Over the past decade, China's service industry has accounted for over 53% of GDP, moving steadily towards the 70% high point of developed countries. Among them, emerging service industries have become the new engine of service industry growth in the digital era, characterized by high knowledge density, high technology content, high added value, and strong driving force; producer services have entered a period of rapid growth, supporting manufacturing to move towards the mid-to-high end of the value chain; the trend of servitization in manufacturing is obvious, with the tip of servitization transformation showing. Service is the common language of all industries; all industries are service industries. No matter how the macro economy and micro market change, the charm of service marketing has never disappeared; service marketing can be said to be a marketing model that never declines. Marketing is servitized, and service is marketed. Whether it is tangible products or intangible services, the marketing carrier has shifted to "solutions," and marketing behavior has been elevated to "proposing to customers," such as life solutions, office solutions, production solutions, safety solutions, etc. In this context, the marketing role of enterprises should change to "consumption consultants," using solutions as the carrier to research, design, test, and create diversified service scenario stages for customers, promoting information, products, services, and industrial consumption, and exploring customer value based on the entire customer lifecycle. 01 From Brand Supremacy to Customer Sovereignty The essence of marketing is the struggle for control. If a brand cannot control customers, customers will influence the brand's market performance. Customers are both partners and competitors. Procter & Gamble regards consumers as competitors, and the only competitor. However, customers are not easily conquered. On the one hand, due to the fragmentation of information, channels, attention, and purchasing, the brand's influence on customers is diluted. On the other hand, products and services are increasingly abundant, and customer expectations are rising. With the rapid development of information technology, digital technology, and intelligent technology, consumer rights have been institutionally enhanced. These have given customers more capital to challenge enterprises. The increasing rights of customers herald the arrival of the era of customer sovereignty. The brand dreams of enterprises are pierced by customers' de-branding demands, and the two forces of branding and de-branding collide fiercely. The market values brands but does not solely rely on them; brand impressions and brand loyalty can be easily erased. Over the past decade, the marketing focus has shifted from product brands to service brands. Based on the diversification of customer purchase needs, information, products, services, and rights are integrated into a "big product," and the sales service cycle is lengthened. Customers' awareness of risks and rights has increased, and they crave a sense of gain, security, and pleasure based on service guarantees. Only with a strong service system can these be achieved, and the service brand is the banner and soul of the service system. Customer uncertainty and unpredictability are increasing, and enterprises need to gain deeper insights into customers and strengthen collaboration, integration, and symbiosis with them. For example, implementing value-added cooperative relationships, consultative marketing, solution marketing, embedded marketing, joint development and manufacturing, etc., to enhance the ability to capture customer changes. Do not give up pursuing long-term customer value because customers are "fickle." Adopt a long-termist marketing perspective and multi-dimensional, refined development thinking, deeply explore customer lifecycle value, and achieve brand marketing growth. Tianjin Jinrong Tianyu Precision Machinery Co., Ltd.'s products cover electrical and automotive parts. It adopts a business model of deep integration with global strategic customers and builds a global network factory system synchronously with customers. Its electrical products cooperate with international giants such as Schneider, ABB, and Siemens, and its parts cooperate with famous companies such as Tokai Rubber and Denso, with final products applied to well-known brands such as Toyota, Honda, Volkswagen, and GM. 02 From Price Victory to Value Supremacy The so-called customer-centricity should be centered on customer value, and "pay as you use, pay equal value" is the true embodiment of customer value. The arrival of the digital intelligence marketing era truly empowers customers. For example, the customization model makes it a reality to escape homogeneous competition and meet personalized needs. This is an integrated service model characterized by information fusion, participatory co-creation, and service pre-positioning. Another example is that compared with traditional one-time purchase, global purchase, and high-cost purchase models, the subscription model meets the value of flexible demand, allowing customers to use on demand and pay flexibly. Respecting customers is a business virtue and a long-termism. Customers should have the right to choose and obtain products or services in the most economical way. Under the sharing economy, aggregation platforms such as power banks, car charging piles, and ride-hailing give customers the right to choose brands, as well as rental services and price comparison models. This proves that customers do not necessarily need to own facility assets, and asset-light consumption is also feasible. For example, when Haier shared air conditioners operate in schools, it pioneered the "time-sharing rental" model. Students can freely choose according to their needs, pay by usage time, and handle rental, renewal, and return online; the school can perform visual energy-saving management online; and service providers can manage operations efficiently. Another example is that Shenyang Machine Tool's i5 intelligent machine tool, rental accounts for 70% of its sales orders. Customers do not need to purchase the machine, can freely choose payment methods, and pay by the hour or by processing volume. 03 From Product Experience to Scenario Experience Price wars never have winners and self-destruct the brand's Great Wall. Over the past decade, platforms such as food delivery, ride-hailing, group buying, and fresh food e-commerce have been "big spenders," relying on subsidies to acquire customers, harming their own profitability, and also harming suppliers. In recent years, the decline of fresh food e-commerce Miss Fresh, internet finance information platform Tuandaiwang, home service provider Qingsong Daodao, and real estate trading service platform Aiwujiwu are examples. Experience marketing expert Joseph Pine pointed out: "Perhaps you are in the industrial manufacturing industry, and you may be involuntarily 'commoditized,' squeezing suppliers, bypassing intermediaries, outsourcing work, optimizing processes to reduce costs, and thus more effectively carrying out 'price wars' centered on products. This is an unavoidable path, and the way out lies in experientialization, rising from the product economy to the service economy, and further to the experience economy." According to the principle of bilateral network effects, it is not afraid of fierce competition on the supply side or explosive demand on the customer side; the key is to create the best experience driven by competitive pressure and customer demand. Everything is experience, and all industries can engage in experience marketing. However, as the product economy upgrades to the service economy and experience economy, products shift from experience themes to experience elements. Experience marketing upgrades from product experience and service experience to brand experience, which is a comprehensive experience based on information communication, product functionality, and tangible service display. Brand experience is very "virtual," and most brands (business lines) are not simple enough, making it difficult to find a single-item brand, and a brand cannot represent a personalized, unique experience. In most cases, the brand is only a connector for customers' emotional experience, and it is difficult to become synonymous with experience value. Interbrand, a global comprehensive brand consulting company, divides modern commercial society into four eras: the era of brand identity, the era of value, the era of experience, and the era of "I." In the era of "I," customers need a role experience based on immersion and substitution—scenario experience. This requires placing physical products or intangible service products in specific scenarios, empowering them with scenario content, deeply attracting customer attention, and integrating into the scenario. The scenario is the content, and the product or service is only the core prop of the scenario content; the protagonist is the customer, and scenario experience is the communication tool for brand marketing. Marketing scenarios mainly create functional scenarios, customer scenarios, and application scenarios, solving the problems of "what the scenario does," "who it serves," and "how the application lands." Scenarios are customer purchase guides with high immersion, high penetration, and high substitution capabilities, and are conversion tools based on scenario content, situational atmosphere, and five-sense experience. Customers no longer just buy products; they also need multi-dimensional added value such as content experience, atmosphere creation, and emotional rendering. Enterprises should perceive scenario content and capture hidden demand decisions in people, objects, environments, behaviors, and stories. Haier Smart Home's San翼鸟 (Three-Winged Bird) configures smart home appliances, furniture, and other home products around real-life scenarios such as bedrooms, living rooms, dining rooms, bathrooms, and balconies, using scenario creation and atmosphere rendering marketing to immerse consumers. Industrial e-commerce platforms focus on scenario marketing, usually embedding industrial equipment, facilities, parts, tools, and core materials used in an intelligent production line into an integrated scenario, and indicating product brands and models, so customers can understand at a glance the brands and products applicable in the entire scenario and their connections. 04 From Process Marketing to Data Marketing What is a service process? It is the creation and delivery of customer value around customer value needs. In the service process, people are the core, which is a decisive factor in the success or failure of service marketing. However, human randomness is too strong; dissatisfaction, negligence, environmental triggers, and other factors can trample on systems and disrupt processes. Therefore, data marketing replacing process marketing is inevitable, that is, using data intelligence to replace human intuition and experience and eliminate accidental behavior. In the catering industry, the "dark under the lamp" in the kitchen has caused some catering companies to "overturn" repeatedly. For example, tampering with shelf life labels, not discarding ingredients on time; removing outer packaging to "divide and conquer" expired ingredients; not changing frying oil for a long time... Since 2021, the kitchens of well-known catering brands such as Pizza Hut, McDonald's, Wallace, Pangge Liang Crab, and Starbucks have been exposed. What to do? The solution is "smart open kitchen," conducting intelligent inspections of the kitchen. Through AI monitoring, chef violations can be identified, such as whether hands are washed or masks are worn, whether there is smoking, spitting, etc., and at night, pests such as rats can be monitored to ensure food safety in the kitchen. Data marketing makes the service process transparent and visible, enhancing customer confidence and trust. Visualization of each node in the service chain includes not only quality traceability but also visualization of service production and service fulfillment processes at service nodes. For example, group buying e-commerce, fresh food e-commerce, and fresh food chains use cloud technology, big data, and intelligent technology to create visual traceable e-commerce, meeting consumers' demand for "food safety first." For example, customers can be profiled 360 degrees, managed with labels, and then classified and layered based on personal interests, behavioral characteristics, and real needs to carry out precise private domain marketing. This is a strong connection and deep communication, of great significance for exploring the full lifecycle value of customers. 05 From Product Marketing to Solution Marketing With market maturity and intensified competition in various industries, the trend of homogenization of products or services is obvious. Enterprises must find and add new differentiation elements and add value at key customer touchpoints. There are two approaches: one is to add new value, such as aggregating information, adding service items, integrating new technologies, etc.; the other is to deeply segment scenarios and provide more refined, specific, and clear services in segmented scenarios. In any case, it is important to base on the customer's "heart value" (understanding the customer's heart), such as worry-free, economical, suitable, change, and success. Therefore, solution marketing with personalized, integrated, and one-stop characteristics has emerged and is widely applied in durable consumer goods, industrial products, and producer services. In the FMCG industry, personalized customization, batch customization, and mass customization are a kind of solution marketing thinking. For example, Wanglaoji launched 115 surname totem cans, and Want Want created 56 ethnic group Want Want milk cans. Solutions are customized combinations of models, products, services, information, and other elements based on the real needs of customers, adapting to changes and meeting the real needs of customers. They are value-based competitive resources. Solutions sound complex, but they are actually a "product + service + information" value package. Solutions can be industry solutions, customized for different customers in a customer-oriented, project-oriented, and solution-oriented manner, forming personalized solutions. They can also be solutions for a key node in the customer's production and operation process, breaking through and providing personalized empowerment. For example, Inspur Information Group does not simply sell products to customers but engages in comprehensive cooperation with customers, allowing them to participate in the design, development, and delivery of server products. Through the Joint Design and Manufacturing (JDM) model, the development cycle of a new Inspur server product has been reduced from 18 months to 9 months, and customized solution needs proposed by customers can be delivered in as fast as 3 months. Solutions are the wisdom to solve customer problems and should have characteristics such as personalization, seamlessness, forward-looking, flexibility, agility, and digital intelligence. They should think ahead of customers and lead customers. When it comes to solutions, many people first think of customer pain points. However, many times customers do not even feel the "pain" and are content with the status quo without thinking about change. At this time, enterprises need to transform into innovators and disruptors, subverting and reconstructing an industry through solutions to stimulate customers' sense of crisis. 06 From Quality Leadership to Efficiency First Quality is no longer a sufficient condition for service marketing success but has become a necessary condition. Service competition is a competition for efficiency, which is the soul of service marketing. From the enterprise perspective, service efficiency refers to the ratio of service resource input to service effect output; from the customer perspective, service efficiency is reflected in capabilities such as service convenience, flexibility, agility, personalization, time-saving, and resilience; from the marketing perspective, service efficiency is reflected in the matching degree of service resources and customers, the convenience and ease of serving customers, the timeliness of service fulfillment, and the agility and resilience to respond to changes. Many enterprises are proud of customers queuing in stores and take pride in daily queues. But have they noticed that some customers have been lost? Have they thought about where the problem lies? Have they thought about how to solve it? The side effects of queuing are obvious, and using it to shape a "business is booming" reputation is even more unreliable. On August 18, 2022, Chayan Yuese's first store in Nanjing opened. As a result, news such as "Nanjing Chayan Yuese stopped business half an hour after opening" and "Nanjing Chayan Yuese appointment purchasing one cup 200 yuan" appeared on Weibo hot searches and attracted attention. Outsiders watch the excitement, insiders watch the craft. If it is hype, it is self-humiliation. If it is not hype, it shows deficiencies in service capability, service efficiency, fulfillment timeliness, and agility in responding to changes. Fulfillment is a whole-process concept, from the first contact between the customer and the enterprise to the completion of delivery. There may be key nodes such as consultation, product selection, payment, receipt, return, use, and evaluation in between. Only when the customer gives an effective evaluation is the fulfillment loop closed. Fulfillment timeliness is an important manifestation of fulfillment capability, which depends on the construction of fulfillment infrastructure. Looking at the past decade, business revolutions have all revolved around fulfillment efficiency. For example, retail has shifted from in-store consumption to home service, from leisure consumption to instant consumption. This is the ongoing new retail revolution. Retail e-commerce, food delivery platforms, offline retailers, group buying e-commerce, and fresh food e-commerce are all promoting instant retail based on everything-to-home, same-city purchase, and home service. Why integrate community retail stores? Why do group buying e-commerce and fresh food e-commerce set up front warehouses and pickup points? It is to solve the problem of retail fulfillment efficiency. The source of fulfillment service efficiency is supply chain efficiency, so many enterprises improve response efficiency through mechanisms such as branding, origin, chain, localization, flexibility, agility, and resilience of the supply chain. Traffic entrances are also becoming more convenient, with more customer entrances and integration with map services becoming a new trend. For example, in the food delivery field, Meituan cooperates with Baidu Maps, and Ele.me cooperates with Amap. In the ride-hailing field, Gaode Travel partners with Amap, and Huawei's ride-hailing Petal platform increases traffic through Petal Maps. Based on the diversification of service functions, business service platforms can improve service efficiency by expanding key service nodes such as digitalization, logistics, finance, payment, and guarantees. 07 From Appeal Marketing to Effect Marketing In the era of advertising and sales-driven marketing, marketing is appeal-based marketing oriented to products or services, from material appeals to emotional appeals, from unique selling propositions (USP) to unique value propositions (ESP). Now, customers have become extremely picky. It is not enough to say that the product is good; customers must experience it themselves, and application effects replace communication propositions. Customers enter the effect purchase mode, and value-based outcomes (VBO) become the new customer doctrine. For example, Pinduoduo and Taobao have launched the "use first, pay later" consumption model. Among them, Taobao offers consumers with a Sesame score of 600 or above, who purchase products marked with "use first, pay later," the special service of "0 down payment, pay on due date," allowing them to experience the product first and pay after satisfaction. Another example is the pay-per-effect model in programmatic advertising, such as CPC (cost per click), CPV (cost per view), CPL (cost per lead), CPA (cost per action), CPO (cost per order), and CPS (cost per sale), all reflecting the value of effect marketing. Customers buy based on effects because they are savvy and unwilling to take risks, and want to obtain services in the most economical way. For example, value-based healthcare is coming to the forefront, which is actually a marketing model based on paying for effects. Johnson & Johnson once launched a chemotherapy drug for multiple myeloma called Velcade. At that time, because the drug was too expensive, NICE, the UK agency responsible for drug pricing and effect evaluation, did not agree to include it in the reimbursement list. Johnson & Johnson did not give up and proposed to pay if effective, and refund if ineffective. As a result, this approach was later accepted by the majority of customers. In the industrial products marketing field, there is a vendor-managed inventory (VMI) model, which aims to achieve the lowest cost for both customers and suppliers, with the supplier managing inventory as agreed. The ownership of inventory belongs to the supplier, who bears the risk, and customers settle based on actual usage. For example, industrial e-commerce Misumi places smart vending cabinets in customer production workshops, settles based on the actual quantity of production materials used by customers, and replenishes in time according to inventory status. Another example is that customers do not necessarily need to buy central air conditioning but can rent it. There are three billing methods: electricity metering type (based on electricity consumption), time type (based on usage time), and area type (based on room area). As long as the unit charging standard is clearly defined in advance and user metering tools (such as billing meters) are provided, customers can be trusted. Another example is Xi'an Environmental Protection Co., Ltd., a new technology air quality management automation control O2O operator, which adopts an "Internet+" operation model, with free equipment installation, and users only need to pay a monthly service fee to enjoy healthy air. In the effect marketing model, the indicator for evaluating whether a sale is concluded is not the transfer of transaction rights but the final effect. As German marketing expert Theodore Levitt said: "People don't want to buy a quarter-inch drill bit; they want a quarter-inch hole." Customers are just pursuing a result; achieving the expected purpose is enough. Effect marketing emphasizes digitizing effects, which is more conducive to building customer trust and making them willing to "assess" enterprises accordingly. -END-