on the sugar content or catering to the sweet tooth of the customer base, the companies bring out the new range of chocolates with higher cocoa content. Cocoa contains flavonoids, which are associated with health benefits such as lower blood pressure, improved blood vessel health and improvement in cholesterol levels. These benefits can be capitalized by the chocolate companies by introducing Dark chocolate.

Natural ingredients can be added to the range of products to optimise the health benefits like the development of Flavabars. Sugar free chocolates or chocolates with alternate sweeteners like Jaggery, coconut sugar can be brought into the market. There are lot of consumers opting for Vegan lifestyle, who are lactose intolerant and the chocolate industry can utilise in bringing them substitutes for the chocolate we see every day. Healthy substitutes of the sweet chocolate have been covering the market base. Snackbars such as Snickers or protein bars can be brought up which have healthy ingredients like nuts, dark chocolate, dried fruit etc. using the substitutes of sugar.

2) Marketing techniques – another loophole with the chocolate industry has been that they have never been advertised as a health product. Now is the time to change that narrative. Instead of targeting the kids, chocolate industry should target the adults. Ads of Choconature (chocolate) has been able to grasp a good hold in the market by inculcating the health benefits in the advertisement itself. They have advertised chocolate not as a product capable of being healthy but as a product which has medicinal properties. Marketing of chocolate can be done in a similar manner. Organic chocolates or all natural chocolates can be promoted for the people to get comfortable with the idea of having it without any health issues.