As a competitive player in the beverage market, Vitasoy encounter various competitors locally and internationally. Here we present a comparison between Vitasoy and its prominent competitors:
Vitasoy VS. Coca Cola
The long-time competition between the two companies dates back to the 1940s when Vitasoy was created. Not only do they compete in product lines, but also in ways to supply drinks–the vending machines.
Standing next to each other, they compete in colors, products and services. Coca Cola’s vending machines also sell Nestlé products, providing soda drinks, mineral water, and coffees. Vitasoy’s vending machines are more Hong Kong taste, providing lemon tea, soy milk of different flavors, and chrysanthemum tea, etc. Vitasoy’s vending machines also provides free Wi-Fi for its customers, another attraction for students and tourists.
Yeung Guang (literally sunshine) is also a popular beverage brand among Hong Kong people but people hardly know it belongs to the Coca Cola company. It is an attempt of Coca Cola to adapt to the local environment, providing lemon tea, juice and tea just as Vitasoy does. One of the main marketing strategies is its impressive TV advertisements and slogans. It invited stars like Nicholas Tse and Ekin Cheng to shoot short plays about youth. Those short plays together formed a series of love stories and as a result, the products of Yeung Guang has been closely related to the beautiful life of high school students. Such TV ads were especially famous in the 1980s and 1990s. At that time, even the background song of the ads were popular among people.
To counter such promotion, Vitasoy also created its own TV ads. In addition to having influential cast, it showed more about people’s daily life, trying to arouse the public memories of drinking this old local brand.
As a foreign company, Coca Cola really did a good job gaining local market share without weakening its classic products. This may be an inspiration for local brands like Vitasoy for their exploration of international market.
Vitasoy & YILI
In the interview, the young man said that he was not quite familiar with the situation of Vitasoy in his city because he often drank Yili.Yili is a state-owned dairy company that sponsored the 2008 Beijing Olympics and the Shanghai World Expo, bringing more awareness to the brand. Yili has a very large share in the Chinese market, establishing itself as a drink of the masses.
Compared with Yili’s over 60 hundred billion revenue on liquid diary products, Vitasoy is like a small company with an annual revenue of 5 billion. But the two companies share some similar developing strategies.
In December 2018, Vitasoy sold 15% of its Dongguan Company stock to Shenzhen Guangming group, another major manufacturer which offers diary and agricultural products. Its collaboration with the dairy player supplier might indicate its plan beyond the plant-based drink market in mainland China. Yili also cooperated with production bases in New Zealand to capture milk source of high quality.
When asked about the plan for the future, the staff from Vitasoy emphasized the importance of sustainable development and technology. Till now, the focus of Vitasoy is still the plant-based products and these meet some people’s increased demand for health and well-being. Recently, Genetically Modified soy has been frequently discussed. Given this, the general manager of mainland sales area said that Vitasoy insists on using non-GM soy and they hoped more firms and consumers could understand the uniqueness and safety of it. As he said, Vitasoy contributes much to the soybean production in China.
Technology is also significant to Yili. It together with Wageningen University established the research center in Europe in order to improve the food safety system. Moreover, it cooperated with SGS and LRQA to increase the level of quality management.
Drink memory 