--- title: "Breaking Old Channel Patterns, Establishing New Consumer Order: 'Product, Store, Distributor, People, Money, Data' Must Be Redone!" description: "At the CFC·11th China FMCG Conference main forum (March 16-18), Bain & Company global senior expert partner Lu Xiuqiong delivered a keynote speech titled 'Breaking Old Channel Patterns, Establishing New Consumer Order.' She highlighted that China's consumer market is undergoing deep shifts from demographics to channel structures, rendering traditional models for brands and distributors obsolete. Facing new cycles of down-market expansion, divergence, and omnichannel integration, companies must comprehensively rebuild capabilities and redo 'product, store, distributor, people, money, and data.'" author: "鲁秀琼" publisher: "New Distribution" email: "zhaobo258@gmail.com" telephone: "+8615854817671" published: "2026-04-04" categories: "Dealer Operations, Industry Trends, Management & Methods" language: "en" canonical: "https://xinjignxiao.com/en/articles/breaking-old-channel-patterns-establishing-new-consumer-order-product-st-56a35725/" markdown: "https://xinjignxiao.com/en/articles/breaking-old-channel-patterns-establishing-new-consumer-order-product-st-56a35725.md" original_source: "https://mp.weixin.qq.com/s/yxY8AQJUel0wrQZ5j42HNg" translation: "https://xinjignxiao.com/zh/articles/%E7%A0%B4%E6%B8%A0%E9%81%93%E6%97%A7%E5%B1%80-%E7%AB%8B%E6%B6%88%E8%B4%B9%E6%96%B0%E5%BA%8F-%E5%93%81%E5%BA%97%E5%95%86%E4%BA%BA%E9%92%B1%E6%95%B0-%E5%BF%85%E9%A1%BB%E9%87%8D%E5%81%9A%E4%B8%80%E9%81%8D-56a35725.md" attribution: "New Distribution — https://xinjignxiao.com/en/articles/breaking-old-channel-patterns-establishing-new-consumer-order-product-st-56a35725/" citation: "鲁秀琼. “Breaking Old Channel Patterns, Establishing New Consumer Order: 'Product, Store, Distributor, People, Money, Data' Must Be Redone!.” New Distribution, 2026-04-04. https://xinjignxiao.com/en/articles/breaking-old-channel-patterns-establishing-new-consumer-order-product-st-56a35725/" usage_policy: "https://xinjignxiao.com/ai-policy.txt" --- # Breaking Old Channel Patterns, Establishing New Consumer Order: 'Product, Store, Distributor, People, Money, Data' Must Be Redone! > At the CFC·11th China FMCG Conference main forum (March 16-18), Bain & Company global senior expert partner Lu Xiuqiong delivered a keynote speech titled 'Breaking Old Channel Patterns, Establishing New Consumer Order.' She highlighted that China's consumer market is undergoing deep shifts from demographics to channel structures, rendering traditional models for brands and distributors obsolete. Facing new cycles of down-market expansion, divergence, and omnichannel integration, companies must comprehensively rebuild capabilities and redo 'product, store, distributor, people, money, and data.' The old channel patterns no longer work. How should the new consumer order be built? At the CFC·11th China FMCG Conference main forum (March 16-18), Lu Xiuqiong, one of the most influential strategic advisors in China's FMCG industry and global senior expert partner at Bain & Company, delivered a keynote speech titled "Breaking Old Channel Patterns, Establishing New Consumer Order." She pointed out that China's consumer market is undergoing deep changes from demographics to channel structures, and the traditional models that brands and distributors have relied on are failing. Facing a new cycle of down-market expansion, divergence, and omnichannel integration, companies must comprehensively rebuild capabilities and redo "product, store, distributor, people, money, and data." The following is a deep-edited excerpt of Lu Xiuqiong's speech, hoping to inspire FMCG professionals in reshaping growth. 2026 Spring Festival Insights: Four Major Shifts Reshape Consumer Landscape To understand the changes in China's consumption landscape, let's start with the just-passed Spring Festival. If you use AI to create a word cloud of social media voices during the festival, you'll find emotions are very "split": both joy and anger. The data is also surprising: although average daily consumption during the festival maintained growth, as consumers, we clearly felt that "the festive atmosphere has faded." Behind this "fading festive atmosphere" is not simply consumption downgrading. On one hand, material abundance has reset public expectations, and consumption is shifting from "face consumption" to "health and self-pleasure." On the other hand, rituals are being simplified, and digital socializing is making relationships more distant. Behind this lie four deep demographic and social structural changes: 1. New generation and silver-haired group reshape discourse power Over the past decade, family structures have continued to change, the young population has shrunk, and the post-90s generation has quietly become the "hosts of the Spring Festival," redefining the festival dining table. Meanwhile, the silver-haired group has started "reverse New Year" travel, driving a noticeable increase in hotel occupancy in first-tier cities. 2. Family structures are becoming smaller From 2015 to 2025, the proportion of three-generation households has sharply declined, and the average family size is now less than three people. Consumer values are shifting from "family-oriented" to "self-oriented." As consumption units become smaller, bulk and stockpiling consumption naturally suffers. 3. Consumption mentality shows "K-shaped divergence" Consumers want both a "happy New Year" and to "keep their wallets tight." Data shows that 75% of people pay more attention to cost-performance and are no longer willing to pay for face. This divergence leads to simultaneous growth of high-end and low-end products, squeezing the middle ground. Pre-made New Year's Eve dinners increased by 92%, and affordable liquor is also growing rapidly, showing extreme polarization in the market. 4. Category convergence and blurred boundaries The traditional "old three" (cigarettes, alcohol, sugar, tea) are declining, while the "new three" New Year goods—health, smart, and emotional gifts—are growing rapidly. The moats between categories are disappearing. Given this backdrop, can the traditional distribution logic still work? Channel Structural Disruption: Traditional Retail Shrinks, Omnichannel Gains Momentum If consumer changes are like boiling a frog slowly, then China's channel changes are a violent storm. The scariest thing is not short-term sales fluctuations, but structural changes. Data shows that with ten years of O2O instant retail development, consumers' new shopping habits of "30-minute fragmented, certain" have been fully cultivated. More seriously, the share of offline channels such as traditional grocery stores and traditional supermarkets/hypermarkets (excluding online-to-offline) is shrinking sharply. It is expected that in the next few years, this traditional segment will account for only one-third of the overall market. However, many FMCG companies still have their sales organizations, staffing, and budgets all invested in this "one-third" traditional market! Today, new growth poles have shifted to omnichannel ecosystems such as e-commerce platforms, interest-based e-commerce, snack collection stores, and front warehouses. Top food companies are seeing growth rates exceeding 60% in new channels like snack collection stores. Channels are no longer a single shelf but a three-dimensional touchpoint. Retailers' "Four Modernizations" and Brands' "CORE" Strategy Facing the new situation, both retailers and brands must evolve. From the retailer's perspective, they are accelerating the "four modernizations" centered on consumers: * Instant: Meet consumers' fragmented needs anytime, anywhere with certain fulfillment. * Community: In big cities, make stores smaller (close to communities); in small cities, make stores bigger (immersive experience). * Discount: Snack collection stores and other formats are moving away from absolute low-price involution, evolving into "treasure discount stores" to find new ecological niches. * Branding: Shopper-centric, developing private labels, doing what brand manufacturers used to do. Facing increasingly powerful and volatile retail channels, brands must reshape their capabilities and transform to the "CORE" model to achieve omnichannel precision management: * C (Circumstance): Fully shift to consumer-centric, mining and creating consumption scenarios with emotional value. * O (Offering): No longer single-product dominance, but providing a product matrix that meets functional, emotional, and social needs. * R (Route to Consumer): Reconstruct the omnichannel fulfillment and touchpoint path from factory to consumer. * E (Execution): In complex channels, match the most reasonable packaging and pricing, and ensure absolute implementation of terminal actions. "Product, Store, Distributor, People, Money, Data" Must Be Redone! Old maps won't find new continents. To survive and thrive in the next cycle, companies must redo their core fundamentals: 1. Product (Product Portfolio Reconstruction) China's market never lacks products; it lacks "scenario-based product portfolio strategies." Brands must coordinate online and offline as one chessboard, tailoring differentiated product portfolios (specifications, packaging, pricing) for channels with different attributes. 2. Store (Terminal Value Reshaping) Stores should be divided into "potential energy channels" and "kinetic energy channels." > Membership stores and snack stores are potential energy channels; consumers' motivation is "browsing," requiring extreme products to ignite. > > O2O channels are "selecting," requiring specific scenarios to stimulate. > > Traditional supermarkets are kinetic energy channels; consumers' action is "grabbing," requiring high standardization and excellent execution. 3. Distributor (Distributor Transformation) The era of traditional "brick-moving" distributors is over. Distributors must transform into "marketers," building multidimensional capabilities to truly serve terminals and empower stores. For brands, this also means decisively implementing "old distributor reform" and "new distributor introduction." 4. People and Money (Digital-Driven) Say goodbye to manpower-heavy tactics and rough expense allocation. Must achieve "lean growth" through digital-driven approaches, improving personnel efficiency, optimizing cost-effectiveness, and building solid infrastructure. Digitalization must not be just a slogan; it must be a top-priority project for enterprises, accompanied by deep strategic, organizational, and business process restructuring. Final Thoughts The era of "big water, big fish" rapid growth is over, and the deep waters of stock competition have arrived. Although the current market environment is full of challenges and everyone is shouting "difficult," we still firmly believe: the next China is still China. It still has the world's most potential and promising growth prospects. Break old channel patterns, establish new consumer order. May all FMCG professionals find their ecological niche in the changes and grow resiliently! --- ## Citation metadata - Publisher: New Distribution - Author: 鲁秀琼 - Published: 2026-04-04 - Canonical: https://xinjignxiao.com/en/articles/breaking-old-channel-patterns-establishing-new-consumer-order-product-st-56a35725/ - Original source: https://mp.weixin.qq.com/s/yxY8AQJUel0wrQZ5j42HNg ## Copyright and AI use This article is sourced from New Distribution. Search, quotation, summarization, and model training are permitted, but every use must credit New Distribution and retain the canonical source URL. Contact: zhaobo258@gmail.com · +86 158 5481 7671