ITOCHU Announces Start of FOODATA Social Media Marketing

ITOCHU Corporation (headquartered in Minato-ku, Tokyo; President and COO: Keita Ishii; hereinafter "ITOCHU") announced today that it will begin providing FOODATA Social Media Marketing, a service comprehensively supporting food companies in their social media marketing.

The market for social media marketing in Japan has been growing with each year. It is expected that by 2027 it will be 1,886.8 billion yen*, about 1.7 times larger than in 2023. Social media is becoming increasingly important in the marketing activities of food companies because it enables them to quickly listen to consumers and communicate directly with their customers.

ITOCHU began to provide FOODATA in July 2021. FOODATA is a data analysis system that enables the one-stop analysis of purchasing, taste, consumer survey, social media and other data. Using this system, ITOCHU has been supporting food companies in their product planning and other marketing operations. Now, ITOCHU will begin providing FOODATA Social Media Marketing, a new FOODATA service providing comprehensive support for food companies in their social media marketing.

FOODATA Social Media Marketing permits one-stop ① data analysis and ② marketing measure implementation.
Regarding ① the analysis of social media data, ITOCHU will begin offering a new FOODATA Social Media Watcher analysis system which automatically collects a huge number of posts, including posts on X and Instagram, from Japan and other countries in real time, and offers users the ability to have diverse approaches to social media marketing and a wealth of analytical functions.
Regarding ② the implementation of marketing measures, ITOCHU will provide services that include support for product development and sales channel development using influencers, the operation of official social media accounts, and the running of ads and campaigns in line with customers' purposes and requests.
Functions, sales plans and support systems to cater to a wide range of needs will be offered to customers, ranging from companies identifying issues in their current use of social media to companies who are using social media for the first time, to support the social media marketing of more food companies.

The ITOCHU Group as a whole has done business with approx. 10,000 food companies, distributing their products and expanding their sales. ITOCHU will continue to develop FOODATA services and support marketing in addition to logistics and sales expansion, thus enhancing its role as a partner that expands the businesses of its customers and solves their issues.

＜FOODATA Social Media Marketing URL＞　https://www.foodata.jp/sns-marketing/