In March, Coca-Cola's two bottlers in China, Swire Coca-Cola and China Foods (COFCO Coca-Cola), released their 2021 financial reports. Swire Coca-Cola's mainland China revenue was approximately 23.884 billion yuan, and China Foods' revenue was 19.784 billion yuan, totaling 43.668 billion yuan for Coca-Cola in mainland China in 2021! Among them, both companies' main product, soda, achieved double-digit growth. Swire Coca-Cola's soda revenue grew by 14%, with revenue of approximately 16.8 billion yuan; China Foods' soda grew by 13%, with revenue exceeding 15 billion yuan. Soda alone contributed approximately 31.9 billion yuan in revenue, accounting for 73% of Coca-Cola's total operating revenue. It is evident that Coca-Cola's position as the "soda king" remains unshakable! However, it's not just Coca-Cola that is unshakable; the entire carbonated beverage market is as well! According to data from the China Light Industry Information Network, in 2021, China's beverage industry resumed growth, with the operating revenue of the beverage manufacturing industry increasing by 13.5% year-on-year. Among them, the carbonated beverage manufacturing industry grew by 19.17% year-on-year, outpacing other categories and still ranking first in market share in the beverage industry. Let's look at another piece of data: recently, Nongfu Spring, known as the "Moutai in water," released its financial report. The total revenue of its product lines, including water, juice, tea, and others, was 29.696 billion yuan, which is less than Coca-Cola's soda category alone! This set of data breaks our conventional understanding: even the industry leader in water can't outsell cola. Coincidentally, Nongfu Spring just launched a new product called "Qi Cha" (Sparkling Tea). What surprised me was that the packaging clearly printed the words "carbonated beverage" on it, unabashedly labeling it as a carbonated drink. This shows Nongfu Spring's strategic ambition. As the saying goes, big fish are found in big ponds, and even small fish and shrimp have enough room to survive. The carbonated beverage industry is such a big pond. In this article, we analyze the most traditional soda products in the carbonated beverage market. In a highly mature market environment, and in the face of the absolute leader Coca-Cola, how can other products find a way to break through? The Revival of Domestic Soda: Opportunities at the Point of Sale The domestic sodas that were once beaten out of sight by the two colas (Coca-Cola and Pepsi) are now making a comeback and are bustling with activity. Beibingyang's parent company, Dahao Technology, went public; Xi'an Ice Peak submitted its IPO prospectus; Wahaha's Future Cola made a comeback, developing over 50 soda production lines nationwide; and brands like Hongbaolai, Dayao Jiabin, and Huayang 1982 have also emerged. Like a sudden spring breeze, their successive emergence in the current market environment is a signal that cannot be ignored. The 4P marketing theory includes four elements: Product, Price, Place, and Promotion. From a product perspective, the new domestic sodas do not have outstanding differentiation. The technical barriers for soda products are not high, and the taste experience for users is not significantly different. In essence, soda provides the same refreshing sensation to users. From a price perspective, the new domestic sodas are priced higher than cola products. Most of them use glass bottle packaging, with retail prices between 5 and 7 yuan. The comparative advantage here is that it leaves more profit margin for the channel. In terms of channel, the main battlefield for soda is still offline, but the new domestic sodas stand out in their penetration and layout in the foodservice channel. In terms of promotion (some translate it as marketing), big brands like Coca-Cola mainly use advertising, public relations, and media to communicate brand information with consumers. They have already completed the initial accumulation of brand equity. Now, it is unrealistic to launch massive advertising campaigns. Compared to big brands like Coca-Cola, the new domestic soda brands are at a disadvantage in communicating with consumers. How do they find a different path to complete their promotional activities? Here, we need to return to the essence of marketing: influencing and changing consumer behavior. How to influence and change consumer behavior? Once upon a time, advertising was king. At that time, brand owners could really conquer the world with a single advertisement. For example, Prince Milk, which won the "King of Bids" on CCTV, borrowed money and bet everything on advertising, and later indeed received orders from all over the country. In that era, advertising did create many big brands. But now, can we still do that? Of course, no one is willing to do that anymore, and advertising can no longer have the same magic. Later, it was the point of sale that was king. When Coca-Cola defeated Pepsi, its biggest weapon was direct control of the point of sale. It directly controlled more than 6 million mom-and-pop stores in China, achieving comprehensive coverage. Does this mean you should learn from Coca-Cola and distribute your products to as many points of sale as they have to achieve your goals? Not exactly. For new products with weak brand power, a head-on confrontation would be disastrous. The so-called "point of sale is king" worked for some brands in a certain era, but in the new environment, even if the battlefield seems the same, entering the game is an unequal competition. These 6 million mom-and-pop stores are already completed infrastructure for Coca-Cola, but for new products, the cost of channels and points of sale is very high. Just getting a new product in front of consumers requires a great deal of effort. So, it is almost impossible to compete head-on with Coca-Cola's direct control of the point of sale. So, how are these domestic soda brands doing it now? What I see is that the opportunity is still at the point of sale, but we need to look at the point of sale from more dimensions. Find Key Points of Sale; Points of Sale Can Also Become Media The path for domestic sodas is to start with foodservice points of sale. Why can foodservice points of sale carry the mission of reviving domestic sodas? Let's start with the essence of the point of sale. Teacher Miao Qingxian once pointed out the essence of the point of sale: the form of the point of sale is not important; what matters is its function! The point of sale has four major functions: logistics (including transactions), product display, information transmission, and consumer education. The form of the point of sale can change in a thousand ways, but these functions must exist. You will find that among the four major functions of the point of sale, product display, information transmission, and consumer education all do one thing: communicate with consumers. By communicating with consumers, they influence and change consumer behavior. The point of sale has this capability! For big brands like Coca-Cola, with their strong brand appeal, they focus more on the product display and logistics functions of the point of sale. So, the more points of sale they distribute to, the greater the likelihood of sales. For some second- and third-tier brands or new brands, information transmission and consumer cultivation are the most important. Blind exposure may only make the product die faster. Therefore, finding key points of sale that can deeply communicate with consumers is particularly important. Soda is a product purchased on impulse, and the scenario of drinking soda naturally matches with dining. At foodservice points of sale, it has closer contact with consumers and can directly influence and change their purchasing behavior. Its strategic significance at foodservice points of sale is far greater than that of mom-and-pop stores and supermarkets. What is activated here is the information transmission and consumer education functions of the point of sale, which are also the media attributes naturally possessed by the point of sale. For soda products, foodservice points of sale have both advertising and selling functions. Each foodservice outlet is an advertising point and will also directly generate transactions. Looking at companies today, they are more rational in advertising, seeking precision marketing and measuring ROI. They invest in elevator media like Focus Media and Xinchao Media because they can capture consumer attention in a specific enclosed space. Let me give another special example: it is said that when Shi Yuzhu was doing an online game product, he concentrated his advertising on the squat toilets and urinals in internet cafes. Isn't that also to influence a specific group of people in a specific environment? In the final analysis, this is because such media carriers can achieve deep connections with precise consumers at fixed times and in fixed scenarios. Similarly, as an "offline specific passive communication point," foodservice points of sale are also a form of media. For soda consumers, they are the most suitable advertising points. It's just that their form of expression as media is not the traditional form of advertising. Imagine if you were making soda products and invested saturated in foodservice points of sale in a region, how many promotional and sales points would you have? Focus Media has tens of thousands of elevator screens in the Yangtze River Delta. If you consider each small restaurant as an independent "offline specific passive communication point," a large city can have more than 50,000 restaurants, and the entire Yangtze River Delta can even reach millions. If you master these points, wouldn't you become an advertising company larger than Focus Media? Of course, this example is somewhat absolute, but the logic is sound. If you don't have advertising budget for media placement, then place your product at the point of sale that has the greatest influence on consumers, and the effect may even be better. I see that the current domestic soda brands are really doing this. Behind the Effectiveness of Foodservice Points of Sale: Creating Familiarity Domestic soda brands make foodservice points of sale their main battlefield. Besides precise scenario matching and saturated investment, they fully activate the media communication function of foodservice points of sale. I will try to analyze why this single-point consumer mind occupation is effective. From the perspective of consumer behavior, for high-frequency purchase behaviors, consumers tend to choose familiar products. For example, the behavior of having a soda during a meal has actually been subtly implanted in the consumer's mind. When consumers sit in a restaurant enjoying food, the restaurant environment and the taste of the dishes can easily trigger their purchasing behavior. So, when they want a soda, how can a new soda product become their choice? That requires creating familiarity. In fact, the reason products like cola and iced tea are chosen is familiarity. And the creation of familiarity can also be done according to the 4P theory. 1. Product: Category, packaging design, taste. The best behavior is to dare to be second. Don't change those classic categories, classic elements, and intuitive expressions. When making new products in familiar categories, try to reduce cognitive distance rather than increase it. 2. Price: The price should not be too high; it should conform to the familiar price range that consumers have developed for similar products. If it is too high, it is easy to form loss aversion psychology. 3. Place: The visibility rate at the channel level, the maintenance of the image and atmosphere of a single store, etc., also create familiarity. 4. Promotion: Whether online or offline, whether for mature brands or new brands, as we analyzed earlier, promotion methods need to establish multiple mental links with consumers to enhance familiarity. When a new product is launched, the most important thing to try to seize market share in a mature category is to enhance consumer familiarity and eventually make it one of their default decisions. So, we return to a core point mentioned in this article: maximizing the functions of the point of sale. Using the four major functions of the point of sale, one of the lowest-cost and most effective ways for a new product is to use effective points of sale as a test field, first penetrate a market in a small area, and then replicate and expand. When your resources gradually become rich and strong, from point to line to surface, you can build a network. Another situation is that if a new product comes from a large enterprise, and the enterprise itself already has a strong point-of-sale network, then you should first verify the effectiveness of creating familiarity, then attribute it to product, price, place, and promotion, so as to find a breakthrough for the new product's promotion. In fact, there are many brands around us that win by following a "follow strategy." Behind their success is that they strike later and become one of the products with the highest familiarity in the consumer's mind in that category. Final Thoughts: Before this, I wrote an article about whether soda is a good business. Interested friends can check it at the end of the article. This content is a sequel to the previous one. The reason I want to continue reporting on the soda industry is, on the one hand, that I do see the revival of the entire soda industry. On the other hand, since last year, I have been following a distributor's case of operating his own brand locally. Among them, the soda category he operates has performed far better in the market than other beverage categories. Based on the distributor's actual market verification, I want to provide some thoughts and inspiration for more practitioners who want to enter this industry. In fact, during the process of writing this content, I also gained some unexpected insights. For example, if the opportunity is at the point of sale, and the media attributes of the point of sale can be activated, are there other functions of the point of sale that can be extended? Of course, there are. Combined with the current idea of BC integration, brand owners and store outlets can use modern tools to connect more deeply with C-end consumers. The effect brought by the functions of the point of sale can even be doubled. At present, this direction is also worth our in-depth thinking and exploration. New Distribution has also reported on some brand cases in this regard. Interested friends can check the extended reading at the end of the article. Finally, welcome friends interested in the soda business to add the WeChat below. I will set up a dedicated discussion group to talk with you all in depth about the soda industry. ↓Scan the WeChat code and note "soda" to join the group↓ More Articles Are you "watching" me?