Even before e-commerce and the internet economy, marketing in physical retail was a persistent challenge, with little breakthrough in the traditional retail sector. Store operations often lacked luster due to a dearth of marketing innovation. It can be said that even without e-commerce, supermarket marketing was lackluster, as most retail entities repeated a tired pattern of repackaging, copying, and addressing issues in isolation. To this day, many companies and stores haven't even mastered the basics of store operations, let alone innovation. When comprehensively evaluating a supermarket's marketing effectiveness, most stores struggle to score high on both corporate image and store sales. So, are the substantial marketing budgets of supermarkets wasted? What causes these problems? Short-sightedness, speculative mindset, and short-term behavior are the "original sins" of store promotions. 1. Store marketing lacks overall planning, and store inaction is rampant. Most stores lack a clear and correct understanding of core operations and key links, and lack strategic planning for store and corporate marketing, making management and operations arbitrary and variable. Many retail enterprises either have no medium- or long-term marketing planning as a strategic consideration, and thus no annual or strategic development marketing plans, or they create marketing plans that remain on paper, discussed superficially and then shelved, without budget allocation or implementation action plans. This reflects the arbitrariness and non-standardization of corporate financial planning and operations. Some are also constrained by decision-makers' speculative mindsets, leading to frequent changes even when investment plans exist. Several phenomena in this regard:

  1. Arbitrarily cutting expense plans and ignoring the marketing department. Even ongoing plans may be interfered with or altered by decision-makers, leading to failure;
  2. Lacking the responsibility for proactive integrated marketing, arbitrarily shifting cost burdens to brands, suppliers, and partner merchants. Some supermarkets even try to profit from marketing activities at partners' expense;
  3. So-called "countering moves" is actually a last-minute competitive tactic. Many supermarkets are reluctant to spend even a cent on promotions, but when competitors open stores or run large events, they become restless, mimicking others without plans, novelty, or creativity, and naturally without results;
  4. Token promotions like sprinkling pepper. Some enterprises only respond during holidays. They fear spending on promotions and fear lowering gross margins with special offers, but also fear losing customers if they don't act, so they only follow others during holidays, which is self-deceptive. 2. Only fighting primitive price wars digs a "Thucydides Trap" for stores. Most retail enterprises only know price wars, even proudly claiming "low price is the only truth," unable to think differently. Over time, consumers develop promotion fatigue, either buying only discounted items and ignoring regular-priced goods, or becoming numb to promotions, knowing that everywhere is the same. Soon, supermarkets cultivate a large army of elderly "bargain hunters" but fail to move the target customer base. This unconsciously trains consumers' "marketing fatigue," and for supermarkets themselves, it falls into the "Thucydides Trap," turning normal customer-attracting promotions into a one-way price slaughter, making healthy market competition a bloody battle. This approach not only fails to help store sales but often lowers gross margins, leaving stores confused about sustained marketing design. Especially during competitors' anniversaries or openings, they are helpless except for price cuts. Store promotions should be part of a comprehensive, integrated business strategy and systematic marketing planning, including price strategies, but crucially achieved through business format planning and control, basic product configuration, promotional product mix, product display, quality building, store image, service processes and levels, corporate culture creation, and media promotion strategies—not just price wars. A single price war over time is like drinking poison to quench thirst. With the internet era, traditional retail's price advantage is lost because online retail uses price weapons to dominate, taking over. In this context, experience economy and scenario marketing emerge, especially for physical retail, which can leverage offline and online scenario marketing advantages. So while retaining price segmentation, retailers should also focus on the future of offline scenario marketing. 3. Failing to adapt to the fan economy of the new media era, misusing platforms' communication, social, and promotional features, wasting internet resources and annoying consumers. With luxurious apps and WeChat platforms, many companies and stores only run irrelevant "public relations activities" like voting or asking for likes, which not only fail to create "stickiness" but also irritate consumers. Platform economy and fan economy are the most powerful marketing weapons for catering, retail, and other service industries. Tools like apps and WeChat are pipelines to consumers' hearts, but many companies treat them as "toys," misinterpreting or oversimplifying the community and social functions of mobile internet. Effective use of social media like media, self-media, WeChat, and Weibo can unlock the huge potential of community-based marketing in retail, tightly linking products, stores, and consumers in interaction, and regularly holding online and offline activities yields good results. However, many companies and stores only imitate others with online topics like children's talent shows or contests, launching irrelevant "voting" or "like" activities, or stiff product promotions. The information is simple, the audience narrow, and because participants constantly ask friends to vote or like, it annoys others, turning them against the initiators. The result is that stores spend money to buy disgust and customer abandonment. So what should retail stores pay attention to in self-media marketing?
  5. Clearly define the company's or store's business philosophy and value proposition, cultivate and attract fans;
  6. Turn the company and its stores into a warm home and spiritual tribe for fans;
  7. Design passionate, enjoyable, and universally appealing public relations and interactive promotion plans to ignite fans' passion and participation;
  8. Just grasp your own appeal and let people find interest on their own, rather than forcing them into boring designs, painful voting, or hypocritical likes;
  9. Differentiated and diversified new business models aren't solved by a few ideas or events; you need organizational rebuilding and value reconstruction of marketing and operations to adapt to this era and be effective;
  10. Whether offline or online, experience models focus on user participation, experience, and feeling. Unlike traditional business, internet-thinking experience business models emphasize user participation, experience, and feeling, especially interaction between company and customers, which must have economic or entertainment value, not just boring arrangements or lectures. 4. Dragging suppliers into every promotion means you'll be the first to die. Many retail enterprises or stores—whether supermarkets, department stores, or shopping malls—treat suppliers, brand owners, and merchants as "outsiders" or opponents, starting from a dead-end mindset because in the era of supplier-retailer cooperation, you'll fight alone and likely die! You can't achieve 100% self-procurement and self-operation, and you can't create many private labels because the market depends on strength and brands, which come globally from the entire product industry. Consumers have the freedom to choose brands and manufacturers. So retailers and brands are at least in the same boat, mutually dependent; to put it bluntly, you even rely on brands and suppliers for survival. But the reality is that many supermarkets create various fees to shift promotion and marketing costs onto suppliers, causing brands and suppliers to avoid or refuse to participate in terminal promotions.
  11. Charging fees for product displays at the terminal;
  12. Charging advertising resource fees for using storefronts, walls, spaces, and outdoor areas;
  13. Charging holiday promotion fees each festival;
  14. Charging so-called "withholding taxes";
  15. Forcing clothing and department store merchants to frequently run "spend 100 get 100" or "spend X get Y back" promotions, deducting all costs from merchant payments. Worse, many supermarkets fabricate extra fees to squeeze merchants further, which is outrageous. Due to these short-term behaviors, merchants openly reject and refuse to participate in promotions, so most malls resort to forced measures, imposing "minimum guaranteed points" or "reverse deductions" to force compliance. Merchants then raise prices or use deceptive pricing to cheat the mall and customers, causing bad effects. And all this is caused by supermarkets themselves. How to resolve this contradiction? First, establish a win-win mindset, treat brand owners and merchants correctly, and build healthy cooperative relationships; Second, recognize that "spend and return" promotions are essentially a form of price war, a double-edged sword for supermarkets. Only by strengthening integrated marketing awareness and capability can enterprises achieve long-term marketing results; Third, build a sound and scientific marketing mechanism, focusing on long-term mechanisms and contemporary features in marketing organization and strategy, and cultivating marketing resources rather than killing the goose that lays the golden eggs; Fourth, encourage and support brands and merchants to market autonomously, with supermarkets providing resources, platform support, and active assistance, and integrating marketing resources. Joint activities should have voluntary, fair, reasonable, and transparent cost sharing; Fifth, change cooperation models and strengthen self-operation to fundamentally solve the bottleneck of controlling promotion resources. With e-commerce's rise, the two-end supply chain model is disrupting traditional retail supply chains. Suppliers prefer companies that settle quickly or pay cash, and new settlement models give retailers price advantages. For retailers, more cash purchases increase autonomy and opportunities, including price advantages and other supplier resource support, effectively moving toward self-operation. Currently, this model is becoming popular in supermarkets, and department stores are trying it. If self-operation becomes widespread in department store retail, the contradictions and constraints of supermarket promotions will naturally disappear, and supermarkets can offer quality goods at fair prices. Sixth, focus on consumers rather than the company, and on products rather than fees. Enterprises must grasp the market, consumer needs, and trends; always prioritize product management and operations that align with the market and create consumer stickiness, such as product mix, brand mix, and business format mix, rather than having a large leasing department fixate on merchant fees, driving away brands and disheartening merchants. If so, your end is near. (Author: Zhang Yifu, Lianshang.com Columnist) The Great Era Needs Micro-Innovation: 2016 Lianshang.com Conference Preparations Begin Theme: Great Era, Micro-Innovation Time: April 7-9, 2016 Location: Hangzhou, China Main Activities: 1. 2016 Lianshang.com Conference and Global Retail Innovation Summit
  16. Second China (Hangzhou) International Commercial Design and Visual Merchandising Exhibition
  17. 2016 China Commercial Real Estate Summit and Expo
  18. Zhiliaoke Training
  19. 2016 China Retail Business Langya List Annual Awards Ceremony
  20. 2016 Lianhe Action Salon