The fundamental issue all enterprises must address is growth. In 2024, Gartner surveyed 416 CEOs and executives globally, covering different regions, industries, and company sizes. The results showed that 62% of CEOs prioritized growth as their top business focus for 2024, the highest level since 2014. Against the backdrop of market saturation, rising traffic costs, and intensifying price wars, every brand is voicing its most instinctive and primal cry for "growth" in response to new consumer characteristics of personalization, fragmentation, and omnichannel behavior.

From Niche Market to Mainstream Market

For high-potential emerging brands with revenue exceeding 500 million RMB that have established a foothold in their niche market, the core challenge is transitioning from structural growth in the niche market to omnichannel growth in the mainstream market, thereby quickly entering the billion-yuan club. Most brands at this stage are constrained by various factors, including resource limitations, past growth paths, and management team philosophies, which keep them within certain boundaries. For example: over-reliance on a single hero product without forming a clear brand positioning, thus failing to build brand momentum in a specific segment or scenario; regional presence without a model for national expansion; or a relatively single-channel structure. To achieve a new round of explosive growth, brands must break through their current "barriers" and open new growth spaces. Over the past decade, many emerging consumer brands, with limited resources, have chosen traditional e-commerce or social e-commerce as their first entry point into the market. This is because internet technology lowers entry barriers, allowing brands to directly reach consumers, and the digital closed-loop enables faster business analysis and opportunity insights, as well as more flexible testing and iteration of growth models. However, in China, offline channels still account for about 70% of consumer goods sales. To achieve omnichannel growth, offline presence is essential. But today, brands should not replicate the traditional pioneering model of 20 years ago. Instead, they should leverage new platforms and digital tools to plan strategically, selectively, and rhythmically. Instant retail is the new weapon for high-potential emerging brands in their omnichannel expansion in the new era.

Instant Retail: The First Step to Omnichannel Growth

Initially, traditional offline retail, such as Walmart and RT-Mart, operated in the "inspired to buy" stage. Later, e-commerce emerged, with delivery achieving next-day or half-day arrival, entering the "inspired to purchase" stage, where consumers can place orders immediately upon need, but delivery is not instantaneous. Now, under the instant retail model, consumers can receive products within about 30 minutes of need, achieving "inspired to obtain." With only a 30-minute gap between order fulfillment and consumer need, instant retail can comprehensively satisfy all consumer needs within 24 hours, including immediate needs that traditional offline retail and e-commerce cannot meet, or fleeting needs that "disappear if unmet."

Instant Retail Development Status and Shopper Insights:

  • Penetration and lower-tier market coverage continue to rise National penetration is nearly 80%, with first-tier and new first-tier cities exceeding 80%. Leading platforms have achieved coverage across all county-level and remote cities; for example, Meituan covers all 2,800 county-level and above cities nationwide.
  • All types of retailers fully embrace instant retail Various offline retail formats have fully joined instant retail: national KA supermarkets deeply cooperate with instant retail platforms, more regional retailers join, small convenience stores and vertical chain stores emerge, mom-and-pop shops leverage platforms to list products online, further expanding channel coverage, and flash warehouses as an innovative O2O supply model are developing rapidly to meet 24/7 demand.
  • Younger shoppers with higher purchasing power and willingness Compared to offline and e-commerce shoppers, instant retail has a higher proportion of shoppers aged 18-30, with higher average monthly income, and the average order value has been increasing year by year, exceeding 80 RMB per order.
  • More daily consumption Instant retail shoppers purchase more frequently than offline and e-commerce shoppers, averaging 2-3 times per week. As shoppers become more accustomed to instant retail and categories expand, shopping motivations have evolved from initial instant consumption to multiple drivers. "Daily replenishment" (buying small quantities for same-day or next-day food, beverages, or daily necessities), "light stockpiling" (regularly purchasing in advance for the coming week), and instant consumption are the main purchase motivations. "Trying new products" and "exploratory consumption" have also become important motivations.
  • 24/7 nature Offline stores primarily see afternoon and evening consumption, e-commerce consumption is concentrated at night, while instant retail operates around the clock. There is significant opportunity to leverage scenario-based marketing to boost sales.

High-Potential Emerging Brands Entering Instant Retail

Instant retail is not an independent channel but a business model that fully integrates online and offline, involving collaboration among instant retail platforms, multi-format retailers, and brands to create value for consumers. Brands preparing to enter instant retail face the following core challenges: 1. High business complexity. The entire instant retail chain involves offline distribution, online supply, marketing, and operations, requiring comprehensive capabilities across the full chain. Most core strategies require cross-departmental coordination and breaking traditional budget planning, allocation, and cross-functional workflows. 2. Inconsistent platform rules and diverse playbooks. Each instant retail platform has different strategies and operational/marketing rules. If a brand enters from scratch, the internal organization will face a long learning curve for overall management. 3. High demand for customization and precision. For high-potential emerging brands, blindly copying mature brands' tactics is not advisable. They need to benchmark category development and competitors, deconstruct core growth opportunities, and match corresponding strategic levers to customize their growth plan. Daily operations and marketing must be precise to maximize ROI. Therefore, high-potential emerging brands should choose a strategic service provider with comprehensive full-chain capabilities in instant retail, capable of developing customized phased growth strategies, and willing to form a "community of shared destiny" with the brand. In the first year of cooperation, the brand's top leader should personally engage, and as the service provider deeply accompanies the brand with hands-on support, the brand can quickly establish the internal organization and capability system needed for future rapid growth.

"Three-Step" Strategic Implementation

Step 1: Develop a "Supply Based on Demand" Strategy.

The biggest challenge in traditional offline distribution is the lack of high-quality data to guide distribution strategy, making it impossible to predict which retail stores will have high brand productivity. Instant retail offers a breakthrough. Service providers can help brands use omnichannel data, including street-level population data, instant retail platform data, and scenario data, to generate street-level category demand heat maps and a list of priority stores. Combined with the brand's current supply data, they can formulate distribution and supply listing strategies, clarifying the list of stores to expand into. Additionally, digital BC-integrated tools and crowdsourcing task platforms can efficiently and quickly implement strategies, connecting information and incentive flows with frontline sales staff and terminal stores.

Step 2: Customized Audience and Scenario Strategies to Build a Long-Term Growth Model. To drive long-term, high-quality omnichannel growth, brands must move beyond the short-term traffic-driven model. Through comprehensive category and brand analysis, they should clearly define the brand's current mind-share task. Develop audience and scenario strategies that permeate all daily operations and marketing activities, jointly driving brand mind-share building and sales growth on instant retail platforms. Simultaneously, maximize baseline traffic across platforms, focus on building benchmarks in the first 6-12 months, use precise RTB advertising, deep cooperation with key channels, and establish core hero products, benchmark channels, and benchmark regions in instant retail to create network effects and improve subsequent operational and marketing efficiency.

Step 3: Strengthen Mind-Share Through Integrated Omnichannel Marketing. After completing the first two steps, high-potential emerging brands can achieve high double-digit or even triple-digit growth. They should also select key category moments to create marketing events, achieving annual audience growth and sales peaks, further accelerating brand momentum. Brands can choose key themes from their annual marketing plan, use instant retail as the base, target core scenarios, and coordinate within the instant retail platform (first ring), the instant retail ecosystem (second ring), and external brand media plans (third ring) to plan and execute integrated thematic marketing.

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