Wei Chuan Foods Corp (
"Our target is to raise market share to 25 percent at the end of this year," chairman Wei Ying-chun (
PHOTO: CHIANG YING-YING, TAIPEI TIMES
The new noodles sell for NT$25 a pack, demonstrating a different marketing strategy from the low-priced tactics employed when Master Kong entered the local market at the end of 2002.
But Wei Chuan may find it hard to achieve its goal, said Rachel Lee (
Several famous products, like the ground-pork noodles (
"As consumption will not dramatically expand in this mature sector, the company must develop unique flavors of noodles," she said.
Lee noted that Wei Chuan's low-price marketing strategy did not really work -- despite causing shock waves at the beginning -- as it had slashed margins by 4 percent when sales of Master Kong fell short of targets.
"Therefore, it turned around to seize the medium- and high-priced noodle market," she said.
According to ACNielsen Taiwan's statistics, Uni-President accounted for 46 percent of the nation's NT$8.42 billion instant-noodle market from May last year to last month, down 3 percent from a year earlier.
It was ranked the No.1 noodle brand last month in major retail channels, including supermarkets, convenience stores and mom-and-pop shops, the report said.
It was followed by Wei Lih, which held 20 percent, and Vedan Enterprise (味丹企業) and Master Kong with around 12 percent each.
Master Kong has been refused access to the more than 3,500 7-Eleven outlets owned by Uni-President's subsidiary President Chain Store Corp (
"But we'll work harder so that 7-Eleven will find it difficult to reject our products," Su said.
Admitting that Master Kong's market share has declined by between 5 percent and 10 percent since December because no innovative products were launched, Su expressed optimism about another shake-up in the market.
"We hope to jump to second place to compete head-to-head with Uni-President," Su said.
On Tuesday, US President Donald Trump weighed in on a pressing national issue: The rebranding of a restaurant chain. Last week, Cracker Barrel, a Tennessee company whose nationwide locations lean heavily on a cozy, old-timey aesthetic — “rocking chairs on the porch, a warm fire in the hearth, peg games on the table” — announced it was updating its logo. Uncle Herschel, the man who once appeared next to the letters with a barrel, was gone. It sparked ire on the right, with Donald Trump Jr leading a charge against the rebranding: “WTF is wrong with Cracker Barrel?!” Later, Trump Sr weighed
SinoPac Financial Holdings Co (永豐金控) is weighing whether to add a life insurance business to its portfolio, but would tread cautiously after completing three acquisitions in quick succession, president Stanley Chu (朱士廷) said yesterday. “We are carefully considering whether life insurance should play a role in SinoPac’s business map,” Chu told reporters ahead of an earnings conference. “Our priority is to ensure the success of the deals we have already made, even though we are tracking some possible targets.” Local media have reported that Mercuries Life Insurance Co (三商美邦人壽), which is seeking buyers amid financial strains, has invited three financial
Artificial intelligence (AI) chip designer Cambricon Technologies Corp (寒武紀科技) plunged almost 9 percent after warning investors about a doubling in its share price over just a month, a record gain that helped fuel a US$1 trillion Chinese market rally. Cambricon triggered the selloff with a Thursday filing in which it dispelled talk about nonexistent products in the pipeline, reminded investors it labors under US sanctions, and stressed the difficulties of ascending the technology ladder. The Shanghai-listed company’s stock dived by the most since April in early yesterday trading, while the market stood largely unchanged. The litany of warnings underscores growing scrutiny of
OUTLOOK: Among the six sub-indices, only the stock market confidence sub-index rose due to strong equity performance and expectations of a US Federal Reserve rate cut Consumer confidence weakened further this month, sliding to its lowest level in two-and-a-half years as households grew increasingly uneasy about the economic outlook, job security and big-ticket spending, a survey by the National Central University showed yesterday. The consumer confidence index fell 1.07 points from last month to 63.31, the weakest number since May 2023, said the university’s Research Center for Taiwan Economic Development (RCTED), which conducts the monthly poll. “Although the Directorate-General of Budget, Accounting and Statistics recently increased Taiwan’s GDP growth forecast for this year to 4.45 percent, consumer sentiment tells a different story,” RCTED director Dachrahn Wu