During the Spring Festival, many manufacturers and distributors formulated corresponding marketing strategies. After the festival, many issues gradually surface, such as how to handle channel stock pressure, when to stop promotions and publicity, and how to effectively summarize market activities. To draw a satisfactory conclusion to Spring Festival marketing, it is necessary to do proper wrap-up work.
Rapidly Digest Channel Stock Pressure
Use withheld reward resources for terminal promotions. Before the Spring Festival, companies usually introduce purchase incentive policies to help distributors and sub-distributors push stock down the channel, using inventory pressure to force channel members and terminals to sell out. In this process, some merchants withhold the purchase incentives provided by manufacturers, refusing to pass them on to downstream customers, resulting in insufficient motivation for downstream customers to purchase and sell, leaving large quantities of goods accumulated in the channel. In response, marketing expert Mr. Pan Wenfu offers two approaches. First, since sub-distributors and second-tier wholesalers already have significant stock in their warehouses, requiring distributors to release the purchase incentive policy to sub-distributors would not only be ineffective but also cause complaints from sub-distributors against distributors and manufacturers, hindering future stock pushing. The solution is to require distributors to take out the withheld incentive resources and use them for consumer-oriented publicity or terminal promotions, helping sell the stock accumulated in intermediate channels. Second, local market managers often find it difficult to force distributors to release withheld incentives. Manufacturers can adopt a lottery method, allowing market supervisors from different regions to conduct cross-regional market inspections. Generally, manufacturers' purchase incentive policies are mostly honored after the peak season, and these pending incentives should only be released to distributors after market inspections are completed.
Manufacturer-led cross-regional inventory digestion. During the Spring Festival sales period, most manufacturers only aim to sell products (i.e., sales targets) to distributors, but distributors' sales to terminals and terminals' sales to consumers sometimes fail to meet ideal targets. If channel stock pressure cannot be quickly digested, it will hinder the progress of subsequent sales plans. Manufacturers should promptly coordinate inventory transfers between regions. Manager Li Mu from Yingkou City encountered this situation last Spring Festival. Because the regional manager overestimated market capacity, channel stock pressure became severe. The manufacturer communicated with Manager Li and transferred the excess stock to a fast-selling region after the festival, alleviating his capital and inventory pressure.
Prevent cross-region dumping after spring. Many distributors, after the peak season, to relieve warehouse pressure or quickly obtain cash, often resort to low-price selling and cross-region dumping to digest products. While these practices may help distributors alleviate inventory pressure, they have significant negative effects on the market. Manufacturer field sales personnel should monitor and organize timely responses. On one hand, they should warn distributors that low-price dumping or cross-region dumping will directly lead to the cancellation of previous purchase incentive policies. On the other hand, they should register the current inventory levels of distributors, understand normal sales channels and flows, and conduct weekly reviews. If abnormal sales data appears, they should promptly track and investigate to understand the reasons, so as to curb dumping or cross-region selling in time.
Appropriately Extend Promotion and Publicity Periods During the Spring Festival, various promotional activities are in full swing, densely concentrated in the ten days before the festival, and abruptly stop two days before. In fact, promotional activities can be extended for a period, appropriately until around the Lantern Festival, but with reduced intensity.
Manager Zhang Wei of Cangzhou Yifei Trading Company told our publication that in 2004, Xiaohutuxian liquor did not stop promotional activities after the Spring Festival but extended them until after the fifteenth day of the first lunar month. During the period between the Spring Festival and the Lantern Festival, most consumers are on holiday, leisurely visiting malls or relatives and friends. Xiaohutuxian focused its promotions on shopping malls and supermarkets, resulting in unexpectedly good sales, no less than before the Spring Festival.
Manufacturers need to carefully consider and reasonably arrange market investments. When the peak season arrives, many manufacturers create momentum for their products through outdoor, newspaper, and television advertising, complemented by product promotions.
After the Spring Festival, promotional activities weaken, and at this time, investment in television media can be increased. Survey data shows that during the days around the Spring Festival, TV ratings are several times higher than usual. Increasing product advertising during prime time can quickly enhance brand awareness locally, laying the groundwork for post-festival market sales.
Conduct Market Capacity Surveys During the Spring Festival, market competition is fierce. After the competitive baptism, it is essential to summarize and lay a solid foundation for post-festival work. The primary analysis is market capacity. If local market capacity is miscalculated, it will directly lead to waste of manufacturer resources or insufficient market investment. Market capacity changes annually, and after the Spring Festival is a good time to test it. Based on the manufacturer's actual channel digestion situation, combined with sales and inventory data of similar products, one can basically analyze the actual market capacity during the Spring Festival peak season and determine whether the manufacturer's initial market capacity estimate was too large and whether the stock pressure task was too high, providing a reference for future inventory adjustments.
Another task for summary analysis after the Spring Festival is consumer satisfaction and consumption trends. To understand consumer satisfaction with products after the Spring Festival, a comprehensive survey method is needed. Liu Weihua, senior consultant at Wuhan Punuo Management Consulting Company, provided a logical model (as shown below) and an effective questionnaire survey method.
First, investigate the degree of consumer demand for product attributes, and also use in-depth interviews to uncover more product attributes (potential needs) that consumers hope to obtain. A questionnaire of 200 copies is appropriate, with multiple choices for each attribute, and the results are aggregated to determine weights (i).
Second, investigate consumer satisfaction with each attribute, scoring each attribute. Use the Likert scale, divided into 5 levels: very good (5 points), good (3 points), average (0 points), poor (-3 points), very poor (-5 points), then aggregate to find the average (j). This yields a comprehensive evaluation of consumer attitudes toward Spring Festival marketing activities, i.e., consumer attitude toward the product A = ∑fij.
As shown in the figure, consumers have relatively high satisfaction with product price (weighted average score 1.72), followed by positive recognition of promotions providing satisfactory cultural experiences (weighted average score 0.63). However, there is a problem with feeling dignified, with a 0.76-point improvement space. According to the law of diminishing marginal utility in economics, investing in this area often yields relatively small input but greater improvement in consumer satisfaction.
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