Magazine: Meat product brands are willing to fight for their buyers

The meat industry has not overcome the biggest difficulties yet: base material prices keep rising and manufacturers cannot or only minimally offset this by increasing sales prices.

Anikó Vasvári, Kométa 99 Zrt.’s marketing assistant says:
– Domestic markets are weaker and weaker, while import’s share remains considerable. Since import products are significantly cheaper than Hungarian ones, they have a great market advantage despite that their quality is most of the time below that of Hungarian products. According to Zoltánné Király, Sága Foods Zrt.’s senior brand manager Slovakian and Polish manufacturers have a better market position because Hungarian production regulation is too strict. Their situation is made worse by the high VAT and the black market. Sága’s volume sales stagnated but in value they produced an above-the-average 2-percent growth. Zoltán Szántó, PICK SZEGED Zrt.’s product manager told our magazine that consumption is growing but buyers favour cheaper products. They are looking for promotions and are willing to travel farther to buy products cheaper. Another sign of increasing price-sensitivity is that retail chains’ Private Label sales are also declining: the financial situation of those who used to buy these worsened further and had to switch to even cheaper, so-called ‘first-price’ products. Reacting to this trend, last year PICK SZEGED introduced Família price point products, which can be bought at the same price in every shop. They have no marketing support, only in-store price communication is used. PICK SZEGED’s Pick and Herz brands try to survive the crisis with strong marketing activity – and they do it rather successfully: both volume and value sales were at the same level in the first half of the year as twelve months earlier. This spring the company organised a promotion for Herz products with Jamie Oliver cooking utensils, cookbooks and other exciting prizes. For Pick an image campaign was implemented, followed by a nationwide consumer promotion, in which the main prizes were consumer electronics and a Mercedes-Benz A-class. More than 100,000 consumers participated in the two prize games. Kométa focuses its communication and innovation activities on a health-conscious diet. Last year they joined the StopSalt programme and this spring they signed a cooperation agreement with TÉT (Nutrition, Lifestyle and Exercise) Platform and decided that from now on Guideline Daily Amounts will be indicated on their products’ packaging. This autumn cold cuts will play the main role at Kométa. Sága started optimising its portfolio this April and in the future they will not only strengthen the Sága brand but will also innovate in the Falni Jó! product range. They intend to stay away from price wars and concentrate on quality, a wide selection of flavours and a good price-value ratio. They prepare for the autumn season with launching new products in both the cooked and frozen categories.