I have tried hummus. If I remember correctly, all the ones I found in the store came with cumin, which unfortunately doesn't taste good to me (I'm guessing a gene thing).

As I wrote elsewhere already, I'm not saying that it's not available in stores. I'm saying that a sizeable portion of the population didn't grow up with it and therefore might not be terribly eager to try it.

Well, I'm from Southern Germany, so pizza has definitely arrived even in the most rural regions.

But rural regions is a good shout. I'm pretty sure, my dad has never eaten anything with chickpeas, at least not knowingly. Like, you can find it in the store, it's easy enough to put a can of it on the shelves. And what's also generally arrived in rural regions, is döner kebap, where I believe the shops will usually also have hummus available. But yeah, you still have to go out of your way to try it.

It's also not like only vegans are going to be buying this. There are other people who don't drink milk or milk products or people who are lactose intolerant etc

How would this be alienating to someone who’s not vegan would otherwise try it as a vegan alternative?

The honest answer might be that the V-word is just off-putting to quite a few omnivores.

it feels like you’re overgeneralizing your own niche experience onto everyone else

To be fair, this is a forum where people express opinions, and opinions tend to be based on personal experience.

In this case I agree with them. In northern Europe at least, there are already vegan Nutella clones that are widely available and tastier than Nutella (which is tasty). For instance Nocciolata, which has a "dairy free" variant, i.e. vegan. Very delicious indeed but also quite expensive.

I mean, I might very well just be talking of my niche experience. My dad has probably never eaten anything with chickpea in it and is absolutely not interested in trying any new foods.

That also unfortunately includes trying Nutella alternatives. He's been eating Nutella since the 70s and even though Ferrero has gradually made the recipe worse, he hasn't noticed enough to want to try something else.

You could probably just as well gradually swap the milkpowder with chickpea + rice syrup and he wouldn't notice either, but since they're specifically marketing it as a separate variant, he's just never going to try it.

Clearly, my dad is a special case. But I just feel in general that many non-vegans will not want to try the vegan variant, because its recipe is so different, whereas they could've also created a vegan variant that just doesn't use milkpowder.

And yes, they will have done some market testing, which is why I'm asking 'why'. Maybe they can sell the specifically-vegan variant at a higher price. Maybe chickpea and rice syrup are actually really cheap for them to get. Maybe they figured, they should introduce these ingredients to match the original Nutella's taste as closely as possible, because otherwise people will just by the alternatives. There is probably some reason, I'd just like to know what it is.