Author | Liu Chunxiong Source | Teacher Liu's Forum (ID: liuchunxiong1964) Around 2000, I accompanied a small company to Japan and Australia for inspections, visiting the largest companies in the same industry in both countries. This Chinese small company had hundreds of marketing personnel, and I initially thought the Japanese counterparts would have a huge sales force. However, both the Japanese and Australian counterparts had only about 20 marketing staff each, primarily focused on market services. Besides market saturation, two other factors meant they didn't need more marketing staff: first, well-developed third-party services meant much work was outsourced; second, they had more backend staff, with much marketing work completed in the background, reducing the need for frontline staff. At that time, I thought this day would eventually come in China, but I didn't know when. 1 How many marketing professionals are there in China? It's said there were once 80 million. Not many countries have a population over 80 million. Chinese university graduates, except those from first- and second-tier universities who may find jobs matching their majors, often find it hard to match majors from third-tier or vocational colleges, so marketing becomes a common career choice. Besides farmers, industrial workers, and service workers, marketing is one of the four major occupations in China, and it's an urban job acceptable to those with higher education. Marketing as a profession also supports specialized media like Sales and Marketing. One year, I saw data showing Forbes, a world-class financial media, had a circulation of only 270,000 copies across four Asian languages. Meanwhile, Sales and Marketing, as a pan-financial media, had a single-issue circulation exceeding 200,000 copies per month, with the main issue published three times a month. In the US, CMO (Chief Marketing Officer) magazine closed after about a year. When Sales and Marketing communicated with German counterparts, they said such specialized media wouldn't exceed 20,000 copies in circulation. 2 Why do Western developed countries have fewer marketing professionals despite similar emphasis on marketing? In 2005, Professor Chen Chunhua published an important article, "Channel-Driven or Brand-Driven?" This article highlighted the differences between the Chinese market and Western developed countries. Professor Chen Chunhua's view is that the Chinese market is channel-driven, with channels taking priority over brands. Even multinational companies adopt a dual-drive of channels and brands. Some Chinese companies lacking strength are purely channel-driven. Some call channel work frontline work, while product and brand work is backend work. Frontline work uses a "sea of people" tactic, while backend work uses a "sea of money" tactic. Backend work includes R&D, product, brand, and marketing department tasks, which require few people but significant spending, or are outsourced (e.g., multinational marketing departments often resemble outsourcing units). Frontline work, due to China's fragmented commerce and vast, dispersed population, requires deep distribution and customer relationship management, demanding a large marketing workforce. 3 Will China's marketing see backend replacing frontline? If so, it means the logic of Chinese marketing will reverse. I believe several factors must be considered.

  • First, are there still many Chinese willing to engage in arduous marketing work?
  • Second, will Chinese channels remain fragmented? Is deep distribution still needed?
  • Third, will China's backend work become similar or identical to that in Western developed countries? These judgments will determine the direction of Chinese marketing. 4 Marketing is facing recruitment difficulties, even failing to hire. Many know this. Labor supply is tight. This is the main reason and is irreversible. Post-90s have lower employment willingness, with a significant increase in entrepreneurship. Meanwhile, the internet absorbs many post-90s, making labor for traditional fields even tighter. Marketing is too tiring and tough, with frequent business trips, discouraging post-90s from pursuing it. Even if companies want to continue the "sea of people" tactic, are there enough people? Due to rising urban living costs, even if people are willing, costs will increase, with personnel costs rising faster than in other occupations. The employment environment is forcing Chinese companies to abandon the marketing "sea of people" tactic. 5 Can the fragmentation of Chinese channels change in the short term? I think it's hard to change. Although urbanization is accelerating, population density increasing, and commerce denser, the rural population remains huge. The high dispersion of rural population leads to commercial dispersion. Although commercial giants' retail share is rising, commerce itself is diverse, with numerous scattered retail businesses. Second-tier wholesalers in central cities still exist, requiring deep distribution-style services. China's third-party commercial services were backward in the past. Now B2B is emerging; if B2B succeeds, it will become a third-party service different from developed countries, but B2B's direction is still unclear. From a channel service perspective, China will remain channel-driven, or dual-driven by channels and communication, for a long time. Here, past brand-driven will gradually give way to communication-driven. 6 Earlier, I raised a pair of contradictory issues: channel fragmentation still requires channel-driven, but the job market cannot provide more marketing personnel. This contradiction troubles current enterprises. In the past, solving this contradiction was difficult. Fortunately, we are now in the internet era, and new tools can solve this problem. Because of channel fragmentation and multi-level channels, deep distribution still exists. But the way of deep distribution is no longer primarily people-based. Big data, internet-based communication, channel-initiated communication, and unified warehousing and distribution will be effective tools to address the inefficiency of traditional deep distribution. Big data provides targeted data to solve terminal problems, making even on-site problem-solving efficient and targeted. Unified warehousing and distribution will allow distributors to no longer equip many salespeople, handing delivery to professional third-party services. Channel-initiated communication will solve problems that previously required face-to-face interaction, though not completely, most issues won't need face-to-face resolution. 7 China's marketing still needs many frontline marketing personnel, determined by channel fragmentation. In China, face-to-face communication remains essential. Tools can never fully replace people. However, people armed with tools are more efficient than traditional ones. Problems previously solved by small individual organizations may be handed to third-party services in the future, such as B2B or unified warehousing and distribution. The remaining problems that must be solved by people will surely involve effective combination of people and advanced tools. -END-