---
title: "Deep Interpretation of the Top Ten Keywords in the 2017 Market"
description: "The market in 2017 is like the season just after the winter solstice: days are getting longer, but the cold is still biting. This article analyzes the economic environment and ten key trends that will affect businesses and marketers, from the warming of the real economy to the rise of content marketing."
author: "苗庆显"
publisher: "New Distribution"
email: "zhaobo258@gmail.com"
telephone: "+8615854817671"
published: "2016-12-28"
language: "en"
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---

# Deep Interpretation of the Top Ten Keywords in the 2017 Market

> The market in 2017 is like the season just after the winter solstice: days are getting longer, but the cold is still biting. This article analyzes the economic environment and ten key trends that will affect businesses and marketers, from the warming of the real economy to the rise of content marketing.

Introduction:
The "flying pigs" have landed, and the sky looks much clearer. The market in 2017 is like the season just after the winter solstice: you can see the days getting longer and know the sun is coming closer, but it's still bone-chillingly cold, getting colder.
The market changes too fast; making predictions is easy to get slapped in the face, but not thinking ahead often gets you beaten to death by the market. Between substance and face, Old Miao has always firmly chosen substance.
Let's first talk about our current economic environment, starting with the "fake news" that was hot a few days ago: "Cao Dewang ran away."
It's called "fake" not because the content is false, but because it's not new; it's old news, probably from August. This time it was dug up and hyped again, so there must be some force behind it.
Who is pushing it? Based on the sharpness of the content, the depth of follow-up analysis, and the criticism of current issues, even the "death tax rate" was mentioned, it seems to be recognized by mainstream authorities; sure enough, later the People's Daily spoke out: "China's economy must accommodate entrepreneurs' questions."
Then think about what just happened: the Chairman of the Insurance Regulatory Commission, Liu, rebuked the "barbarians" and protected the outstanding representative of Chinese manufacturing—Gree Electric. The government's sincere care for real enterprises is as clear as the sun and moon.
But good intentions alone are not enough; action is really not easy. To cut taxes, fiscal revenue will inevitably be affected. You know, in the past decade or so, our fiscal revenue has always outpaced GDP. Now the economy is slowing down, but fiscal revenue hasn't slowed. In 2015, our fiscal revenue exceeded 10 trillion yuan, accounting for over 20% of GDP, and we still didn't cut taxes.
Even so, few local governments don't complain about being poor. More importantly, the real estate market in third- and fourth-tier cities seems unlikely to heat up, and relying on land sales to expand fiscal revenue is coming to an end. What? You want to cut taxes? Can we still "serve the people" properly?
So the official line is: reform has entered the deep-water zone, from economic system reform to political system reform, every step forward is difficult.
The results of the supply-side reform proposed last year are roughly as follows: there has been progress in cutting overcapacity, you know about destocking, and deleveraging and the other two seem to have not moved yet.
Let's focus on the 2017 economic growth target. 6.5% is a sensitive point: if it's greater than or equal to this, it won't be achieved without some decent stimulus, and we might see the old trick of "prospering the country through real estate"; if it's lower, it means giving up the "iron bottom," and supply-side reform will have to play big.
The above should be a relatively consensus brief economic environment. In short, "the will to reduce burdens is there, but action is difficult; scraping the bone to cure poison, but the pain is unbearable." Next, let's focus on the keywords that may have a direct impact on our enterprises and marketers.

**One**
**The Real Economy Warms Up**
Private entrepreneurs and marketers who are a bit older mostly miss the environment before 2005. During that period, real entrepreneurs who created social wealth were heroes of the era, technological innovation and marketing innovation were valued, and a large number of real enterprises were bathed in star light. The industrialists still active today are still them: Ren Zhengfei, Liu Chuanzhi, Shi Yuzhu, Duan Yongji, Zong Qinghou, Zhang Ruimin, Dong Mingzhu, etc.
However, since 2003, the social direction and environment have undergone tremendous changes. The most active in business were first real estate developers, then capital players, and in recent years, internet tycoons have been added. Real enterprises, especially private ones, have found their space shrinking and their burdens increasing.
But all this seems to be loosening.
First, Trump loudly advocates American manufacturing, eyeing made in China; then Sister Dong's call received Chairman Liu's support, rebuking the "barbarians" to protect Gree Electric; the hottest was, as mentioned at the beginning, coinciding with the Central Economic Work Conference, the fake news of "Cao Dewang ran away" was hyped by the media and affirmed by the People's Daily. In a short while, Ren Zhengfei, Cao Dewang, Dong Mingzhu, Tao Huabi, Zong Qinghou, Li Dongsheng and other honest industrialists became new internet celebrities.
Is the government going to use all its strength to revitalize the real economy?
From macro data, the third and fourth quarters of 2016 showed that manufacturing is recovering, consumption's share in the economy is continuously increasing, and private investment has also stopped negative growth.
Will the real economy usher in a second spring? From the current environment, it clearly doesn't have the conditions yet. In reality, the wave of real enterprise closures is in full swing, and 2017 will not improve. But from this year, the "warming" of China's real economy will begin at the thinking level.
First, there are many opportunities at the consumer demand level. Over the years, we've built houses, engaged in finance, and hyped concepts, but the lag in the real economy has led to our poor performance in meeting consumer demand.
For a long time, we thought our products were cheap and good. When we opened the door, we realized we were just rich but foolish. So we went abroad to buy milk powder, bags, rice cookers, cosmetics, and even toilets. In the past two years, cross-border e-commerce has grown rapidly, thanks to this gap. There are huge opportunities in this area.
Second, some far-sighted entrepreneurs or startups will begin to lay out the real economy. Unlike previous imitation and following of foreign products, this time from product to technology, they must directly compete with imported products to gain a place in the market.
Although the real environment won't be good yet, it will be a bit better than previous years, especially with support from policy and capital.
The "warmth" of 2017 will start from the "heart." Others rely on heating, but industrialists can only rely on their own integrity, plus spiritual care from the government.

**Two**
**C-end E-commerce Continues to Rampage**
In 2016, e-commerce gave offline a heavy blow again. It's estimated that the C-end e-commerce market size has accounted for about 15% of total social retail sales. The previous industry estimate of a maximum of 20% seems unreliable.
It's not that online is too fierce, but that offline is too helpless.
High housing prices lead to high rents and high labor costs, forcing offline prices to be inflated, even fake brands and A-goods are rampant, shopping experience is poor, product structure is single, a thousand stores look the same, large supermarkets have backward platform thinking, eliminate personalized products, and consumers lose the fun of browsing. These cannot be changed.
In recent years, the so-called offline experience, without a customer flow foundation and with high costs, basically cannot be implemented. Catching a consumer and making them sit on a massage chair for half an hour or applying a mask for twenty minutes, then selling them products, is that offline experience?
Don't listen to the "spring of physical stores" hype. Most shopping-oriented offline stores (except convenience stores) will have a long, hard time. C-end e-commerce still has a lot of room for development:
> Every year, a batch of post-90s and gradually post-00s will move from campus to society, joining the young purchasing power.
>
> The shopping habits of e-commerce are just being developed by many people in second- and third-tier cities. For fourth-tier cities and below, and towns and rural areas, it's still in the acceptance period, a new thing.
>
> The main categories of e-commerce products are also expanding from 3C, clothing, bags, cosmetics, audio-visual books, etc., to all fields, penetrating from medium-attention products to both higher and lower attention products.
Of course, category development has a limit. Due to distribution constraints, for example, C-end e-commerce cannot take a leading position in low-value, high-frequency, low-attention, immediate-purchase FMCG. This is an iron law of the market; even Ma Yun can't change it. So e-commerce developed the B-end for this area.

**Three**
**B-end E-commerce Revolution**
2016 is called the first year of FMCG B-end e-commerce. Besides Alibaba and JD.com, many FMCG B2B platforms have developed nationwide, mainly supplying traditional retail small stores.
Speaking of it, this is a very **ironic** thing: the circulation market in the FMCG field has always been called the traditional channel. The earliest FMCG market developed relying on such channels.
First, at the beginning of the century, supermarkets and chain convenience stores rose, called "modern channels," wanting to revolutionize circulation. Later, many companies and distributors found that selling in the so-called "modern channels" was just losing money for applause, and they had to earn money in "traditional channels" to subsidize the "modern channels."
Later, e-commerce rose and became the new "modern channel," and supermarkets became the "ex-husband." Many people plunged into e-commerce again. Finally, they found that traffic is expensive, still losing money, and still relying on traditional circulation channels to subsidize.
Thus, many companies formed an awkward situation of relying on traditional circulation channels to subsidize "modern channels"—e-commerce—and also subsidize "pre-modern channels"—supermarkets.
After all the fuss, the most traditional circulation: from manufacturer to distributor, and then directly or through re-wholesale into the channel chain of 6.8 million small stores nationwide, is actually the only channel that can achieve a four-win situation for factory, store, and customer, and is the most profitable channel. In other words, it is currently the most efficient channel. (The traditional circulation channel seems extensive but is actually efficient because the responsibilities, rights, and interests of the factory, store, and distributor are naturally clear)
What e-commerce is targeting is undoubtedly the fattest piece of meat in the FMCG field, with prospects and temptation. However, what can the newly rising e-commerce platforms bring to the original channel chain? If it's just platform construction for staking territory, unified ordering for small stores, and logistics warehousing for distributors, it looks lively but has no great value, and may even disrupt the originally clear responsibilities and rights.
If it can add value to the operation of small stores and distributors and product promotion, it will be the first step of "vertical channel integration" as proposed by Master Kotler.
Relatively speaking, Zhaogang.com's B2B is a bit ahead of FMCG. Regardless of its so-called "90 billion in sales in three years under the steel winter," from a business model perspective, Zhaogang.com looks simple, but the value it provides is extremely clear: mainly business matching, followed by contracted logistics for the self-operated part, solving the "inefficient" pain point of the traditional steel industry chain. It's worth learning from for B-end e-commerce in other industries.

**Four**
**Distributors Stop Playing**
Since we're talking about the B-end, we have to mention distributors. Kotler said that middlemen are the "main source of economic efficiency" in business, and their role is not ordinary.
Most of the talk about de-intermediation and eliminating middlemen is nonsense, so distributors inevitably have a lot of survival space. But in 2017, distributors will have a really hard time. The fundamental reason is still the loss of core value. We won't tear into it more; we've already torn it apart before.
In the new year, besides some distributors going bankrupt, more will show contraction. Not only is it hard to take on new brands, but old brands that shouldn't be dropped will also be dropped, even if they are first-line brands.
There are also those busy transforming, connecting with B-end e-commerce, or reshaping other core functions. But overall, it's mainly about tightening the purse strings to survive the winter.

**Five**
**Hidden Unemployment of Traditional Marketers**
Our great country claims to have 80 million marketing personnel (source unknown, but many people say so). To be precise, they should be called sales personnel.
Our country is big; it's not easy to get products from production to consumers. The channel chain is long, requiring recruitment, developing second-tier distributors, laying out terminals, and doing maintenance and display; for short channel chains or 2B products, personnel often need to directly visit customers, such as selling houses, equipment, raw materials, or insurance.
China's marketing has been built this way over the years. The brilliance of countless brands was built by running from store to store and negotiating with customer after customer.
But now marketing will rely more and more on information and content, while the value of sales channels is decreasing. The traditional human wave tactics and terminal maintenance costs are getting higher and higher, with less and less effect. Many companies are significantly laying off traditional sales personnel.
These marketers won't be "unemployed" for now, because there are still many companies with a "channel is king" mindset: thinking that if they have a distributor selling their goods, or they have some relationship, they can sell well. So recruitment websites are full of ads for sales directors (managers), with customer resources or certain relationships preferred. But in recent years, such models have failed without exception, often ending with the company and the marketer cursing each other as idiots and parting ways.
I've seen many such marketers, frequently changing jobs, moving from company to company in the industry, from a year or so to two or three years, working hard but achieving little. As these backward-thinking companies gradually decline, these marketers who once made great contributions to Chinese marketing will also be gradually eliminated (or transformed). The state in 2017 can be considered a kind of hidden unemployment.

**Six**
**Capital's "Hairdryer" Takes a Break**
From the rumor that 846 A-round startups were almost all dead, to the O2O and fresh e-commerce that fell all over the ground, the live-streaming internet celebrities of 2016 also suffered repeated setbacks. Even the emerging VR virtual reality, just after a wave of capital injection, began to see a wave of closures.
In recent years, capital has played a very bad role in the development of the real economy and startups. Many good market concepts, because they were favored by capital, burned money, got inflated, engaged in vicious competition, and attracted traffic at any cost, were soon "played bad."
Capital likes to play the game of passing the parcel, but the premise for this game is having a sucker to take over, or a deeper trick: playing all the way to IPO, letting the vast number of shareholders be the sucker (what did we small shareholders do to deserve this?).
But once even the old man selling roasted sweet potatoes at the subway entrance knows you're passing the parcel, the game can't continue. And in the economic winter, it's not easy to survive until IPO.
Capital is not stupid, so in 2017, venture capital will pay more attention to startups with very reliable profitability. Big capital has also started to love value companies that can earn and spend. Baoneng wanted Vanke and then Gree, although unsuccessful, but you can still see some of their direction.

**Seven**
**Pseudo-concepts Wrapped in Internet Thinking Will Be Torn Apart**
The arrival of the severe cold will reveal the truth of many hot pseudo-concepts. Over the years, pseudo-concepts have basically been wrapped in the cloak of "internet thinking."
Of course, you can't exaggerate enough to describe the changes the internet has brought us. It's truly great.
**It has changed the way people obtain information, the way they feedback information, the content of information they obtain, and their purchasing behavior, and even brought about the reshaping of social relationships and knowledge structures. We need to understand and master these changes on the basis of insight into human nature and business laws, and use and respond to them.**
But what's the point of wrapping everything in internet thinking? Community, ultimate products, free, craftsmanship, explosive products, sentiment, sharing—what do these have to do with the internet? They're basically old wine in new bottles, mostly common techniques in traditional marketing, but they've been given new and exaggerated expressions, and some explanations and applications are full of loopholes.
Winter is coming. The best way to survive is not to let yourself get inflamed and walk naked in the snow to show how cold-resistant you are, but to dress warmly, lower your metabolism, and eat high-calorie food.
People in business are basically smart. I believe that in 2017, although internet applications will be more widespread, products, companies, and marketing under the banner of internet thinking will definitely be fewer and fewer, and marketing that solidly creates valuable products and services will be more and more.

**Eight**
**Rural Areas Are Most Likely the Next Windward**
Although the overall environment is not good, Old Miao is still blindly optimistic about China's economy.
Our rapid economic development over the years has benefited from the market economy. However, our truly marketized areas are limited to civilian consumer goods. Premier Zhu completely liberalized foreign trade in 1998 and gradually liberalized real estate, which drove another decade of rapid economic development.
Let's count: how many industries have we not truly marketized? Energy, minerals, transportation, banking, communications, agriculture, heavy industry, etc. There are still so many big fish not put in the pool, so the US and Japan refuse to recognize our market economy status.
Any one of these big fish, if brought in, could turn the economy upside down. But these big fish are related to the economic lifeline, and the government will not easily let them go. Among these industries, who is easier to talk to?
Undoubtedly, it's rural areas! Note: Old Miao is talking about **rural areas**, not just agriculture, including not only **agricultural products and their extended industries**, but also **rural land, rural labor, rural urbanization, rural e-commerce, and a whole bunch of things.** "Prospering the country through real estate" is coming to an end. This should be the next important engine of economic development. Readers in related industries or interested in rural industries should note that there should be changes in 2017.

**Nine**
**C2B Products or Tools Will Appear**
"When I sell you the product, our relationship is not over, but just beginning." This sentence is a good expression of the user-centric philosophy in recent years, and it's consistent with Old Miao's "post-terminal" concept.
Master Don E. Schultz proposed Integrated Marketing Communications (IMC) nearly 20 years ago. After the internet appeared, the concepts and tools of IMC truly began to play a role. **The core of IMC is interaction, and the premise for interaction is that consumers have channels and motivation to transmit information to brand owners.** Now this channel is beginning to be unblocked. Let's call it C2B for now, but the motivation is not strong yet, unless there are customer complaints.
Currently, C2B only stays at product customization, but C2B can do more than that. More importantly, it's about information transmission, even reverse brand building.
This is already very feasible technically. For example, the current one-item-one-code technology can undertake part of the reverse communication function. But in the previous hot era, when everyone was focusing on traffic and growth, this attention to users who have already purchased products was clearly insufficient.
In the future era of small but refined, small but beautiful niche marketing, being able to do C2B well might be a necessary foundation.

**Ten**
**New Trends in Content Marketing**
If it weren't for quick success and MLM-ization, WeChat business, as a form of content marketing, shouldn't have entered a downturn so quickly.
However, the advancement of content marketing is very fast. The strong combination of JD.com + Toutiao and Tmall + UC has already launched an attack on content e-commerce. Tmall, JD.com, and other vertical platforms like Mogujie's live-streaming e-commerce also had a hot wave in 2016. In 2017, it's not ruled out that Baidu, Sohu, Sina, and other self-media will also enter this field.
The basic forms of content have always been text and video; audio is non-mainstream. 2016 was lively because of the addition of live streaming. In the future, VR will definitely add color to content marketing, but the current technology is not mature, the experience needs improvement, and it's been played by capital once, so it's estimated to have little effect in 2017.
For content marketing, we still need to talk about the essence. Let me say a tongue-twister: **The content of the content is the key; the form of the content is secondary. The content of the content depends on human nature, and human nature is eternal.**
Alright, that's roughly the sorting out. To make it valuable for readers, Old Miao tries to choose controversial points or those that most people haven't paid much attention to. Getting slapped in the face is equivalent to gaining insight. You don't even need to look at the conclusions; looking at the arguments and logic might be more enlightening.
We won't predict what everyone knows, such as companies' promotional resources will further concentrate on the internet and self-media, grabbing eyeballs and creating hot topics is getting harder, hot topics last shorter, traffic is getting more expensive, etc. Predicting this is like predicting "China's football team definitely won't qualify," so let's save it.
-END-
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