Localisation landslide: Ritter Sport zooms in on APAC consumer flavour and festivity popularity to enhance relevance
Ritter Sport is best known for its wide range of colourfully-packaged chocolates encompassing both sweet and savoury flavours and fillings – and the firm has taken stock of a particular flavour preference in the Asia Pacific region, namely for fruity yoghurt products, in order to launch its newest range.
“We have noticed that the fruity yoghurt products have been doing particularly well in the Asia Pacific region and have thus decided it is time to put the spotlight on these flavours in particular in our new combo launch,” Ritter Sport Marketing Manager Global Travel Retail Kerstin Kruger-Worreschk told FoodNavigator-Asia.
“The new range will feature the strawberry yoghurt, blackcurrant yoghurt and original yoghurt flavours, and will first be launched in APAC travel retail.
“To us colours and variety have always been very important, and there will still be that nice mixture here with the pink, purple and white colour scheme.”
The firm has also decided to up the ante in terms of localisation in APAC by not only looking at consumer preferences but also diving deeper into the culture of various parts of the region.
“We definitely have noticed that festivals are a very big thing here in APAC, and that many consumers here celebrate many different festivals, which is all part of the culture and diversity in this region,” she added.
“Case in point, major festivals such as Diwali or Chinese New Year may be mainly celebrated by Indian or Chinese consumers but these are also considered great gifting occasions as the festival is so well-recognised in the country.
“What we decided to do to align as much as possible with these festivals has been to develop custom printed sleeves for some of our products that aim to celebrate these, just to show how we definitely do want to resonate with cultures here as much as possible and also because these end up being even better gifting options due to the packaging.
“Sleeves are not an entirely new thing to us, we also looked into localisation from a geographical perspective by creating custom sleeves for each major city we wanted to highlight such as Kuala Lumpur, Bangkok. Hong Kong, Singapore and more – and again, these are also a great opportunity for us to make full use of our focus on colours.”
Audiovisual appeal
Integration into local preferences aside though, Ritter Sport is also looking at both capturing new consumers and reinventing its strategy with a new limited edition launch which it has dubbed its Summer Collection, where the firm is attempting to tie in flavours with music vibes.
“This will see the advent of names such as our Groovy Crunchy Pretzel, Chill-out Creamy Milk and Funky White Lemon,” she said.
“We do see that this fusion of music and flavours in the marketing would have strong appeal for consumers seeking unusual, colourful and basically cool products.
“That is important to us as well, as we do also see individualisation whether it is in the choice of chocolate flavour or type of packaging, or liking a particular colour or design, all as being strongly driven by a desire to be unique, and this individualisation is definitely a rising trend in the confectionery industry.”
