Magazine: There are few strong cheese brands

The 1-percent drop in volume sales and the 7-percent rise in value sales measured by Nielsen mean that despite growing cheese prices households try to maintain their consumption. Quality cheese sales stagnated or grew moderately, while cheap varieties produced a robust sales growth. Kitti Pulics, product manager with ERU Hungária told our magazine that economic recession led to the strengthening of private label cheeses.

Retail chains organised the highest number of promotions among dairy products for cheese (23 percent), followed by yoghurt (15 percent) and margarine (7 percent). Hungarian consumers like to try new products but when it comes to buying cheese they stick with what they are used to: Trappist cheese. Even when buying Trappist cheese, consumers look at the price first and think of the quality after that – we learn from Bernadett Strasser-Kátai, owner-managing director of Mona Hungary. However, good price in itself is not a decisive factor, product quality, usage opportunities and taste are also important and large packaging units are more popular. Brand awareness is rather weak on the cheese market, not only because consumers are price-sensitive but also because most cheese varieties are manufactured by more companies, so consumers cannot really differentiate between brands. If we take a look at the segment of processed cheese, we can see that the plain version of ERU’s Camping cheese is the favourite as demand for flavoured versions is smaller. Processed cheese packaged in casing is slowly conquering the market. It is creamier and easier to spread or to use it as a cooking ingredient. ERU is currently in the process of updating the image of its CAMPING cheese, introducing new flavours and communicating new ways of usage; a nationwide prize game backs the renewal. Mona Hungary keeps innovating to meet the ever-higher health requirements of consumers. Last year the Montice Daisy Education Programme was implemented with great success, at the same time strengthening the company’s social responsibility role: parents and children both learned about healthy diet, while wining schools received HUF 1 million each and valuable prizes. Currently Mona focuses on its Good Milk campaign that targets new groups in new ways.