The growing popularity of Zespri’s SunGold kiwifruit offering across the Middle East is prompting the company’s customers to establish new buying patterns to avoid undersupply.
Ben Hughes, Zespri’s regional manager for the Middle East, Africa, the Indian subcontinent and the Americas, said the move is helping Middle Eastern suppliers respond to spikes in demand.
“We have a four to five week shipping time to most Middle East markets which means we can’t instantly increase the amount of fruit available to our distributors,” Hughes told Asiafruit. “To manage this challenge our customers are now holding more stock.”
Another obstacle both Zespri and its supply partners are trying to navigate is the rapidly developing and increasingly competitive modern retail environment in countries such as the UAE and Qatar.
“The second challenge is trying to attract consumers attention, produce is just one section in the supermarket and we are one of over 20 fruits in that section so standing out and getting noticed is always a challenge,” Hughes added.
To help establish a unique position in the market, Zespri continues to develop a variety of different promotions to appeal to Middle East consumers. Hughes said these are largely inline with the company’s global marketing programmes.
“There might be a slightly higher weighting towards digital advertising given the higher consumption of YouTube by KSA consumers but other media and tools such as public relations, instore sampling and point of sale material are pretty standard (with other markets around the world),” he explained.
Hughes said the 2016 marketing campaign would have a focus on building “physical and mental” availability for the fruit.
“We have excellent distributors and will be running activities in the wholesale market, instore sampling and display competitions with retailers to build that physical availability and visibility,” Hughes said.“Mental availability will be built through an increased spend on radio, digital and magazine advertising along with events.”
The campaign will be weighted towards SunGold in the early part of the season as Zespri aims to introduce more consumers to the variety. The focus will then shift to Zespri Green in the later part of the season.
