As families attach more importance to nutrition added to milk powder, milk powder with HMO appending seems to be a promising product. To probe the market of HMO-added milk powder, we designed a questionnaire with 12 questions. To gain a more precise result, we distributed this questionnaire online to several cities of different sizes and people of different ages. Hitherto, 1194 people have participated in it.

Per the survey result below, 33.51% of our respondents are males, while 65.46% of them are females, and 1.03% of them are of other genders. This could indicate that females may care more about milk powder thus are more willing to fill out a questionnaire about the topic.

Among all people that completed the questionnaire, their age distribution is shown below: 22.16% are 0-18 years old; 18.56% are 18-30 years old; 57.73% of them are 30-60 years old; 1.55% of them are older than 60. In this case, we can assume that most of them are under the childbearing age and could be considered as our potential target group, their views about this topic matter a lot to us.

For the family’s monthly income, we discover that, among people we cover, 40.6% of them have a family monthly income between 30,000-50,000, which is of largest percentage. This reflects that bringing up a child can be very costly for them, and their demand for a fair- price milk powder is great. For the family’s monthly income, we discover that, among people we cover, 40.6% of them have a family monthly income between 30,000-50,000, which is of largest percentage. This reflects that bringing up a child can be very costly for them, and their demand for a fair- price milk powder is great.

Next, we investigate people’s fertility circumstances, finding that 58.25% of them have given birth to at least a child, and 41.74% of them have not. In addition, we asked the childless group whether they have the willingness to birth in the future. The result is shown below.

Since our product will be milk powder to substitute breast milk for feeding the baby, we designed a question to investigate whether the general public prefers breast milk and milk powder. Based on the result, half of our respondents will combine both, and a rare few of them (7%) will feed their baby only with milk powder.

As part of our market research, we also wanted to investigate the general acceptance of our final product, a new type of milk powder with HMO added. Initially, we assumed that there shall be a majority of people care about the brand or the nutrition. Surprisingly, a great percentage of people chose “depends on the price”, which makes us prioritize considering the pricing in our business plan which might attract more customers to buy our products eapecially at the early stage.

To determine our product position and future marketing plan, furthermore, we listed several factors, including safety, nutrition, price, brand, and taste, from the factor people could rank from the value most to the least. As seen from the graph below, safety will be the top priority which we also focus on the most in our product development, then nutrition ranks the second which actually is our most competitive point. Therefore, we could see that our final product will have a quite promising market in future.

Lastly, we also investigated how much people know about milk powder. Through their answers, we can see that most people actually know little about this industry, leading us to consider the popularization of relative knowledge.

After team discussion, we identified our stakeholders including parents. Therefore, we decided to conduct an offline survey to talk with those parents about how they think about milk powder and our product. Totally, we interview 23 people on the street. Most of them are moms between 20-35 years old with various educational backgrounds.

Our first question was “what aspect do you value most when purchasing milk powder?” Regarding these questions, people gave different answers, which is similar to the result of our questionnaire: About 40% of people said “safety”; 30% of them said “nutrition”; 20% said ”brand”; the rest gave ”price” as the answer. This result is consistent with the conclusion of our online questionnaire. Per the comments from our interviewees, most of them mentioned that no doubt safety will be the top priority question we will consider as a parent, similarly, nutrition also matters.
Secondly, we asked about these moms’ experiences when feeding their babies and in which way using milk powder could help. One mom’s word was touching. “I have nipple retraction, so it is hard for me to breastfeed.” She said. "In this case, I began to feed my baby using some expensive milk powder from 2 months old to ensure the nutrition supply for my baby.” From her narration, she had spent a lot of money on milk powder she considered nutritive, for they were usually expensive and even had to be transported from oversea. This is enlightenment for us and a call for more nutritious milk powder with a rational price.
Regarding our product positioning, we would like to establish a mechanism to tailor milk powder for our client which was inspired by the conversation with a nutrition expert. Based on their mother milk’s different nutrition distribution, we can customize the unique products for their children. Therefore, we shared this idea with our interviewees and wanted to hear their opinions. Generally, about 40% of them gave optimistic views; 40% of them are not sure; the rest 20% are doubtful about this creative idea. Through these surveys, we could see that there exists a great potential for our products in the market but still many challenges we need to overcome.

On August 15th, we interviewed Ms. Wu, who is a professional nutritionist and graduated from the Chinese University of Hong Kong with a Master of Science in Nutrition, Food Science and Technology.
Our interview can be roughly divided into two parts: In the first part, we were discussing the difference between traditional milk powder and breast milk in nutrition so as to find the competitivity of our final product. In the second part, we sought Ms. Wu's advice on implementing our product in the market.

Regarding the first question, Ms. Wu mentioned that actually nowadays the formula of milk powder is designed to match the nutrients of breast milk. In the beginning, those production companies mainly focus on those 5 nutrients, carbohydrates, proteins, esters, minerals, and vitamins so as to feed babies to maintain their basic needs. Then with its development, people start to realize the importance of prebiotics so this nutrient is also commonly added to milk powder. At present, many milk powder companies are keen to add something they think is useful to the milk powder. However, she pointed out that actually, HMO accounts for the most difference between these traditional milk powders and breast milk. In this way, our final product, the milk powder with 2'-FL has a certain market with this competitivity.
When talking about how to position our product, Ms. Wu provided us with an idea of customized milk powder. She mentioned that the composition of breast milk changes every day, and it adjusts itself according to the needs of the baby. A meal of milk may have a lot of water in the front and a lot of protein in the back. It has a physiological autoregulation mechanism. To simulate this mechanism, we could customize the formula of the milk powder depending on the need of each baby. We were quite inspired by this idea and decided to adopt this in our business plan.
At the end of the interview, Ms. Wu reminded us of learning the detailed regulations of milk powder and HMO in China and other countries, which is important to our later work.

On August 16th, we interviewed Prof. Wen. This interview focused on the feasibility of implementation in experimental design and the advice on our future development plan.

At first, he appreciated our experimental design to select yeast instead of E. coli as the host. The production of high-yield HMO using Escherichia coli as a host has long been achieved in Europe, but it has not been approved for use, and it is even more unrealistic in China because it has an endotoxin problem. This statement is consistent with the conclusion in our survey result that safety matters the most. On the host topic, he added that there is also another popular host cell, Bacillus subtilis which is commonly accepted for its safety. But the yeast host also has another advantage that the waste yeast could be used as a feed with additional values.
Following that, Prof. Wen also shared us with much advancing research in the relative area which inspired us a lot and we can also feel that this research has its undeniable promising application future which is why so many scholars are still working on its development.
Regarding the experimental design, he pointed out that the purity of our products will affect the assessment of the product quality, including the amount of impurity protein。 Therefore, he provided us with some practical methods to improve the purity of our products in the laboratory, like utilizing enzymes for catalysis production.
Besides Mr. Wen also provided us with some information about registering patents. Generally speaking, there are two types of patents, one offensive patent, and the other defensive patent, per his insignts. He also introduced the difference between these two types and several strategies for patent registration. Through this conversation, we had more thoughts about improving our business plan.

To further solidify our business plan, we managed to contact Dr. Liu for acquiring professional insight into the market.

Based on our investigation, the analysis of the current situation of the import and export market of China's infant formula milk powder industry in 2022 shows that the import scale of China's infant formula milk powder in 2021 will drop to US$4.5 billion. We are wondering whether this will increase the market share of our domestic milk powder brands, providing an opportunity. About this, Dr. Liu explained that the decline in imports is actually due to various reasons. First, the impact of the epidemic; second, the decline in the number of newborn babies; third, the increased willingness to breastfeed.
After hearing of this, we were a little worried about our market. Dr. Liu comforted us and pointed out that actually our product position exactly meets the demand of the market. Since the main nutrient HMO is quite a popular topic in this market and many milk powders today do not have this ingredient. Many scientists have argued that it has many benefits for the intellectual development and immune ability of infants and young children. Therefore, there is great potential and a great opportunity for our product in the milk powder market.
Talking about the milk powder market in China, we mentioned that many people prefer purchasing from abroad thus we had a concern about the China market. He also explained that actually in recent years, the market share of domestic milk powder has been increasing, and market confidence has recovered. Coupled with the domestic brand war in recent years, everyone has gradually tended to buy domestic products. About our idea of formula milk powder, he suggested that we can consider targeting high-end consumers to attract specific groups to make profits, especially in the early stage.
With help of Dr. Liu's sharing, we had a clearer picture of the market and clearer thoughts on our business plan.