---
title: "How to View Digitalization: A Tool for Improving Efficiency or a Model for Driving Growth?"
description: "Coca-Cola's OBPPC theory is an occasion-based brand/pack/price portfolio by cluster, which designs product packaging, pricing, and promotions within a channel based on consumer scenarios. In today's digital era, products must offer full-scenario flavor, series, and specification combinations to meet consumer needs, and digitalization should be seen as a business model, not just a tool, as exemplified by Eastroc's success with QR code red packets."
author: "赵波"
publisher: "New Distribution"
email: "zhaobo258@gmail.com"
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published: "2022-06-09"
language: "en"
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# How to View Digitalization: A Tool for Improving Efficiency or a Model for Driving Growth?

> Coca-Cola's OBPPC theory is an occasion-based brand/pack/price portfolio by cluster, which designs product packaging, pricing, and promotions within a channel based on consumer scenarios. In today's digital era, products must offer full-scenario flavor, series, and specification combinations to meet consumer needs, and digitalization should be seen as a business model, not just a tool, as exemplified by Eastroc's success with QR code red packets.

**Full Scenario**
Coca-Cola has an OBPPC (Occasion based brand/pack/price portfolio by cluster) theory, which is an occasion-based brand/pack/price/channel portfolio solution. It means that within a channel, based on the purchasing needs of the population, different consumption scenarios can be covered. We need to design product packaging, pricing, and promotional solutions within the channel according to these consumption scenarios, thereby meeting consumers' shopping needs based on scenarios within the channel.
This theory is quite effective because it is built on in-depth research and insights into consumer scenarios, examining consumers' shopping purposes and decision-making logic, and classifying consumers' shopping motivations within the channel based on these insights.
The OPBBC theory's extended portfolio is based on the traditional large-channel distribution system design. Regardless of the scenario, consumers would trade and purchase at locations with limited types and relatively concentrated shopping, so we need to use this method to analyze and design the distribution and sales promotion system.
But today, with the internet developed, cognition and transaction are integrated, and transaction and delivery are separated. As soon as you think of it, you can place an order anytime, anywhere. The entire decision-making chain is very short, and the options are extremely high, which makes consumers have extremely low tolerance for the mismatch between product selling points, packaging specifications, and scenarios.
In other words, in the past, a bottle of cola could be drunk anywhere—in a restaurant, gym, stadium, or any place. But today, due to increased options, consumers will consume different beverages in different places, and even in the same place, under different times and relationships, there will be different requirements for packaging specifications.
For us today, insight into scenarios, consumers' demands for new needs, and the matching of products to scenarios have become very important.
Therefore, **today's products must be a full-scenario combination of flavors, series, and specifications to meet consumers' full-scenario needs.**

**Full Domain**
As mentioned earlier, when consumers see and get what they want, users' different shopping behaviors are determined by their psychological, physiological, and lifestyle behaviors. We need to categorize based on product characteristics: instant consumption, planned consumption, and impulse consumption.
There is no so-called online or offline; instead, we need to conduct full-lifecycle operations based on users' consumption logic.
Full domain is not full-channel coverage, but a combination of consumption channel paths under the user's lifecycle, full journey, and full behavioral logic.
**Different SKUs have different channel combinations; we need to look at user behavior.**
Take a bottle of cola again: different consumption behaviors have completely different shopping logic paths.
- **Instant consumption: O2O delivery? Community direct-sale/convenience stores?**
- **Planned consumption: Hypermarkets? Community direct-sale/convenience stores? O2O delivery? E-commerce?**
- **Stockpiling consumption: Group buying? KOL带货, e-commerce combo sets?**
- **Impulse consumption: KOL带货? Group buying? E-commerce promotions? Hypermarkets/community direct-sale/convenience stores?**
Even for instant consumption, different sizes, specifications, and capacities are sold in different ways.

**Sales Promotion Logic**
Under new consumption and new supply, people's consumption logic has changed, so when thinking about sales promotion, the logic must also change according to external changes.
From a scenario perspective, with changes in family structure and social logic, packaging has shifted from large barrels to small cans; large barrels have become the main product for small dining gatherings.
This is the change brought by scenario changes.
What we need to do is: in what scenarios do consumers have what consumption weight for beverages? Based on this weight, what consumption behaviors will occur? Based on users' consumption behaviors, we design interference points in consumers' shopping paths, design product combinations, specification combinations, and packaging combinations to influence and persuade them to buy.
**Different trading venues have different sales promotion logics.**
Let's look at the following diagram:
Consumers have completely different transaction and thinking logic in different scenarios and path logics.
For example, in offline scenarios, when designing the shopping path, the store owner considers the purpose of the customer's visit. If the consumer wants to buy a beverage, the purpose is very clear: I want to buy a beverage, an ice-cold one.
So, in convenience store shopping paths, the beverage cooler is either on the right side at the entrance or at the very back. These two different placements are due to different store types and different freezer display methods. So for us, we need to design our product display and consumer influence methods based on the store's location—whether it's a community convenience store or an office building convenience store.
Another example: content live streaming and social live streaming. Although both are live streaming and consumers are equally impulsive, the logic of what consumers watch is completely different, so our product and promotion combination models are also completely different. We need to design solutions based on the logic of how consumers watch the streamer.
Another example is B2B and community group buying, which distributors are familiar with. When doing both channels, distributors' biggest feeling is the fear of price chaos on these platforms.
An important reason for price chaos is the failure to consider consumers, small store owners, and the characteristics of the channel. Distributors only use a price lever to drive sales.
As Chen Xin, CEO of Hemai Chun, described to the author in a previous New Distribution live broadcast, small store owners are not actually that price-sensitive. B2B uses price promotions a lot, but you must never use low prices. Once you do, the product is dead. Instead, you should do bundle gifts, based on the life scenarios of small store owners, find products that cannot be sold but are usually not affordable, and have high premium, to do promotions. This works better than low prices.
At their peak, they gave away nearly 100,000 rice cookers in one promotion.
But community group buying is clearly different. Although it's online, the promotional shelf space is limited (time, position). So **for group buying, more attention should be paid to pit production**—that is, how much sales a single product brings in one promotion at that position. But pit production should be designed based on consumer scenarios and actual demand models, not just low prices.

**Digital Systems and Tools Supporting the Sales Promotion System**
In the past two years, one-code-one-object has become standard in the FMCG industry. Many companies use it as an entry point for interacting with consumers.
Although many companies use it, few brands do well in using one-code-one-object to interact with consumers.
In 2015, Dongpeng saw Evergrande Spring promoting one-code-one-object, so they tried it and officially launched one-code-one-object promotions.
Unexpectedly, the results were surprisingly good. The scan-code red packets quickly ignited the market wherever they went, so Dongpeng Special Drink became determined to use scan-code red packets for consumer marketing.
Dongpeng used one-code-one-object to play various tricks with scan-code red packets, igniting consumers' purchasing enthusiasm, tearing open a gap in Red Bull's airtight market, and achieving rapid growth. In 2021, Dongpeng Special Drink's annual sales reached over 7 billion yuan, firmly holding the second position in the domestic functional beverage market, leaving Monster (Coca-Cola's brand) far behind.
Initially, Dongpeng used one-code-one-object to solve consumer-side promotion issues, but found that consumer-side promotions required terminal merchants to verify and settle. Then they gradually improved the mini-programs for consumers and terminal merchants, but mini-programs alone were not enough; they needed to connect with terminal merchants on the SFA side, and then DMS, TPS, and a series of functions emerged. This was vertical; there was also horizontal.
Dongpeng found that bottle codes solved consumer issues, but they also needed box codes to solve channel-side issues. They found it wasn't enough, so they needed to do box codes.
Mini-programs solved consumer verification, but also needed to solve store verification. After solving verification, they found they could use mini-programs for channel-side promotions. Thus, from one-code-one-object, red packet prize draws, to terminal merchant rebate systems, terminal merchant online AI displays, consumer-side verification systems, then they found SFA had to be self-developed to match, and then TPM, OMS/DMS, promoter management systems, marketing BI big data systems, TMS, smart freezer management systems... Dongpeng Special Drink, based on business logic and needs, took five years to gradually improve a complete digital marketing system based on scan-code red packets.

**The Essence of Digitalization Is Not a Set of Tool Applications but a Business Model**
Zhang Le, the information director of Dongpeng Group, told New Distribution that most companies treat this system as a tool, but Dongpeng Special Drink knew from the beginning that the essence of digitalization is not a system but a business model.
What is the logic of tools? It is coordination and support, and it cannot perfectly match the company's management philosophy and business logic. But what is a business model? It is the combination of product + tool + method, building a complete business operating system around effective sales promotion.
The biggest difference from tool applications is that the logic of tool application is to use this tool to solve a problem for a certain position, a certain matter, or a certain department. But the entire system not only solves one problem but also solves the problem of the company's marketing system around the product.
The system and business are integrated; they cannot be separated. Business needs technology for support, and technology needs business scenarios for application. Zhang Le gave New Distribution an example:
Most FMCG companies' display fees and terminal promotion fees are distributed layer by layer from the brand to the distributor to the retailer. In the past, it was manual signing, factory inspection and approval, distributor settlement, and factory reimbursement. A full cycle took several months.
With tool thinking, companies adopt digital software to match business processes, so the software builds a digital system based on the company's existing processes. Essentially, it only informatizes the original process, making a quantitative change. Except for saving a few sheets of paper, it doesn't actually change the essence of the business.
But Dongpeng Special Drink thought: can we skip the intermediate links and directly pay merchants? This would reduce losses at the channel level, and more importantly, fast and efficient verification would get quick feedback from the terminal.
So when Dongpeng designed the system, they considered effectiveness, not process.
So when you compare tool thinking and system thinking, you'll find that **the efficiency of system thinking is incomparable to tool thinking.**
We see many companies have such path dependence, just like the diameter of a rocket is determined by the width of a horse's rear. These are the business processes accumulated over time in organizational management, which are the foundation supporting the company's operation and development. Although technology is changing rapidly, tool thinking limits the application of technology to improve business models.
Many brand owners haven't figured out the positioning of developing this system; the purpose is unclear.
**Defining SFA as a tool is not logical.**
When Dongpeng Special Drink did SFA, it wasn't to manage people that they developed SFA, but because they found that external SFA couldn't efficiently synergize with their one-code-one-object marketing system. Even customized development was hard to meet Dongpeng's needs. In the end, Dongpeng had to invest heavily in self-development.
All departments and actions revolve around solving one problem. Based on this logic, they then improve various business modules and functions, and finally achieve the entire company's business units working in one direction.
All premises are built on the support of new technology. Build a complete effective sales promotion system based on the business model.

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