Truth behind star ice-cream consumption

As a cost-effective snack, ice cream is popular with young people in Summer. However, contrasting with one or two yuan before, the price of a star ice-cream has increased to at least over ten yuan by now. “Never take any ice-cream that you don’t know, or you’ll suffer from a high cost,” warned some net users with humor.

“Most of people are still willing to pay for low price ice-cream rather than celebrity ice cream with high cost, which are usually consumed by young people,” said a manager of a ice-cream shop.

It is increasingly difficult for people to be rational in ice-cream consumption. When talking about the reason of souring prices, the ice-cream businesses used to blame the high cost of raw materials. But some insiders claimed that the raw material and cost of a celebrity ice-cream and normal one are close.

“Star ice-creams have been going viral, which is attributed to young people’s stylish pursuits in social life. Driven by profits, the stylish ice-cream chain is extending to smaller cities for more shares in the lower-end market,” said Zhu Danpeng, an analyst of the Chinese food industry.

  

Also, businesses attracted lots of young consumers who are not sensitive to price increase through promotion hypes, endowing ice-cream with social and emotional attributes. Some consumers complained the star ice-cream is expensive and tastes bad, and they were actually paying for the costly promotions.

The rising price is not equal to the upgrade of consumption. Businesses should pay more attention to the quality instead of promotion stunts and never make the cost-effective ice-cream far from the public.

Source: Ecns.cn; Trans-editing by Wang Qing