These days, people are no strangers to home meal replacement (HMR) products, convenience food products that can be quickly enjoyed at home with ease.
In addition to rice and side dishes which occupy Korean people’s dining tables on a daily basis, there are also HMR snacks enjoyed as light meals or refreshments, whose popularity among Koreans is on the rise. In the last and third episode of Changes in Korean Consumers' HMR Experience, we take a look at the changes in purchase experience rates for HMR snack products.
Episode 3: Changes in Purchase Experience Rates for Products in the Snack Category
The changes in the purchase experience rates for products in the snack category, which has been divided into the two subcategories “frozen pizza” and “corn dogs” for the survey, are as follows:
| product | Households purchased by year | Gap between 2016 and 2018 | ||
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2016 | 2017 | 2018 | ||
| Frozen Pizza | 111 | 547 | 733 | +6.21 |
| Hotdog | 347 | 422 | 504 | +1.57 |
unit : 10,000 households
* The number of households who have purchased a product in the category at least once in a given year
Source: KWP, Duration: a period of one year, ending in September
- · In case of frozen pizza, the purchase experience rate was relatively low in 2016, but the figure increased significantly in 2017.
- · In case of corn dogs, the rate of increase for the purchase experience rate is somewhat slower than that for frozen pizza, but the purchase experience rate for corn dogs itself has been increasing steadily each year.
Purchase experience rate refers to the number of households who have purchased a product in a given category at least once over the year. The changes in purchase experience rates for the snack category that have occurred over the past three years can be construed as follows:
The following graphs compare the purchase experience rates for each snack subcategory divided by life stage.
| Total | One- to two-person households | Households with preschool children | Households with grade-schoolers | Households with middle/high schoolers | Households with college students or older | Senior households |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 7.33 million households | Slightly lower than overall | Pretty higher than overall | Highest overallSlightly lower than overall | Pretty higher than overall | Slightly lower than overall | Lowest overall |
| Total | One- to two-person households | Households with preschool children | Households with grade-schoolers | Households with middle/high schoolers | Households with college students or older | Senior households |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 5.04 million households | Slightly lower than overall | Pretty higher than overall | Highest overallSlightly lower than overall | Slightly higher than overall | Slightly lower than overall | Lowest overall |
- · The purchase experience rate for snacks is relatively high among households with middle/high schoolers or younger, who frequently tend to eat snacks after school.
- · Among these households, the figure is the highest among households with grade-schoolers.
So far, we have examined the changes in the purchase experience rates for HMR products among Korean consumers in three episodes: Episode 1. Rice, Episode 2. Side Dishes, and Episode 3. Snacks. In the next episode, we will take a look at the usage patterns of the air fryer, which, with the increasing purchase experience rate for HMR products among Korean consumers, has recently established itself as an essential household appliance in South Korea.