Asia Pacific

Despite the rise of digital wallets, physical credit cards and pre-paid cards still play a significant role in payments. Notably, digital wallets often cannot link to popular pre-paid cards like EasyCard, the largest transportation card in Taiwan,…

The performance of pre-paid cards is supported by the growth of e-commerce – notably since the era of the pandemic. In fact, prior to 2020, transaction numbers in pre-paid cards were showing a negative performance, in sharp contrast to what is seen…

In 2023, sauces, dips and condiments is set to turn to decline in retail volume and current value terms. This is primarily due to the Chinese government’s lifting of the zero-COVID policy in 2022. With no more lockdown measures in place, consumers’…

Post-pandemic, packaged food players are making efforts to meet various consumer needs due to the increasing preference for home-cooked meals. This movement involves developing and launching multiple food products in various formats. For example,…

Whilst consumers have indeed been returning to foodservice channels, a trend for home-cooking maintains, thus supporting sales in sauces, dips, and condiments – in both value and volume terms. Various sauces and bouillon are popular ingredients in…

The reduced-salt trend, as backed by the government, is influencing patterns in sauces, dips, and condiments. According to reports from the Ministry of Health, Vietnamese consumers are cited to eat an average of 9.4g per day of salt, compared to the…

Store cards are often referred to as “Gaisho cards” in Japan. Gaisho is a department most often found in department stores, positioned somewhat like direct selling. Gaisho are elite staff members with high levels of skill and experience, and these…

In 2022, due to the COVID-19 pandemic and the corresponding lockdown measures, which affected consumers’ in-store shopping, and led to disruptions in product transportation for e-commerce platforms, sweet spreads experienced retail volume and current…

Alongside the home café trend, a notable shift has occurred in bakery products, transcending the long-held bias that bread cannot serve as a meal replacement - often referred to as the “breadcrumbs prejudice”. This shift emphasises the savoury,…

Sweet spreads is benefitting from consumers’ return to out-of-home lifestyles, notably with children back to school and employees back to work. In this sense, chocolate spreads and nut and seed based spreads are seeing healthy volume and value…