---
title: "Distributor | What Should a Distributor Do When Competitors Are Promoting but the Upstream Manufacturer Doesn't Support?"
description: "Promotions are a common market stimulus, but when a competitor launches a promotion while the distributor's own manufacturer has no scheduled promotion, the distributor faces a dilemma. This article analyzes the psychology of secondary wholesalers and retailers and proposes low-cost countermeasures, such as using information warfare to undermine the competitor's promotional impact."
author: "New Distribution"
publisher: "New Distribution"
email: "zhaobo258@gmail.com"
telephone: "+8615854817671"
published: "2018-07-23"
language: "en"
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# Distributor | What Should a Distributor Do When Competitors Are Promoting but the Upstream Manufacturer Doesn't Support?

> Promotions are a common market stimulus, but when a competitor launches a promotion while the distributor's own manufacturer has no scheduled promotion, the distributor faces a dilemma. This article analyzes the psychology of secondary wholesalers and retailers and proposes low-cost countermeasures, such as using information warfare to undermine the competitor's promotional impact.

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Promotions, as the most common market stimulus, are familiar to every distributor. Almost every distributor constantly applies to their upstream manufacturer for promotional activities. However, manufacturers plan promotions in phases and cannot arrange them year-round.
**If your upstream manufacturer has no promotion scheduled for the current period, but a competitor launches one, that's a problem.** The secondary wholesalers and retail stores downstream of the distributor are profit-driven and will flock to whichever manufacturer offers the biggest promotion, showing little loyalty.
**When a distributor encounters a competitor's promotion, the first reaction is often to report the situation to the upstream manufacturer and apply for a corresponding promotion to counter it.** But manufacturers have their own overall plans and generally won't easily add temporary promotions based on a distributor's request.
Moreover, **even if the manufacturer agrees to arrange a promotion, it still goes through a series of applications, approvals, product transfers, and publicity, which inevitably delays the optimal promotional timing.** After all, the control of promotions remains in the hands of the manufacturer. Of course, **in extreme cases, distributors sometimes fund their own promotions to counter competitors and win over downstream customers.**
In reality, whether the promotion is arranged by the manufacturer or the distributor, the premise is often that competitors are promoting, making it a reactive and confrontational measure, with the core goal of winning customers.
However, this back-and-forth promotional war often hurts both manufacturers and distributors. To **win customers, competitors escalate promotional intensity and frequency, even sacrificing their own profits to give to downstream customers. This allows secondary wholesalers and retail terminals to reap the benefits and develops a habit of demanding promotions—no promotion, no sales.** This creates greater trouble for future market work, and many markets are ruined by excessive promotion.
Therefore, when planning local market promotions, distributors must consider the negative issues that promotions can bring, to avoid falling into a vicious cycle.
Of course, when competitors promote, distributors need some countermeasures; they can't just watch competitors snatch away customers one by one. But this must consider two premises: **First, the upstream manufacturer has an overall promotional plan and generally won't change it based on the distributor's application; second, unless absolutely necessary, the distributor won't fund promotions out of pocket.**
In short, distributors need low-cost countermeasures. **As the old saying goes, in business, there are no unsolvable problems, only problems of high or low solution costs.**
How to apply these low-cost countermeasures?
First, we must identify the target of the promotion—clearly, **the secondary wholesaler bosses and retail store owners.**
**Next, let's analyze the psychological attitudes of these two groups toward promotions:**
> 1. There is no fixed quantitative standard for promotional intensity; the more, the better.
>
> 2. They link the amount of promotional support they receive to their sense of being respected, i.e., their face.
>
> 3. They always feel that distributors hold back more promotional policies and resources.
>
> 4. They are very concerned about differences in promotional policies compared to other similar customers.
>
> 5. They always suspect there are newer promotional policies they don't know about.
>
> 6. Regarding the dissemination of promotional information, secondary wholesaler bosses and retail terminal bosses often don't trust official notices from manufacturers (distributors) but prefer various rumors.
**The premise of solving a problem is to analyze its core.**
**The core of the above points lies in mindset patterns and information acceptance. Grasp these two cores for secondary wholesalers and retailers, and designing counter-strategies becomes easy.**
Research shows that for these promotion recipients (secondary wholesaler bosses and retail terminal bosses), whether there is a promotion or not isn't the most important issue; the key is the amount when receiving a promotion.
If a manufacturer (distributor) has no promotions all year, secondary wholesaler bosses and retail terminal bosses will only complain a bit, but generally won't harbor resentment. However, as soon as a manufacturer (distributor) runs a promotion, several issues immediately arise:
> 1. Is the promotional intensity strong enough?
>
> 2. Were all secondary wholesalers and retail terminals notified?
>
> 3. Is the promotional intensity equal for everyone?
In fact, many manufacturers (distributors) running promotions stumble on these issues. In the eyes of secondary wholesalers and retail terminals, promotional intensity is never strong enough. They always suspect favoritism, believing they didn't get the best deal. From complaints to suspicion, from suspicion to resentment, from resentment to hatred—manufacturers often spend money on promotions but end up with complaints.
From the manufacturer's (distributor's) perspective, channel promotions inevitably face issues like incomplete information notification or uneven resource allocation, leaving openings for attack. **If cleverly exploited, these can significantly counter a competitor's promotion.**
**For example:**
A distributor in Hebei, whenever a competitor ran a promotion, would find ways to learn the highest promotional policy offered by that manufacturer, then spread this information (even in altered form) to secondary wholesaler bosses and retail terminal bosses through third parties.
This catered to the suspicions of these bosses, making them feel even more that they were being shortchanged, and they would aggressively demand more promotional policies from the promoting manufacturer (distributor). If they didn't get it, these secondary wholesalers and retail terminals would become very displeased, thinking: "This isn't just about the promotional policy; it's clear they don't take me seriously—they're playing me!"
After a few rounds, the competitor's promotions not only failed to achieve positive results but also garnered complaints among secondary wholesalers and retail terminals. This led the competitor to drastically reduce promotional activities, thereby easing the pressure on this distributor.
Thus, this distributor effectively blocked the competitor's promotions at a very low cost.
Chinese people place great importance on emotions, especially unquantifiable sentimental indicators like relationships, feelings, trust, and face, sometimes even more than material gains. Rational indicators like promotional intensity and form easily lead to constant comparisons.
**In other words, if a distributor fails to manage the sentimental relationships (face, trust, respect) with downstream secondary wholesalers and retail stores, no matter how strong the promotion, it will be futile.**
**Conversely, if a distributor leverages this, using the mindset patterns and information acceptance habits of secondary wholesalers and retailers to wage 'information warfare,' even actively spreading altered competitor promotion information to incite dissatisfaction and worsen customer relationships, they can avoid competitive pressure.**
Source: FMCG Distributor Alliance
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