China Business: Focus on quality bears fruit

The social media campaign culminated in a Zespri juicy water fight in a Shanghai park.

Social media helps get the Zespri message across, writes Bill Bennett.

Quality helped Zespri sell $150 million worth of kiwifruit to China last year. The company's general manager of marketing Carol Ward says owning the quality label is important in every market Zespri operates in, but it resonates especially well with Chinese consumers.

She says: "Quality boils down to taste and the look of the fruit in supermarkets. Our kiwifruit has a high quality external appearance, it looks great on the inside and it tastes great. We emphasis quality in everything we do in China. If we use an image in our marketing, it's always a very high quality photograph."

Pitching at the top end of China's fruit market has its rewards. Ward says a Zespri kiwifruit sells for about 10 times the price of locally produced fruit. Differentiation and branding is important, because China is the home of kiwifruit. Varieties grow wild in the country, though Ward says they don't taste good.

China grows and sells a huge amount of kiwifruit. Most of its production is consumed locally and tends to sell out during the season. New Zealand's southern hemisphere seasons work in Zespri's favour because it means the company can supply during China's off season.

China is Zespri's second largest market after Japan. It accounts for about 15 per cent of global sales. Ward says the goal is to increase sales from $150 million to $200 million this year. That's a big jump, but the growth potential is to increase sales in China by 20 per cent year-on-year for each of the next five years.

Ward says much of that growth will come from the SunGold variety: "We expect to double the sales of gold kiwifruit in China this year. The SunGold is especially appealing to Chinese consumers and has proved critical for the growth of the industry which has now recovered from PSA".

Launched in 1997, Zespri has grown to become one of the top five fruit brands worldwide. In China it is the third largest brand. Yet despite this, there are parts of the country where it is still relatively unknown. That's a function of the country's size.

Zespri's biggest challenge is China's geographic vastness. Ward says China is such a large market that Zespri had to focus its marketing effort. At first this meant selling only in the top tier of cities. Now, the company is moving into the next tier, but is taking the expansion city-by-city. At present Zespri operates in 15 key markets where it can get a high level of marketing support.

"The cost of television advertising is prohibitive. We don't have the budget for that. We go for in store tasting - we spent $20 million on that last year. We use a lot of billboards and wraps on public transport. We do cost-effective marketing online".

Zespri ran a high profile social media campaign to launch the SunGold variety in China using Sina Weibo, which is similar to both Facebook and Twitter.

Kiwifruit can be as broad and diverse as apples. They can come in every shape, size and colour.

Carol Ward

That campaign drew 25 million social media hits and culminated in a Zespri juicy water fight in a Shanghai park. The social media campaign is matched to online shopping sites - urban Chinese consumers habitually buy food from the internet and online food shopping is associated with quality.

Ward says though quality is Zespri's main marketing message, the social media campaign was more linked to the health and vitality aspects of kiwifruit. It also had a family focus.

Zespri wanted to position SunGold as a good fruit choice for children. She says the company's health message goes down well in China: "A green kiwifruit has as much fibre as a bowl of bran, while the gold variety has more vitamin C than any other fruit."

Kiwifruit is New Zealand's leading horticultural export and set for significant growth. Some of that growth will be met by increased yields.

"We have a huge research and development programme focused on kiwifruit farm productivity," says Ward. "Newer varieties tend to be higher yielding, so orchards can boost the fruit produced per square metre.

"At the same time we're working to increase the amount of land under cultivation. There might be 12,000 to 14,000 hectares of kiwifruit orchards today, but the potential is by no means exhausted. We're looking at extending outside traditional kiwifruit growing areas. It helps that our growers are getting good returns for fruit and the industry is economically and environmentally sustainable."

Zespri is also developing a kiwifruit breeding programme. Ward says the company expects to see new varieties emerge from working with China. Although most consumers are familiar with only one or two varieties, she says there are potentially hundreds. "Kiwifruit can be as broad and diverse as apples. They can come in every shape, size and colour.

"The main reason they don't at the moment is because the varieties don't always taste great, so our working is focused on looking for ones with great flavour."