---
title: "How Does Alibaba's Hema Fresh Create a Hit Product?"
description: "Bai Lu, a marketing professional with diverse experience including at Meituan and Alibaba's Hema, shares insights on how Hema selects, positions, and markets hit products like crayfish, focusing on customer psychology, product differentiation, and strategic marketing rhythms."
author: "晓玲"
publisher: "New Distribution"
email: "zhaobo258@gmail.com"
telephone: "+8615854817671"
published: "2020-05-25"
language: "en"
canonical: "https://xinjignxiao.com/en/articles/how-does-alibaba-s-hema-fresh-create-a-hit-product-56d499e0/"
markdown: "https://xinjignxiao.com/en/articles/how-does-alibaba-s-hema-fresh-create-a-hit-product-56d499e0.md"
original_source: "https://mp.weixin.qq.com/s/oilGD9drdTnn1FGVelVEOA"
translation: "https://xinjignxiao.com/zh/articles/%E9%98%BF%E9%87%8C%E7%9A%84%E7%9B%92%E9%A9%AC%E9%B2%9C%E7%94%9F%E6%98%AF%E6%80%8E%E4%B9%88%E6%89%93%E9%80%A0%E4%B8%80%E6%AC%BE%E7%88%86%E5%93%81%E7%9A%84-56d499e0.md"
attribution: "New Distribution — https://xinjignxiao.com/en/articles/how-does-alibaba-s-hema-fresh-create-a-hit-product-56d499e0/"
usage_policy: "https://xinjignxiao.com/ai-policy.txt"
---

# How Does Alibaba's Hema Fresh Create a Hit Product?

> Bai Lu, a marketing professional with diverse experience including at Meituan and Alibaba's Hema, shares insights on how Hema selects, positions, and markets hit products like crayfish, focusing on customer psychology, product differentiation, and strategic marketing rhythms.

If I wanted to ask someone where to find a nice restaurant with good food in Beijing, the first person that comes to mind is Bai Lu. Not because Bai Lu once ran a themed restaurant, nor because her several jobs were somewhat related to food, but because she not only loves food but is also a very enthusiastic explorer who always surprises you.
(Bai Lu)
Her "enthusiasm for exploration" is reflected in her rich work experience. This Inner Mongolia girl has been working for 8 years, and her career path has been as free as a horse galloping on the grassland—she worked as a consultant at an American company, opened a wedding-themed restaurant, did marketing at a photography company, then entered the internet industry, where she did three from-zero-to-one projects at Meituan in 3 years, and later went to Alibaba's Hema to do integrated marketing.
I invited her to do an interview for the Sanjieke Alumni Association, divided into personal career growth experience and干货 topic sharing. This article mainly organizes the干货 topic sharing content—
**How Does Hema Fresh Create a Hit Product?** Q: When selecting a main product, what factors does Hema Fresh consider?
A: Suppose you are the person in charge of Hema and need to think about the proposition of "what to sell this summer." In product selection, you need to focus on evaluating several points—
> **First, the audience for this category must be large enough, not too niche;**
>
> **Second, users have a certain cognitive foundation for this category, so there's no need to educate users;****Third, the GMV of the category can be made very high, not a product that can't be sold at a high price.**
From this perspective, crayfish is a good category.
Crayfish is a category that is very popular among the public. In Beijing, in summer, the longest queues are definitely at Guijie waiting to eat crayfish; also in Wuhan, Shanghai, and other cities, people have the habit of eating crayfish.
Most importantly, in summer, there are many scenarios: one person can watch a game while drinking beer and eating crayfish; two people can buy crayfish and eat at home; or everyone can gather at a restaurant to eat crayfish.
It can be seen that it not only has high acceptance but also has rich scenario coverage. Q: After selecting a category, how do you position and package it before launch?
A: The core factor to consider is: **insight into user needs, combine different user psychology, and think of various ways to move them.**
For example, still taking crayfish as an example, we made adjustments in several aspects—
**1\. Specifications**
Hema's best-selling crayfish is the "100 yuan for three jin" category, and the core is that it differentiates in specifications.
In Beijing's Guijie, crayfish are sold per piece, at 6 yuan each.
Actually, when people eat crayfish, they hope to eat to their heart's content, wanting that feeling of being able to keep eating with a pile of shells beside them. So selling per piece, eating one costs 6 yuan, and then it's gone, eating one costs 6 yuan, and then it's gone... it makes people reluctant, and it's not easy to eat to satisfaction.
Hema seized this user psychology and sold three jin at a time, which has several benefits—
> First, the average order value is high enough, each order is 100 yuan.
>
> Second, it gives a very satisfying feeling, a big box of three jin that you can keep eating.
So, we created this differentiation in specifications, which not only raised the average order value but also gave users a strong sense of value. The "100 yuan for three jin" magic bucket sounds full of happiness and is very memorable.
**2\. Flavors**
Hema's crayfish actually has 20-30 SKUs, with various flavors available.
The "100 yuan for three jin" crayfish comes in two flavors, catering to both spicy and non-spicy eaters, being the most normal and most popular flavors, so there's no need to hesitate when choosing, making it an easy decision.
Apart from the main "100 yuan for three jin" product, other products have all sorts of flavors to satisfy everyone's curiosity. For example, some people like to eat the freshest, so we have live shrimp cooked on the spot; some people like to challenge flavors they've never tried, so we have salted egg yolk mustard flavor; some people like fun and interesting things, so we have sauerkraut flavor made in collaboration with Haidilao...
In short, we make moves on flavors to highlight differences between categories and meet different user needs.
**3\. Product Mix**
Summer is long, so we arrange our products strategically, launching them rhythmically to keep things fresh.
When considering product arrangement, we differentiate based on the main role each product plays.
For example, "100 yuan for three jin" as the main product means we have the highest expectations for it, invest the main sales force in it, and encourage as many users as possible to buy it to increase the average order value. So, it's the category with the most stock and is sold continuously.
Then, other categories are supplementary. Summer is very long, and sales might start from April or May and last until October, within such a long time period. We need to constantly stimulate users' desire to eat.
For example, promoting new flavors—if users get tired of a certain flavor, give them a reason to try other flavors. We need to consider the overall rhythm: what to sell in the first wave, the second wave, the third wave, and how to sell... If we mainly promote flavors, how do we reflect the richness of flavors? Behind these decisions, there needs to be a set of logic for design.
For overall product decisions, we also need to match marketing resources according to the rhythm and make a good marketing plan.
Q: After the product launches, what are the key points in marketing planning?
A: The first key point is: sales forecast and goal management.
For physical stores, especially O2O, supply chain is very important, and sales forecasts must be done well in advance.
Common problems in stores are: users want to eat but find it out of stock, or not many users buy but we've stocked a lot, and the next day it can't be sold.
Also, sales will surge during holidays, while on weekdays like Monday to Friday, sales are lower.
In this case, how do we make a good sales forecast?
On one hand, it's basic skills—we need to make some relatively accurate predictions based on past sales. On the other hand, it might be driven by goals. Even if we can't achieve that much sales, we can invest resources, promote in stores, and arrange enough resources to ensure sales go up. The second key point is the coordination of activity gameplay and sales results.
Once we have clear sales goals, we face many problems: how to break down the goals? What level of resources to allocate for promotion? How to convey selling points to users? How to coordinate online and offline resources?
Specifically, if we do some activities, like "recharge to get a free magic bucket" or "buy a magic bucket to get cola," to make these activities better support sales, you need to understand how the current gameplay and tools can be linked to sales results, and then allocate online and offline marketing resources to the activities.
Among them, we also need to consider that online and offline marketing resources are different; offline might rely more on salespeople's face-to-face sales.
So, maybe we need to arrange resources like floor stickers and display boards to make the whole stall very eye-catching. Some stores are decorated beautifully, with crayfish prominently placed in the most visible spot, giving users a strong hint that it's hard not to see the crayfish, and since you're here, you might as well buy some to take home.
Moreover, to get users to buy, besides relying on users' subjective willingness, for hesitant users, we need strong in-store sales ability to explain the product's benefits or guide some tasting.
Besides making decisions on product promotion, creating atmosphere and designing gameplay are also a large part of the work. During the process, we also need to monitor sales results and continuously adjust strategies. Q: How are marketing activities carried out, and what is the rhythm?
A: **Early stage: Sales stage**
**Generally, for new products, we don't use discounts to sell because it needs to maintain a price anchor in users' minds.** The price shouldn't fluctuate too much; otherwise, if it's discounted right at launch, people will think the product is cheap and the profit is high.
Since we can't use discount strategies, we focus on promoting atmosphere. The first shot must be loud. For example, if the crayfish arrives, we launch "new product, go try it fresh."
We definitely use the best online and offline resources to push it out because we are very confident in this product.
But **for a new product that hasn't been sold before and whose market performance is unknown, at the beginning, we still push it in small quantities, even see how it sells under natural traffic.** Then, if it sells well under natural traffic, we increase resource investment.
For products like crayfish that have been validated countless times, we definitely want to sell them out from the start, so when it first arrives at the store, we make full use of online and offline atmosphere and give ample resources. **Middle stage: Activity stage**
In the middle and later stages, marketing activities become more diverse. For example, cooperating with banks—if you use a certain bank's credit card, you get a half-price crayfish coupon; or doing fission activities where you invite friends to buy crayfish together and both get a red packet; or lottery activities where buying crayfish gives you a chance to win another bucket. These kinds of gameplay might be interspersed.
**Because if we always do the same theme, users will definitely get tired of a certain theme, so we need constant new stimuli.** For example, change the theme every week or two weeks to constantly evoke new purchase scenarios and keep users' impulse to buy.
Therefore, activity themes change according to hot topics, such as specific seasonal solar terms. During Dragon Boat Festival, it might become crayfish zongzi, or buy crayfish get zongzi, doing this kind of associated product sales; it can also follow the rhythm of solar terms. The theme mainly needs to fit users' attention to hot topics at that stage.
**Later stage: Restocking, brand cooperation**
In the later stage of sales, everyone's stock is insufficient, but users might still want to eat every day. For example, by October, there's basically no stock on the market. At this time, if we suddenly bring out a wave of fresh supply, it's a very good marketing method.
Even if sales targets aren't met, we definitely won't sell at a discount. Instead, we might do buy-one-get-one promotions. For example, we cooperate with Coca-Cola to sell crayfish and cola as a bundle. We negotiate with Coca-Cola to get some free resources to give to users, and we can also package our offline resources for resource exchange with Coca-Cola, like giving some promotional space in stores and doing interactive activities with users on weekends.
**Online and offline traffic are resources, and we need to think about how to use them.**
If customers are willing to pay for resources, we can combine them with our products. By leveraging external resources and bringing in their participation, the activities they do can also bring us some traffic.
So, the core strategy in the later stage is to further improve sales through external brand cooperation as much as possible.
However, basically in the later stage, we also respect its natural decline.
The content only represents Bai Lu's personal observations at Hema and does not represent Hema's official decisions or behavioral logic. It is for reference and discussion only, and we look forward to more collisions and different viewpoints.
Source: Sanjieke (ID: sanjieke01) Author: Xiaoling
Tips will be paid 400-2000 yuan once adopted.


---

## 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