Famed for its square format and colourful packaging, Ritter Sport is pushing the envelope when it comes to offering consumers variety and choice when making chocolate purchases.
“We do a lot of product mixes with multiple flavours of mini squares in a single larger packaging – the most recent of these has been a mix of our best-selling classic flavours Alpine Milk, Salted Caramel, Crispy Flakes, Strawberry Yoghurt and Butter Biscuit in a single tower packaging,” Ritter Sport Marketing Manager Global Travel Retail Kerstin Kruger-Worreschk told us.
“The whole idea behind this latest mix was to offer even more variety to consumers, this time in terms of sensory variety with a combination of crunchy, fruity and milky flavours all available to them in once pack.”
Variety and choice is increasingly becoming an important driver for confectionery both in domestic and travel retail markets because this is what younger consumers are looking for when making purchasing decisions.
“This is very obvious in Asia Pacific markets, because young consumers here place a very high value on being able to have a lot of choices at their fingertips, and will gravitate towards products that offer them a variety to choose from,” she said.
“APAC is the market with the strongest tendency to purchase big packages of chocolates to share, but many consumers in key locations like Singapore and China want the option of small bites so they can taste multiple flavours in one sitting – which comes back to the need for variety.”
Ritter Sport’s strong focus on variety has led to the launch of many different SKUs in the region, including the aforementioned towers, boxes of individually-packaged Choco Cubes, large multipacks of mini Ritter bars, as well as its Duo mega chocolate bars.
“Duo is essentially a large chocolate bar that has two different flavours, so consumers would have access to two different chocolates if they happen to be unable to decide which they want more,” she added.
“This is in both domestic and travel retail markets and we are trying to get it out to all of our global markets as we see a lot of potential for this.”
Some Duo combos include the Coffee Duo with the Milky Macchiato and Crunchy Coffee flavours; as well as the Fruity Duo with the Crazy Cassis and Be My Berry flavours.
“Fruity flavours are still the most popular here in this region so we have made sure that no matter what new formats we develop, there will always be a fruity variant included as part of the portfolio,” she said.
Dubai Chocolate craze
Ritter Sport’s enormous portfolio of chocolates has encompassed just about all possible types of nuts, from almond to cashew to hazelnut – but somehow, pistachio has never been part of the fray.
“Pistachios has been a long time missing from the Ritter Sport family, and with the rise of the popularity of Dubai Chocolate, now is the perfect time for us to introduce our Pistachio flavour,” Kruger-Worreschk added.
“Dubai Chocolate is of course a major trend not just in the Middle East but all around the world, so it would really be remiss of us as a chocolate company not to have our own version.”