--- title: "40 Years of Marketing in China: Dr. Shi Wei Summarizes 9 Key Growth Lessons" description: "Since the late 1970s, China's economy has undergone dramatic changes, with marketing evolving through four stages. Dr. Shi Wei, a management consultant, distills nine key lessons from the growth of successful Chinese enterprises, including demand response, price competition, integrated communication, deep distribution, and e-commerce." author: "施炜" publisher: "New Distribution" email: "zhaobo258@gmail.com" telephone: "+8615854817671" published: "2017-10-23" language: "en" canonical: "https://xinjignxiao.com/en/articles/40-years-of-marketing-in-china-dr-shi-wei-summarizes-9-key-growth-lesson-d8e3c9fa/" markdown: "https://xinjignxiao.com/en/articles/40-years-of-marketing-in-china-dr-shi-wei-summarizes-9-key-growth-lesson-d8e3c9fa.md" original_source: "https://mp.weixin.qq.com/s/MYHSIWskn4etIa7eHEBeZQ" translation: "https://xinjignxiao.com/zh/articles/%E4%B8%AD%E5%9B%BD%E8%90%A5%E9%94%8040%E5%B9%B4-%E6%96%BD%E7%82%9C%E5%8D%9A%E5%A3%AB%E6%80%BB%E7%BB%93%E4%BA%869%E5%A4%A7%E6%88%90%E9%95%BF%E7%BB%8F%E9%AA%8C-d8e3c9fa.md" attribution: "New Distribution — https://xinjignxiao.com/en/articles/40-years-of-marketing-in-china-dr-shi-wei-summarizes-9-key-growth-lesson-d8e3c9fa/" usage_policy: "https://xinjignxiao.com/ai-policy.txt" --- # 40 Years of Marketing in China: Dr. Shi Wei Summarizes 9 Key Growth Lessons > Since the late 1970s, China's economy has undergone dramatic changes, with marketing evolving through four stages. Dr. Shi Wei, a management consultant, distills nine key lessons from the growth of successful Chinese enterprises, including demand response, price competition, integrated communication, deep distribution, and e-commerce. **Stages of Marketing Development in China** In the few decades since the late 1970s, China's society and economy have undergone tremendous changes. The market-oriented reform of the economic system and mode of operation, along with economic growth characterized by industrialization, urbanization, and internationalization, have forcefully propelled China's economy—which had missed several historical opportunities—onto a path of "takeoff." This was accompanied by the arrival of a materialistic, mass-consumption era. The internet wave that began at the turn of the century has made China's market structure more complex and colorful. Against this backdrop, marketing and competition have grown like a small tree on this fertile and magical land, quickly taking root, blossoming, and bearing fruit, now a magnificent sight. For over 20 years, I have been primarily engaged in management consulting, having undertaken dozens of marketing projects. This has allowed me to observe the marketing practices of Chinese enterprises from a close vantage point. Now, let us turn back the clock and board the marketing train that departed at the start of China's reform and opening-up, to see the ever-extending tracks and the scenery outside that is eye-catching, moving, and memorable. Since the reform and opening-up, the "new era" of marketing can be roughly divided into four stages: **The 1980s: Introduction of marketing concepts and ideas.** Domestic enterprises' marketing awareness was just emerging; local brands were still in their infancy, while foreign brands began tentatively entering the Chinese market. Marketing at this time had a "primary" character: advertising was the main form, and selling was the main content. **The 1990s: A large number of local brands rose like bamboo shoots after rain, and marketing became richer than before.** Centered on brand operations, with coordinated efforts across product, channel, price, and promotion, marketing styles were flexible, varied, fast, and sharp. Against a backdrop of rapidly expanding domestic demand, rapid shifts in consumption structure, many market gaps, and the decline of traditional planned-economy enterprises due to institutional, mechanistic, and conceptual reasons, a group of local enterprises and brands that learned quickly, learned early, and had strong innovation awareness—most born around 1990, such as Wahaha Beverages, TCL Color TVs, Gree Air Conditioners, and China Merchants Bank—swept through markets with great momentum. Their success largely depended on the early adoption of marketing concepts and methods, combined with creative adaptation to Chinese market characteristics. When many domestic enterprises did not know what marketing was and foreign brands had not truly "localized," they opened the "window of opportunity" in the market, leveraging marketing advantages to drive rapid growth. During this stage, some foreign brands seemed ill-adapted and were at a disadvantage in competition. **The 2000s: China further integrated into the global economy, becoming the world's largest emerging market, and foreign brands began positioning it as a strategic market.** They increased resource investment and accelerated localization. During this period, new chain retail formats flourished, creating conditions for foreign brands to solve channel problems and improve channel efficiency. Foreign brands' systematic marketing and high-profile, aggressive marketing achieved notable results, while some domestic brands, due to weak resources and lack of professional and management capabilities, lagged behind and gradually lost ground. Currently, in many fields, the two camps are in a stalemate. Despite foreign brands' advances, some well-known domestic brands, having established market advantages earlier and with solid foundations, still hold dominant or leading positions. **The 2010s: Internet marketing, long in gestation, crossed the threshold from quantitative to qualitative change and became the market mainstream.** Every enterprise must embed the internet into its value creation process and marketing model. The internet's impact on marketing occurs mainly in three areas: first, online channels grow faster than offline channels, continuously eroding the latter's share; second, internet-based distributed communication, promotion, and interaction methods have severely impacted traditional centralized, broadcast media; third, the new consumer group "new humans" who grew up with the internet are alienated from traditional marketing models. In this context, with more complex socio-economic structures and diverse consumption scenarios, many traditional enterprises—except for a few internet giants like Tencent, JD.com, and Alibaba, which, backed by capital, have advanced triumphantly—feel confused and lost when facing fragmented demand, the prominence of both online and offline channels, and diversified media structures, sometimes even losing their footing and distorting their actions. However, after a period of adaptation, some traditional enterprises have found ways to harness and utilize the internet, making a good start in building integrated online-offline marketing models, such as KUKA Home and Yinger Fashion. Overall, over the past 30-plus years of marketing evolution, Chinese enterprises have been in a state of imitation, reference, and learning. But the best among them, based on China's national conditions, have carried out effective marketing innovations. Exploring the secrets of their rise, summarizing their marketing experiences during growth, and clarifying their accumulated marketing assets are undoubtedly beneficial. **Lesson One: Demand Response and Customer Value Innovation** For enterprises or brands that have succeeded in the Chinese market, one of the basic experiences is their insight into and grasp of domestic market demand and Chinese consumer characteristics, thereby accurately responding to local demand. On one hand, they distill and summarize unique demand models of domestic consumers; on the other hand, they align product (service) value positioning and differentiation accordingly. In the early 1980s, personal computers were very expensive and rare, and customer needs were often limited to simple typing. Stone Typing Machine extracted the word-processing function of PCs and combined it with traditional typewriter features, achieving meteoric success in the market. Beverage companies like Wahaha bottled purified water, which was mainly for direct drinking abroad, adapting to the special national condition where consumers wanted to access advanced consumption patterns at a lower cost. This demand response can be called the "simplification" model. In many areas where domestic products substitute foreign ones, Chinese enterprises lack core and key technologies, which greatly limits value innovation. That is, in some core values of products, there is little room for innovation. Lacking supporting resources for differentiation, but with market competition requiring "differentiation," the solution is to seek breakthroughs in auxiliary, additional, or even marginal functional innovations, finding unique values that domestic consumers appreciate. Lenovo's "home" function (catering to Chinese families' emphasis on children's education), Haier's "service" positioning (fitting consumers' psychology of valuing safety, reliability, desiring respect and rights protection, and emotional communication), and TCL's "super reception" technology (suitable for weak TV signals in rural and remote areas) are all examples of this value innovation—let's call it the "auxiliary" model. This innovation tradition remains powerful today. For example, vivo and OPPO phones, which have performed well in recent years, emphasize differentiated functions and values such as "photography," "music," and "fast charging." It must be frankly admitted that in most fields, as latecomers, Chinese enterprises' product value is mainly based on imitation and reference. But in a few areas, local demand differs significantly from foreign demand, so value innovation based on this has a unique nature. Baidu's Chinese search relies on the mother tongue; Alibaba's information aggregation relies on the industrial environment with numerous domestic SMEs. It seems that products (including services) within the "new economy" category, such as internet services and new media, better reflect the originality of certain customer values. Look at "Chinese-style" internet celebrities, and you'll understand. Additionally, some consumption habits and traditions formed over the long history of the Chinese nation also provide space for this "original" model. **Lesson Two: Price Competition and Import Substitution** Over 30 years ago, when the country opened up, many new consumer goods (not new abroad) that domestic consumers had never seen or heard of flooded in. For example, in the 1980s, imported brands dominated home appliances and computers, with high prices, and potential demand was not effectively stimulated. In these fields, the planned economy era left no accumulation, and the industrial base was weak or even zero. But huge consumer demand and market resources gave local emerging enterprises enormous opportunities. They started with imitation, adjusted and partially innovated product functions, and leveraged cost advantages in domestic supply chains and production factors to make overall product cost-performance surpass imported products. By entering the market with low prices, they achieved import substitution, squeezing some foreign brands out of the mainstream market, leaving them only in narrow high-end segments. This also broke domestic consumption bottlenecks, opening up a vast market territory for themselves. To this day, in many industries and consumer areas, this substitution continues (e.g., automobiles). In industrial goods, this story is also the main line for some enterprises' rapid growth, such as Huawei's communication switches replacing imports from Japan, Europe, and the United States. Dynamically, in industries with economies of scale, domestic enterprises use the "price-scale" mechanism to rapidly expand market share and dominate the market. Some domestic brands frequently launch "price wars" while expanding production scale and reducing costs, creating a cycle of market share and manufacturing scale. On one hand, this allows them to accumulate resources through production and sales scale, build protective barriers, and lay the foundation for future development; on the other hand, it makes it impossible for competitors lacking scale and cost advantages to survive. However, if this competitive model continues without restraint, problems such as diminishing marginal returns and market capacity unable to accommodate supply will inevitably arise. But during periods when total market demand is growing rapidly and products are in the growth stage of their life cycle, it is effective and even immediate. **Lesson Three: High-Pressure and Integrated Communication** For a long time, China's market communication environment has had two basic characteristics: first, consumers are relatively emotional and easily influenced by communication information; second, mainstream media have a certain degree of monopoly, with high concentration and intensity of communication information. Some domestic enterprises and brands have utilized these two characteristics, while also borrowing from foreign "integrated marketing communication" theory and "positioning" theory, forming a communication model with distinct Chinese characteristics that condenses brand growth and rapidly increases brand value. "Integrated" means, briefly, two things: first, content integration: selecting and communicating content and concepts that domestic consumers are interested in, can understand, and emotionally resonate with, making them as focused, extraordinary, and sharp as possible. For example, some automobile and computer brands often choose "grand narratives" related to "humanity" and "the world," implying Chinese consumers' "collectivism" and great-power mentality; some daily necessities brands' "family affection" appeals resonate with Chinese consumers' emphasis on family and kinship. Nongfu Spring's "natural water" concept is innovative in the local market, with its functional "selling point" hitting consumers' core needs (to borrow Nongfu Spring's slogan: "We are nature's porters"). Second, integration in communication forms: mobilizing multiple communication means and channels for three-dimensional promotion, creating a composite communication effect. Among various communication methods, local enterprises' "event marketing" and "terminal battles" are rich, colorful, and vivid, with the most "Chinese characteristics" (even some famous foreign brands have borrowed and applied them in their own markets). "High-pressure" means that during brand growth, resource investment is huge, communication information is dense, and consumers' psychological space is quickly occupied in a short time. Especially when products transition from introduction to growth, resources are concentrated on mainstream media for intensive communication, rapidly establishing brand image and driving the construction of sales channel networks. Almost every year, we see some new enterprises stand out, with similar communication tactics. **Lesson Four: Deep Distribution** As is well known, the domestic market is vast with many vertical levels, making it difficult for enterprises to build a distribution network (including distribution and retail networks) with both breadth and depth, in terms of resources and management. At the same time, for a long time, in the third, fourth, and fifth-tier markets (prefecture-level, county-level, and township markets), distribution and retail enterprises have been small in scale, numerous, backward in form, and generally low in operational quality, making it difficult for manufacturers to smoothly connect internal and external value chains. This situation is both a challenge and an opportunity—because foreign brands find it even harder to adapt and lack solutions. Some domestic brands fully leverage their geographical advantages, downstream customer communication advantages, and sales team management advantages, treating the complex channel environment as an opportunity to build marketing advantages. They implement deep distribution strategies that are flat (directly facing or penetrating retail terminals), segmented (dividing channel network layout and management into smaller spatial units, focusing on intensive cultivation in small areas), and dynamic (continuously driving channel partners at both distribution and retail levels). They center marketing on channels, especially retail terminal push, maximizing channel power while achieving three goals: first, influencing and driving consumers; second, mastering retail terminals as a strategic marketing resource; and third, forming channel barriers against competitors. **The deep distribution model has achieved great success in China's home appliances, mobile phones, FMCG, agricultural materials, and other product areas. It can be said that without deep distribution, many famous brands that still lead the market today would not exist.** Examples include Nanfu Batteries, Liby Laundry Detergent, C&S Paper, Yili Milk, and vivo/OPPO phones. It is also the most important contribution of Chinese enterprises and marketing scholars to global marketing innovation. The key to effective implementation and operation of deep distribution lies in managing a huge and complex sales organization and team, which is precisely a weakness for some foreign enterprises with low localization. In recent years, some pioneers of deep distribution, as their corporate life cycles progress, have felt overwhelmed due to declining organizational vitality, rising labor and internal management costs, and declining integration efficiency of corporate culture, thus reducing their penetration into distribution channels. Meanwhile, some foreign brands, as their localization improves, have expanded their organizations and recruited personnel, advancing along the "depth" direction with good results. Recently, with the growth of new chain formats and the increasing share of e-commerce, the environment for deep distribution is changing; but for a considerable period in the future, it will remain the most basic and effective marketing model in China's market, still playing a positive role in improving corporate sales performance. **Lesson Five: Intensive Development of Regional Markets** Clearly, the "intensive regional market development" marketing model has traces of "deep distribution" and also contains the strategic meaning of "focus." Theoretically, "focus" is one of the three basic competitive strategies proposed by American management scientist Michael Porter. Chinese enterprises have consciously or unconsciously applied it to marketing practice, yielding fruitful results. For many enterprises, with limited resources and capabilities, occupying the national market is difficult; but their regional market has sufficient demand capacity, and they have certain geographical advantages. Therefore, choosing a region close to the enterprise as a key market and concentrating superior forces to thoroughly develop the regional market has become an operationally feasible and quick-effective marketing model. Jiangxi Twin Pig Feed, Shenzhen C'estbon Beverage, and Guangdong SF Express are best practitioners of this strategy in their early growth stages. It should be noted that "regional focus" is more suitable for industries with high product homogeneity. This is because in industries with high product differentiation, regional advantage barriers are more easily broken by differentiated value; whereas in homogeneous product situations, competitive advantage mainly comes from marketing operations and marketing organization. The so-called "intensive development," from the perspective of marketing operations and organization, has the following characteristics: First, in the regional market, enterprises arrange their own market management organizations (teams) densely, with many personnel; based on this, the tentacles of market operations and management extend to every segmented and grassroots market space. Second, because market management organizations (teams) are densely distributed, they are close to customers and channel partners, facilitating direct, keen, and accurate understanding of their needs, wishes, and changes, and enabling rapid response; it is also easy to form competitive advantages in customer and channel services and create barriers that competitors find hard to enter or break. Third, "intensive development" spatially means penetrating almost every market corner; temporally, it means long-term presence in a certain area, gradual progress, and accumulation over time. The result is an extremely solid market foundation, difficult for competitors to imitate, with sales share and customer psychological share leading continuously and significantly. **Lesson Six: Balanced Marketing** Currently, the domestic market is undergoing structural changes, and some local enterprises' marketing models are in transition: from offline channels to integrated online-offline channels; from mass communication via traditional media to precision communication across all media; from breakthroughs in a single link to overall competition; from channel push as the center to product (value) as the center... Since the transition is not yet complete, many enterprises' marketing is in an "intermediate state": old and new factors interweave, past and future are interconnected. In this context, many excellent enterprises have adopted a balanced marketing model. In terms of guiding ideology and thinking, "balance" first means "moderation," emphasizing unity of opposites, being impartial, and just right; second, it means "appropriateness," that is, flexible handling according to the environment, not sticking to one pattern, and dynamic adjustment. In terms of specific marketing strategies, "balance" is reflected in the following aspects: First, in sales targets, balance scale ("volume") and profit goals, and adjust the balance point in a timely manner. Based on the competitive characteristics of the domestic market, some excellent enterprises take market share as a basic goal (otherwise they would easily lose living space); under this premise, they ensure and improve profitability through various marketing means. Second, in the marketing mix, balance "product," "brand" with "price," "channel," and "promotion." For most local enterprises, the first two elements are shortcomings. In recent years, with intensified market competition and the impact of "internet thinking," many enterprises have begun to value product (value) and brand as basic marketing elements. Huawei phones are a model example. Third, in competitive strategy, balance "surprise" and "orthodox." These two concepts are important categories in "The Art of War." In marketing strategy, the former aims to win by surprise, including novel product "selling points," "unique selling propositions" that effectively stimulate consumers' purchase desire, imaginative communication, unexpected price wars, and hot promotions. The latter aims to lay foundations and build competitive barriers, including product quality, performance improvement, cost-performance improvement, enhancement of brand intrinsic value (reputation), channel network construction, and channel resource accumulation. Some enterprises, based on opportunism, often overemphasize "surprise," harming the basis and foundation for long-term growth. This situation will not disappear for a long time, but indeed many enterprises have begun to focus on the interdependence of surprise and orthodox, surprise winning with orthodox, and surprise within orthodox (e.g., Fotile and Midea in the home appliance industry). Fourth, in brand operations and market promotion, balance pre-emptive, non-continuous, one-time information input communication methods like advertising and PR with post-hoc, continuous, long-term information penetration methods like "consumer relationship management"; balance strong promotion using mainstream media (commonly known as "air raids") with direct contact and precise interaction with consumers (commonly known as "ground battles"); balance traditional media communication and internet communication. Fifth, in channel planning and management (specifically for manufacturers), balance using social resources and doing it yourself; balance depth of market management and operations with investment and capability; balance large-scale, wide-area agents (large distribution) with small-scale, narrow-area agents (small distribution); balance the structure and layout of various retail formats; balance online and offline sales; balance the distribution of interests among manufacturers, distributors, and retailers; and so on. **Lesson Seven: Manufacturer-Dealer Cooperation Model with Both "Division of Labor" and "Integration"** There have always been two "extreme" ways of connecting manufacturers and dealers in the domestic market: first, manufacturers extend into the distribution field, either replacing distribution (dealer/agent) institutions and directly facing retail terminals, or making distributors (dealers/agents) supporting roles, only undertaking service functions like logistics and payment collection, while the manufacturer plays the leading role in market operations. This is the well-known "deep distribution"; second, manufacturers hand over the national market to a few large distributors (dealers/agents), retreating to the background, and except for some overall brand operations, publicity, and PR affairs, they do not directly intervene in regional market development and management. The former is favored by many mainstream domestic enterprises, while foreign enterprises mostly adopt the latter. In market operations and management practice, both methods face some difficulties. For the former, because manufacturers emphasize independent control of the market, it inevitably leads to many personnel, large organizations, high internal management complexity, and low sales efficiency; some enterprises' sales personnel scale almost exceeds their management capability boundaries. For the latter, due to the multi-level, non-standard domestic market, weak operational capabilities of distribution enterprises, and low concentration in the distribution industry, manufacturers cannot firmly grasp the market foundation, cannot expand sales scale, and cannot effectively develop sub-markets outside central cities. In this context, there are signs of convergence from both "extremes" toward the middle: on one hand, foreign enterprises with high channel control are learning from Chinese enterprises' "deep distribution" and terminal management experience, following the concept of penetrating terminals and flattening channels, dividing market operation areas into smaller units, transforming distributor functions (mainly service), and increasing regional market business personnel, hoping to make the market deeper and finer; on the other hand, some domestic enterprises are considering whether "internal integration" or "external marketization" has lower transaction costs, and moderately regressing, controlling the number of business personnel, and leveraging channel partners' roles to control operational risks and improve sales efficiency. These two converging changes reflect the inevitable trend and reasonable "position" of manufacturer-dealer division of labor. For each manufacturer, it is necessary to find a balance point and combination point between deep market development and operational efficiency (risk), and between utilizing social resources and effectively controlling the market. As a concrete manifestation of this principle, "market-oriented transactions, integrated management" will become a new form of manufacturer-dealer cooperation. "Market-oriented transactions" means: there are clear boundaries between manufacturers and distributors (dealers/agents) as transaction entities, and both sides cooperate in a market-oriented manner, with clear responsibilities, obligations, rights, and interests. "Integrated management" means that manufacturers bring channel partners into the scope of unified management, exert influence, provide training, make their business models and operating methods conform to the manufacturer's wishes and requirements, and make their management level and human resource quality adapt to the needs of market competition. On this basis, both sides coordinate operations and jointly develop and manage the market. Under this new form of manufacturer-dealer cooperation, manufacturers neither blindly penetrate downstream nor rashly exit distribution, but precisely and reasonably allocate market operation and management functions between themselves and downstream partners. Changes in the manufacturer-dealer cooperation model largely depend on the growth of distribution enterprises. In recent years, a group of high-quality distributors (managers/agents) that have withstood severe tests in harsh environments have risen or are rising. Their emergence and growth will bring a new trend of "balance, division of labor, and coordination" to manufacturer-dealer relations in the domestic market, and the efficiency of social distribution will be greatly improved. **Lesson Eight: Fast, Changeable, and Flexible Market Operations** Some domestic enterprises, in their market operations, have a fast pace, many changes, and flexible tactics, leading market trends and gaining competitive advantages. On one hand, this conforms to the general competitive rules of the "speed economy" era—not only local enterprises but almost all global enterprises must follow; on the other hand, it suits the special competitive needs of local enterprises: as challengers, followers, and late entrants, they hope to "use speed to impact scale" and rely on changes to erode the market space of leaders; while as leaders in market share and production (sales) scale, they hope to quickly innovate and dynamically transform product differentiation value, suppress the trend of diminishing marginal returns caused by scale expansion, and maintain or even improve profitability. First, because many local enterprises are smaller than famous foreign enterprises, with more flexible decision-making mechanisms and simpler operational processes, they often launch new products faster, replace old products with new ones more frequently, and have shorter average product life cycles. At the same time, because many local enterprises lack core technology, they can only make efforts in additional functions and auxiliary value; these areas often have more room for imagination and more innovation dimensions and points than core technology and functions. To attract consumer attention and maintain the "time difference" advantage of product value, local enterprises continuously launch new functions, styles, and new concepts as external expressions unrelated to core technology. This type of speed competition may have already given local enterprises an edge in some industries. Second, relying on the time patterns of peak and off-peak seasons and the distribution of important holidays, they rhythmically arrange market promotion and channel promotion activities to stimulate market consumption and leverage channel sales. For many Chinese enterprises, maintaining channel tension through dynamic and continuous sales policies, as well as continuous and varied "event marketing" and "terminal shows," has become the core competitiveness of marketing. Third, prices are dynamically adjusted according to changes in market demand and competitors' strategies and actions, always maintaining price competitive advantage. In price competition, whether initiated proactively or followed passively, they are fast and powerful. Some smaller companies often launch price raids; when facing price pressure from large companies, they dare to take risks. Industry leaders often use price wars as the most direct means of industry consolidation and cleaning house. **The "fast, changeable, and flexible" market operation method, tracing its conceptual origins, is related to "guerrilla warfare" military thought and strategy in the near term; in the long term, it is related to the Chinese cultural tradition of valuing change and flexible adaptation, giving it certain local cultural characteristics.** **Lesson Nine: The Rise of E-commerce** In 1999, Alibaba, aiming to rapidly expand its global business, was founded. On the basis of commodity transactions, Alibaba provided Alipay, a convenient and secure third-party payment platform and tool. JD.com, on the other hand, persistently developed its offline logistics and delivery system. The overlay of services on top of commerce became key to e-commerce competition. By around 2015, Alibaba and JD.com—representing the platform model and the self-operated model, respectively—had basically formed a duopoly, and they each launched strategic layouts of alliances and acquisitions: JD.com allied with Tencent, acquired Yihaodian, and partnered with Walmart; Alibaba invested in Suning... With the rise and involvement of WeChat, the payment "war" entered a new stage. Besides the Alibaba and JD.com duo, some e-commerce enterprises with unique and precise positioning also grew through competition. Vipshop, focusing on brand discount categories and women's categories, met the brand needs of users in second- and third-tier cities and specific groups, not only growing sales rapidly but also achieving sustained profitability after listing. Han Du E She, Inman, and Linsy Furniture, as vertical e-commerce brands in consumer goods, rose rapidly with a model of many styles, small quantities, and rapid changes. In recent years, numerous micro-businesses have emerged, "ant-army" style eroding the territory of traditional e-commerce (some estimate that the number of people in the micro-business industry exceeds 20 million, with annual transaction amounts exceeding 500 billion yuan). The trend of "decentralization" has begun to impact traditional e-commerce. The reason e-commerce has advanced triumphantly in the Chinese market—its influence even surpassing that in the United States—is the result of multiple factors. The vast number of highly dispersed small and medium-sized manufacturers, and the widely distributed, massive, deep, and finely segmented consumer groups, are the solid foundation for the existence and development of e-commerce (especially platform-based e-commerce). Young consumers' ultra-high price sensitivity, participation enthusiasm, and herd mentality are the cultural environment for e-commerce marketing. The continuous "blood transfusion" from the capital market is the strategic support for some e-commerce companies to use price wars and resource wars to conquer territory, integrate industries, and squeeze upstream. The sufficient supply of human resources needed for logistics and delivery is a necessary condition for e-commerce to penetrate every household. E-commerce has built channels to vast consumers for many small and medium-sized manufacturers that previously could not build channel networks; it has also provided consumers with convenient, fast, high-efficiency, and low-cost (for most products) shopping experiences. However, the "price wars" and "resource wars" (manifested as "advertising wars") in the e-commerce field have dragged upstream manufacturers into the fray, causing varying degrees of damage to some manufacturing enterprises and their industries. How to truly achieve win-win across the industry chain and symbiosis in the ecosystem remains a new topic for e-commerce companies. In the past 20 years, e-commerce competition has evolved from price wars and category wars to experience wars, O2O wars, and service wars, and now has entered the level of technology wars and intelligence wars. From business electronization to business intellectualization, competition among e-commerce enterprises will enter a new stage. Through business intelligence, reducing customer acquisition and operational costs, overlaying financial services, and truly achieving precision marketing and deepening customer relationships are the themes of future strategic transformation for e-commerce enterprises. This article is not allowed to be reproduced, excerpted, copied, or mirrored without permission. For reprints, please apply for authorization through the official account of Huaxia Jishi e Insight (ID: chnstonewx). 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