Crisis and Turnaround of the Pre-Prepared Food Industry: Research

on the Impact of Improper Marketing and Brand Reshaping Paths

Yihe Wang

Faculty of Hospitality and Tourism Management, Macau University of Science and Technology, Macau, 999078, China

Keywords: Improper Marketing, Rebranding, SWOT Analysis, 4P Theory.

Abstract: Due to some improper marketing methods used by some pre-prepared food merchants, consumers' trust in

pre-prepared food has decreased, and even the image of pre-prepared foods and the catering industry has been

damaged. Current research pays little attention to the impact of improper marketing in the pre-prepared food

industry. This paper takes Weizhixiang as the research object and analyzes some of its improper marketing

strategies through a case study method. Based on the case study, this paper finds that some improper marketing

methods of prepared food companies can lead to a crisis of trust among consumers. Negative comments from

consumers about companies will spread quickly through social media, which greatly affects consumers'

consumption decisions. This article also puts forward relevant suggestions to help the pre-prepared food

industry reverse its bad impression in the minds of consumers.

1 INTRODUCTION

In recent years, the pre-prepared food industry has

developed rapidly and has gradually become an

important part of the catering market. Due to its

convenience and efficiency, many companies choose

to use pre-prepared food to replace traditional manual

cooking to reduce costs and improve operational

efficiency. Consumers also choose convenient and

fast pre-prepared food to save time when they are at

home. However, with the expansion of the pre-

prepared food market, the use of improper marketing

methods has become increasingly frequent, leading to

a crisis of consumer trust and even damaging the

overall image of the industry.

Some companies exaggerate the nutritional value

of their products, conceal the use of food additives,

and even lack transparency in food safety, which

makes consumers doubt the food safety, taste, and

health of pre-prepared foods. In addition, the

popularity of social media enables consumers to

obtain information faster and more widely, and the

negative public opinion effect caused by improper

marketing is rapidly amplified, further exacerbating

the credibility crisis of the pre-prepared food

industry.

From the perspective of marketing strategies, more

companies have adopted digital marketing strategies

to promote their products through social media.

Consumers can obtain product information and

product reviews through social media. Effective use

of social media, using content, pictures, promotions

and the influence of opinion leaders, will have a

positive impact on purchasing decisions of customers

(Aziz, Hosain, Dhar, Hossain, & Noor, 2024).

Therefore, reviews of pre-prepared food on social

media will influence consumption decisions of

customers.

From the perspective of the trust crisis caused by

improper marketing strategies, the current pre-

prepared food industry should promote brand

transparency and food safety information

transparency so as to accept public supervision.

According to research, although consumers can

identify exaggerated claims as less credible than

factual claims, their brand evaluation will be

exaggerated after being exposed to exaggerated

claims (Cowley, 2006). Therefore, when pre-

prepared food companies exaggerate advertising

information but consumers do not have

corresponding consumption experience, consumers'

trust in pre-prepared food will decrease.

Although existing studies have explored the

market promotion model and marketing methods of

the pre-prepared food industry, there is still a lack of

research on how improper marketing affects

170

Wang, Y.

Crisis and Turnaround of the Pre-Prepared Food Industry: Research on the Impact of Improper Marketing and Brand Reshaping Paths.

DOI: 10.5220/0013987900004916

Paper published under CC license (CC BY-NC-ND 4.0)

In Proceedings of the 2nd International Conference on Public Relations and Media Communication (PRMC 2025), pages 170-175

ISBN: 978-989-758-778-8

consumer trust and how companies can restore

market recognition through brand reshaping.

Therefore, this study intends to explore how the pre-

prepared food industry can optimize its marketing

strategy, reshape its brand image, and improve

consumer trust in the current market environment.

This study will first use the SWOT analysis

method to analyze the crises and opportunities of the

failed prepared food industry, and will also introduce

how improper marketing affects the development of

the prepared food industry and consumer trust. In

addition, it will provide relevant suggestions for

optimizing marketing methods and reshaping the

brand image of the prepared food industry. This

article will introduce the relevant improper marketing

cases of Weizhixiang Prepared Food Company.

The theoretical significance of this study is to fill

the gap in the academic research on the impact of

improper marketing and brand reshaping strategies in

the pre-prepared food industry, and to explore the

application of crisis management and brand reshaping

in the food industry. The practical significance is to

provide an operational marketing optimization plan

for the pre-prepared food industry, to help companies

find an effective way to repair their brands in the

market crisis, and thus to promote the development of

the industry.

2 CASE ANALYSIS OF

WEIZHIXIANG FOOD CO.,

LTD.

This article chooses Weizhixiang Food Co., Ltd.

because it is a large-scale pre-prepared food product

company. Weizhixiang is one of the leading

companies in the industry. It is representative to

choose Weizhixiang as a case. At the same time, due

to its large scale in the industry and the bad news

disclosed before, Weizhixiang has received a lot of

attention, and the information it has is relatively true

and credible.

2.1 Company Profile

Suzhou Weizhixiang Food Co., Ltd. is a pre-prepared

food product company. It was established on

December 10, 2008 and listed on April 27, 2021.

Weizhixiang focuses on the research and

development, production and sales of semi-finished

dishes, providing consumers with healthy, green,

convenient and delicious semi-finished dishes.

Weizhixiang has 8 major product lines and more than

300 products. After more than ten years of

development, more than 2,000 Weizhixiang stores

have been opened in major cities across the country.

2.2 Weizhixiang's Multi-Brand and

Multi-Channel Marketing Strategy

2.2.1 Weizhixiang Brand Diversification

Weizhixiang has achieved full coverage from high-

end to ordinary through brands such as

"Weizhixiang", "Zhuanyu", "Wei Ai Fengcang",

"Souxiang", and "Weizhixiang Workshop". This has

not only enhanced the brand's competitiveness, but

also left a good impression on consumers. For

example, the brand "Zhuanyu" is mainly responsible

for the mid-to-high-end market, while the brand

"Weizhixiang" guarantees cost-effectiveness,

allowing ordinary consumers to have corresponding

purchasing power. In addition, the products of each

brand are also rich and diverse to meet the

personalized needs of consumers. For example, some

Weizhixiang brands are divided by the main

ingredients, focusing on the four major series of

cattle, sheep, aquatic products, poultry, and pork,

providing catering companies with ingredients with

stable quality and reasonable prices.

2.2.2 Weizhishan’s Channel Diversification

Weizhishan’s sales channels adopt a combination of

online and offline methods. On the one hand, it sells

in offline farmers’ markets or supermarkets. On the

other hand, it cooperates with many e-commerce

platforms (such as Taobao).

In offline stores, the franchise system is mainly

used for market expansion. These franchise stores

mainly sell semi-finished dishes. Their main

positions are in the Yangtze River Delta region, and

most of them are located in farmers’ markets.

Weizhishan implements a strategy of independent

operation and self-financing for the management of

franchise stores, and provides franchisees with

business guidance and supervision, store decoration,

operation training and product delivery services. At

present, Weizhishan has nearly 2,000 offline

franchise stores, which contribute about 54% of

Weizhishan’s operating income.

On the other hand, especially during the epidemic

in the past few years, the expansion of online

channels has brought new growth points to

Weizhishan. Through multi-channel layout,

Weizhishan has increased market penetration,

Crisis and Turnaround of the Pre-Prepared Food Industry: Research on the Impact of Improper Marketing and Brand Reshaping Paths

171

improved brand visibility and consumer purchasing

convenience. The online e-commerce channel

accounted for 0.2% of the main business operating

income last year. Although the proportion is not high,

this channel has brought certain space for the growth

and development of the company's business.

3 USE SWOT TO ANALYZE THE

CRISIS AND OPPORTUNITIES

OF THE PRE-PREPARED FOOD

INDUSTRY

3.1 Advantages

With the continuous development of science and

technology, supply chain technology has also been

optimized to a certain extent, which saves the

operating costs of pre-prepared food companies. At

the same time, technologies such as automation

reduce labor costs while improving the accuracy and

stability of production. In addition, the transportation

routes optimized by supply chain technology have

reduced the transportation costs of pre-prepared food

companies to a certain extent.

3.2 Disadvantages

In 2024, CCTV's 315 Gala exposed a series of

incidents such as Weizhixiang using inferior rotten

meat to make preserved vegetables and pork, which

caused consumers to doubt the quality of pre-

prepared dishes, and some consumers began to

boycott pre-prepared dishes. At the same time, the

relevant food safety information of pre-prepared

dishes was not fully provided, which led to consumers

questioning the safety of pre-prepared dishes after the

vicious incident. In the end, consumer trust dropped

significantly.

3.3 Opportunities

3.3.1 The Popularity of Digital Marketing

The popularity of social media has led to the fact that

pre-prepared food companies can promote their

products through social media (such as TikTok), and

the influence of consumer reviews on consumer

decisions has become increasingly greater with the

spread of social media. Some companies that have

experienced malicious incidents can use social media

to guide consumers to pay attention to the positive

aspects of their own companies, so as to deal with the

trust crisis caused by improper marketing methods.

At the same time, pre-prepared food companies can

see consumer reviews in a timely manner through

social media and make corresponding adjustments

immediately(Qiao, Xue, & Han, 2024).

3.3.2 Sustainable Food Concept Improves

Industry Acceptance

The concept of sustainable development is

recognized by more people in today's society. The

proportion of ingredients in pre-prepared dishes is

strictly regulated and divided during the production

process. Therefore, it saves more ingredients and

avoids food waste compared to manual cooking.

People who support the concept of sustainable

development will be more likely to accept pre-

prepared dishes.

3.3.3 Strong Market Demand

Since the epidemic, pre-prepared dishes have become

a major consumer choice for consumers. It meets

consumers' needs for convenient, fast and diversified

catering. At the same time, pre-prepared dishes are

easy to make and low-priced, which is very suitable

for today's fast-paced society. Consumers can enjoy

dishes with a similar taste to those prepared on site in

a shorter time through pre-prepared dishes. This saves

a lot of time and also ensures a certain quality of life.

Therefore, more consumers choose to buy pre-

prepared dishes. This has led to a strong demand for

pre-prepared dishes.

3.4 Threats

3.4.1 Government Regulation Is Becoming

Stricter

The state's supervision of food safety and the catering

industry is becoming increasingly strict, and the

introduction of relevant policies has set norms for the

development of the pre-prepared food industry. For

example, the Food Safety Law issued in 2022

clarified the production standards and circulation

specifications of pre-prepared food to ensure the

healthy development of the industry.

3.4.2 Intensified Market Competition

With the booming development of the pre-prepared

food market, more and more companies are

participating in it. However, the rapid expansion of

the market has also brought fierce competition.

Weizhixiang pointed out in its 2023 annual report that

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the current industry is in a stage of rapid

development, the market scale continues to expand,

and the number of participating companies is

increasing. These companies each rely on their

advantages such as brand awareness, product

innovation capabilities and cost control to compete

for market share and improve profitability. But at the

same time, problems such as following the trend,

homogenization and price wars have gradually

emerged, bringing a considerable impact on the

industry. When a new competitor enters the pre-

prepared food market, pre-prepared food companies

need to enhance the diversity of their products to

improve the competitiveness of their products.

Although when market competition is high, the

impact of the innovation atmosphere on employee-

driven departmental innovation is stronger (Gao, Lin,

& Zhou, 2020). But this will bring great pressure to

the pre-prepared food industry.

3.4.3 Food Safety Issues Have Attracted

Much Attention

Food safety is related to human health level, and food

safety is an inevitable expectation of modern society.

As the production and operation entities that directly

affect food safety, food production and related

enterprises are given behavioral requirements to

ensure food safety, that is, food safety

responsibilities(Luo, 2020). A series of vicious

incidents in the pre-prepared food industry have made

the pre-prepared food industry itself more likely to

attract public attention. At the same time, they pay

more attention to the food safety issues of pre-

prepared food. Therefore, in order to ensure the

quality of pre-prepared food, pre-prepared food

companies need to invest more time and money.

4 USE 4P THEORY TO ANALYZE

THE WEIZHIXIANG

PRE-PREPARED FOOD BRAND

4.1 Products

Weizhixiang provides consumers with a convenient

and fast product. This type of product is mostly

processed for the first time and can be eaten after

heating. The characteristics are easy processing,

simple operation, and time saving. In addition, the

taste of pre-prepared dishes is similar to that of

freshly made dishes. At the same time, in order to

cater to consumer needs, Weizhixiang provides a

variety of pre-prepared food products, such as hot pot

ingredients, fresh ingredients, so as to meet the

personalized needs of consumers.

4.2 Price

There are multiple levels of pre-prepared food

product prices. According to research, under the

decentralized pricing model, compared with the

differential pricing strategy, the supplier's own profit

is reduced when adopting a unified pricing strategy

(Chen, & Duan, 2024). Weizhixiang uses this

differential pricing method to enable each brand to

accurately meet customer needs. As mentioned

above, Pre-prepared Food Co., Ltd. has multiple

brands and has developed products of all prices from

high-end to ordinary for different consumer groups.

Consumers can purchase products of corresponding

prices according to their own circumstances. For

example, the price of products of the "Weizhixiang"

brand is mostly between 30 and 50 yuan, and the

weight of the products is mostly between 200 grams

and 300 grams, which is competitive in terms of cost

performance. At the same time, since the target

customers of the brand's products are 20-30-year-old

office workers and students, the price will be

relatively cheap.

4.3 Place

Weizhixiang itself uses a multi-brand and multi-

channel marketing strategy. Its sales channels are

offline sales points such as supermarkets, and it also

uses e-commerce for online sales. At the same time,

in order to expand its sales scope, Weizhixiang also

cooperates with major e-commerce platforms to

deliver its products to consumers quickly and

accurately.

4.4 Promotion

Due to the widespread use of social media in recent

years, online marketing has gradually become an

important means for companies to gain competitive

advantages. As an emerging field of online

marketing, social media marketing plays an important

role in the era of social media. One of the most

representative platforms is TikTok (Lu, 2024).

Weizhixiang promotes its products online to enhance

brand awareness and influence. At the same time,

Weizhishan promotes its products by conducting

some offline promotional activities (such as

discounts), also adopting an online plus offline

approach.

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5 THE IMPACT OF IMPROPER

MARKETING ON THE

PRE-PREPARED FOOD

INDUSTRY

The lack of transparency in information about food

safety issues in pre-prepared food leads to the lack of

authenticity, accuracy and completeness of relevant

food safety information. These problems lead to

consumers' lack of complete knowledge of relevant

food safety information. At the same time, with the

exposure of some food safety issues, consumers' trust

in Weizhixiang's pre-prepared food has declined. In

the current era of social media development,

consumers' evaluation of the Weizhixiang pre-

prepared food brand will be spread through social

media platforms such as short videos (such as

Douyin). Therefore, the quality of the evaluation will

directly affect the overall image of the pre-prepared

food industry. Therefore, when Weizhixiang's pre-

prepared food has problems, consumers' negative

evaluation of Weizhixiang will spread quickly. In

addition, improper crisis marketing will lead to the

inability of pre-prepared food companies to respond

urgently to customers' negative evaluations and have

no way to deal with the corresponding problems in a

timely manner. At the same time, if crisis marketing

cannot present real and feasible information to

consumers. Then, under the negative media reports on

the company, it will not only reduce consumer trust,

but also result in the damage of the brand image and

economic benefits of the pre-prepared food industry

(Lagree, Wilbur, & Cameron, 2019).

6 SUGGESTIONS

6.1 Brand Reshaping and Marketing

Optimization Strategy

If Weizhixiang wants to reshape its brand and

enhance consumer trust, it should improve brand

transparency, establish a true and credible

information transmission mechanism, and make the

food safety information of pre-prepared food

authentic, accurate and complete. At the same time,

introduce a third-party testing agency to improve the

credibility of Weizhixiang's products through the test

reports of third-party agencies, and prove that its own

products have no quality problems, so as to improve

consumer trust.

6.2 Brand Integrity Affects Consumer

Purchasing Decisions

Through the case analysis of Weizhixiang, this article

finds that the reason why the pre-prepared food

industry is boycotted by consumers is that the

relevant pre-prepared food companies exaggerate and

spread false advertisements and the lack of

transparency in food safety information has led to a

decline in consumer trust. It can be seen that brand

integrity has greatly affected consumers' purchasing

decisions, and consumers are more inclined to buy

products with high brand integrity. Therefore, the pre-

prepared food industry should actively improve its

own brand integrity and enhance customer trust.

6.3 Positive Publicity on Social Media

Through case analysis, in order to cope with the brand

trust crisis caused by negative marketing, pre-

prepared food companies need to make information

such as food safety transparent to improve consumer

trust. At the same time, they need to increase the

publicity of the brand's positive image on social

media to guide the public to pay attention to the

positive side of the brand. According to research,

online media has no significant impact on service

experience satisfaction or overall satisfaction. The

positive impact of loyalty on overall satisfaction is

higher online than offline (Shankar, Smith, &

Rangaswamy, 2003). Therefore, service marketers

should consider developing special loyalty

enhancement programs for their online customers to

enhance overall satisfaction. For example, pre-

prepared food companies can offer additional reward

points for online reservations and display these

rewards prominently on their websites, allowing

customers to track their rewards and actively remind

or encourage customers to take action when they are

close to reward milestones. Although some

companies have implemented the first three

initiatives, not many companies have implemented

the fourth initiative.

6.4 Crisis Marketing

Collecting critical incident data on service failures

from customers and employees can generate valuable

information and support monitoring procedures.

However, rather than simply categorizing events, it is

better to examine events from the perspective of crisis

management. Crisis management should pay more

attention to the nature, form, and impact of customer

participation in service organizations. Monitoring all

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forms of customer participation has benefits, but

special attention should be paid to customer behaviors

that may trigger crises and the stabilizing effects of

customer interactions on customer dissatisfaction

(Elliott, Harris, & Baron, 2005). These are all things

that the prepared food industry can learn from other

companies that have experienced crises.

At the same time, when a crisis occurs, crisis

marketing response and handling are crucial. Once a

crisis event occurs, the company needs to respond

quickly and take positive measures to respond,

including communicating information openly and

transparently, actively solving problems, and

stabilizing public sentiment. Only in this way can the

negative impact of the crisis be minimized and the

reputation of the company and brand be maintained.

At the same time, the company should also learn

lessons from the crisis, strengthen internal

management, and prevent similar crises from

happening again.

7 CONCLUSION

This paper takes Weizhishan Company as the

research object, deeply studies the crises and

challenges faced by the prepared food industry under

the background of improper marketing and the

consumer trust crisis caused by the negative impact.

Based on the case analysis, this paper explains the

impact of brand integrity on consumer purchasing

decisions. It also explains how consumer evaluation

affects the overall image of the prepared food

industry in the era of social media.In addition, this

article explains how brand reshaping can help

companies rebuild market trust and enhance brand

value. At the same time, it also analyzes how

companies can optimize consumer experience

through transparent information disclosure and how

to use social media marketing to establish a closer

brand relationship with users. Since the scope of this

article does not involve technologies such as AI, if

researchers are interested, they can explore how

artificial intelligence and blockchain technology can

improve transparency in the food industry in the

future, such as using AI algorithms to accurately find

consumers.

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