---
title: "Marketing Reflections on the New Normal in China's Beer Industry"
description: "From January to December 2014, China's beer industry produced a cumulative 4,921.85 tons, a year-on-year decrease of 0.96%. This marks the first negative growth in over two decades. The new normal for the beer industry includes slowing growth, structural adjustment, and the failure of traditional marketing tactics."
author: "方刚"
publisher: "New Distribution"
email: "zhaobo258@gmail.com"
telephone: "+8615854817671"
published: "2015-03-07"
language: "en"
canonical: "https://xinjignxiao.com/en/articles/marketing-reflections-on-the-new-normal-in-china-s-beer-industry-7b3b9077/"
markdown: "https://xinjignxiao.com/en/articles/marketing-reflections-on-the-new-normal-in-china-s-beer-industry-7b3b9077.md"
original_source: "https://mp.weixin.qq.com/s/oCmHX3jDgujlZlCE7XJhSA"
translation: "https://xinjignxiao.com/zh/articles/%E4%B8%AD%E5%9B%BD%E5%95%A4%E9%85%92%E8%A1%8C%E4%B8%9A%E6%96%B0%E5%B8%B8%E6%80%81%E6%A0%BC%E5%B1%80%E4%B8%8B%E7%9A%84%E8%90%A5%E9%94%80%E6%80%9D%E8%80%83-7b3b9077.md"
attribution: "New Distribution — https://xinjignxiao.com/en/articles/marketing-reflections-on-the-new-normal-in-china-s-beer-industry-7b3b9077/"
usage_policy: "https://xinjignxiao.com/ai-policy.txt"
---

# Marketing Reflections on the New Normal in China's Beer Industry

> From January to December 2014, China's beer industry produced a cumulative 4,921.85 tons, a year-on-year decrease of 0.96%. This marks the first negative growth in over two decades. The new normal for the beer industry includes slowing growth, structural adjustment, and the failure of traditional marketing tactics.

From January to December 2014, China's beer industry produced a cumulative 4,921.85 tons, a year-on-year decrease of 0.96%. This is the first negative growth in over two decades! This negative growth easily evokes a current economic buzzword: the new normal! What does the new normal look like for the beer industry?
1. Slowing industry growth. The industry has moved from double-digit growth to slight growth, and now to negative growth, with the overall trend of slowing growth basically set.
2. Structural adjustment. With the big growth market gone, increasing profits has become the top priority in corporate strategy. Product structures are rapidly shifting toward mid-to-high-end segments, bottled beer's share is declining, and cans are gradually becoming the mainstay and the primary profit category.
3. Traditional marketing tactics are failing. In the era of fragmentation and personalization, traditional advertising, communication, and even industry-standard ground operations like buying store placements are no longer effective.

I: Red, White, and Yellow on the Same Rope.
The industry's negative growth, while not a disaster, marks the beginning of new challenges for the beer industry. It is foreseeable that the industry landscape will not change significantly in the short term, but industry performance will face a period of climbing. This negative growth is influenced by both the overall industry environment and specific industry factors. Across the entire alcohol industry, and even the beverage and FMCG sectors, while baijiu has stumbled, beer hasn't benefited; red wine has come down from its pedestal, with prices and channels moving downmarket, becoming more approachable.
Baijiu began its decline in 2013, triggered by plasticizer scandals and the freeze on government spending, with cries of distress spreading rapidly across the industry. That year, the beer industry grew by 3.25%! Slim profits and slight growth became the industry's main theme. In 2012, before this, the baijiu industry achieved total profits of 81.8 billion yuan, while the beer industry earned 9.9 billion!
Government spending had nothing to do with us, and plasticizers were far from beer. The beer industry felt safe! There was even a fantasy that as baijiu receded, beer would take its place. But when the government-backed consumer segment disappeared, the domino effect that had toppled baijiu quietly reached beer's shoulders!
2014 was a year of transformation for the baijiu industry. High-end was frozen, the mid-range declined, calls for mass-market liquor grew, and small bottles were everywhere... Going to the countryside, building strongholds, terminal control, buying bar counters, making displays, setting up tables and cutting boxes, guaranteeing volume with exclusive deals—these FMCG tactics that the beer industry had mastered became the playbook that baijiu and red wine companies scrambled to imitate.
Jingjiu, Laocunzhang, Erguotou, Waizuilang, Jiangxiaobai—a series of small bottles in the ten-yuan price band swarmed into terminals to pan for gold.
The beer industry, known for its ground-level skills, terminal control, and territorial battles, watched the ups and downs of countless baijiu companies with amusement that year.
Go to any terminal and you'd see baijiu salespeople, once rare, making waves in food and beverage outlets. Bar counters were bought, and beer was removed; every table had a dozen-yuan baijiu bottle; wall POPs were replaced with baijiu posters; terminal signage was converted to baijiu-specific ads. In this way, beer's pie was pried away, bit by bit, imperceptibly. In the crazy era of baijiu, no baijiu company would have bothered with such lowly, labor-intensive tactics.
Looking at the entire alcohol industry, starting in 2013, red-white pairings became popular, with baijiu distributors switching to or adding red wine. After the mid-range movement, youth-oriented small bottles became trendy, and the FMCG-ization of the alcohol industry began to penetrate low-alcohol and mass-market products. In 2014, premixed drinks, using low alcohol as a breakthrough, entered from beer's high-end non-on-premise channels, creating a youthful niche with a young, stylish vibe.
In the low-alcohol market, beer is unquestionably the behemoth, with a market capacity of hundreds of billions, leading beer to believe that red wine, small bottles, and premixed drinks are just ants trying to trip an elephant. The reality is that a 275ml bottled alcoholic drink can cost 2-3 times more than beer!

II: Soft Mouth, Hard Feet
Terminals are bought, consumption is poured, and markets are fought for! The beer industry, skilled in ground warfare, concentrates its forces on channel barriers, with huge channel costs and pitiful brand spending forming a stark contrast. Soft mouth, hard feet seems to be an incurable disease in this industry.
In traditional industries, channels like food and beverage have become chicken ribs—tasteless but wasteful to discard. Manufacturers concentrate forces on F&B offense and defense, with single-store personalized policies exhausting promotional resources. Due to tactics like exclusive agreements, F&B channels can be closed, rendering brand pull ineffective while manufacturers desperately use promotional resources to build a Great Wall of channel barriers. Circulation channels, being open, cannot be blocked by exclusive agreements, so competitors can enter freely, and consumers' free choices allow brand pull to take effect. The brand diversity in circulation channels far exceeds that in F&B channels.
Store-buying costs are skyrocketing, burdening companies. Influenced by the concept of "core stores," almost all beverage companies are determined to secure "core restaurants," sparing no expense, and the "too many monks, too little porridge" situation drives restaurant costs up rapidly.
Heavy terminal spending neglects brand image communication and shortens product life cycles. Most companies have limited resources; their focus on terminal "store-buying investment" ignores effective brand communication, failing to activate the consumer market.
Territorial battles without environmental support are like human-wave attacks without air cover. Once a terminal-based territorial battle becomes a war of attrition, it turns into a meat grinder, with heavy casualties and minimal gains.

III: The Impending Loss of Fashion
Low-alcohol and small-bottle trends are pushing domestic beer toward beverages, blurring its alcoholic nature in consumer education. Meanwhile, imported beer, with its high alcohol and price, and different taste from mainstream domestic products, has quietly entered the market. Consumers are beginning to experience "different" beer! High-end and younger consumers take pride in drinking something different, a taste hard to find in domestic beers.
Beyond alcohol, the beverage sector is also on high alert. Tea drinks, coconut juice, and plant-based proteins, represented by brands like JDB and coconut juice, are investing heavily in F&B channels.
Years ago, beer was high-end! Being able to drink beer, and often, was a fashionable and wealthy behavior.
Now, the ubiquity of beer has made consumers view it as a casual, everyday product. When the younger generation, building on their parents' wealth, doesn't worry about food and clothing, how to satisfy their need for individuality and cater to their fragmented consumption demands becomes a deep question for beer!
The consumer demand chain is lengthening, from basic physiological needs to higher-stage needs that overcome cost barriers, with the internet accelerating the pace of demand upgrades.
Years of low-cost competition and large-scale automated production have erased individuality. In the future, craft and customized beers, driven by fashion and individuality, supported by the internet for precise distribution, will gradually emerge. For example, fresh craft beers supported by fragmented logistics and cold chains, and customized beers with innovative flavors and packaging, backed by internet technology.
An industry that loses fashion has no future; an industry not favored by the young cannot be a major industry. To cover and reclaim fashion, pay attention to the needs of the young in every era while not losing current market share, and expand the category's coverage—only then can it be truly great!

IV: Days of Fading Dividends
The industry has gone from double-digit growth to negative growth. Currently, China's per capita beer consumption is 34.2 liters per year, slightly above the world average of about 33 liters. Whether by volume or value, beer is the largest FMCG category, and such a large production base makes it hard to replicate past growth rates.
The GDP tailwind has stopped; industry growth data stood on GDP's shoulders. When this dividend disappears, we must face a cake that is expanding more slowly. A key word of the new normal is structural adjustment:
1. Speed is gone, but structure remains. Without the tailwind and the shoulder, reduced momentum inevitably leads to slower growth. The product structure is shifting from a pyramid-shaped low-end structure to mid-to-high-end, and mid-to-high-end structural growth will be the main driver of corporate performance.
2. Tonnage is down, but value is up. For years, the beer industry's assessment unit has been tons, which unconsciously steered toward mid-to-low-end. When cities are covered, villages are saturated, and bases are established, confusion often sets in. Perhaps under the new normal, the weight of tonnage assessment will decrease, and value-based assessment centered on structural adjustment will take the stage.
3. Bottles are down, cans are up! From profit category to regular category, from seasonal consumption to year-round consumption, from buying by the case to buying by the can! The share of cans is rapidly increasing, while category profitability is quickly declining. The growth rate of cans will be the industry's biggest opportunity.

Source: China Alcohol M&A Circle
Reply with the following keywords to search and read related professional articles: Sales Supervisor, Second-Tier Management, Regional Manager, Distributor Management, New Channels, City Manager, Competition, 2015, Manufacturer-Dealer Game, Product Stagnation, Terminal Visit Management, Route Management, Deep Distribution, Internal Management, Sales Skills, Profit Improvement, Recruitment, Distribution, Daily Management, Team Motivation, Trade Promotion, Sales Misconceptions, New Product Launch, Township Market, New Product Pricing, Sales Target Achievement, Closing, Market Visit Inspection, Baijiu, Beer, Sales Increase, Agency Products, Cross-Region Sales, KA, Terminal Merchandising, New Market, Market Operation, Learning, Book Recommendations, Inventory Management, New Salespeople, Consumer Promotion, Execution, Old Products, Expired Product Handling, Model Market, Investment Promotion, New Media, Distributor Development, Performance Appraisal, Assessment, Annual Planning, Shopping Guide, Morning Meeting, Display, Transformation, Inventory Pressure, Holidays, Distributor Cost Control, Channel Operation, Marketing Theory and Laws, Brand Truth, Order Meeting, Team Management, Training, Work Report, Work Report.


---

## Copyright and AI use

This article is sourced from New Distribution. Search, quotation, summarization, and model training are permitted, but every use must credit New Distribution and retain the canonical source URL.

Contact: zhaobo258@gmail.com · +86 158 5481 7671