Sales doubled during USA Rice promotions
Jan 18, 2022
TAIPEI, TAIWAN – USA Rice and two importers of U.S. rice here launched a two-month retail promotion combining both online and offline elements that ended in mid-December. The original plan was to have the promotion run in-store at two supermarket chains and two online marketplaces. The supermarket chains included PX Mart, the largest grocery retailer in Taiwan with more than 1,000 outlets.
“When presented with the promotion plan, our rice importing trade partners not only agreed to participate but – at their initiative and expense – added four online retailers to the promotion, posted the campaign details next to their brands, and placed banner ads on the landing pages of the online retailers,” said Jim Guinn, USA Rice director of Asia promotion programs.
Consumers saw stickers on brand packaging, and shelf talkers and banners in stores, and tapped into the online promotion via press releases on 23 on-line news platforms, Facebook posts, and banner advertisements with Search Engine Optimization (SEO) on Google. In addition, importers provided store coupons, and USA Rice provided giveaways such as cooking timers with the USA Rice logo and a grand prize of an iPhone.
“According to the participating importers, results of the campaign were impressive, yielding sales of more than 10,000 packages of U.S. rice, more than double sales during the non-promotion period,” said Guinn. “In addition to medium grain rice, the predominate U.S. import here, one importer introduced U.S. long grain jasmine rice to local consumers for the first time.”
Taiwan is the third largest market for U.S. rice in Asia and the twelfth largest export market overall. The U.S. exported 53,846 MT of rice to Taiwan in the first 11 months of 2021, valued at $32.2 million.