---
title: "Marketing Transformation under the Trend of Balanced Integration of Consumer Behavior"
description: "Li Zhengquan once wrote on his Weibo that 'migrant workers are ambassadors of brands,' meaning that the large migrant worker population brings back not only money but also brand awareness and lifestyle insights from big cities to rural markets, effectively bridging the urban-rural brand gap. Looking back, he admits he was still conservative, as the mobile internet era has accelerated changes in consumer behavior and marketing trends."
author: "李政权"
publisher: "New Distribution"
email: "zhaobo258@gmail.com"
telephone: "+8615854817671"
published: "2014-11-13"
language: "en"
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# Marketing Transformation under the Trend of Balanced Integration of Consumer Behavior

> Li Zhengquan once wrote on his Weibo that 'migrant workers are ambassadors of brands,' meaning that the large migrant worker population brings back not only money but also brand awareness and lifestyle insights from big cities to rural markets, effectively bridging the urban-rural brand gap. Looking back, he admits he was still conservative, as the mobile internet era has accelerated changes in consumer behavior and marketing trends.

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Li Zhengquan once wrote on his Weibo: 'Migrant workers are ambassadors of brands.' The gist is that the vast migrant worker population brings back from large and medium-sized cities and developed regions not only money, but also brand awareness and consciousness, as well as an understanding of lifestyles. They bring the brand awareness they encountered in big cities back to rural markets, effectively erasing the urban-rural brand structure divide in China.

Looking back, I was still conservative. In the mobile internet era, commerce and consumer behavior seem to have installed a super-powered engine, evolving and advancing with a roar. We need to make bold, even bolder, predictions and preparations for future changes in consumer behavior and corresponding marketing trends.

**The Trend of Balanced Integration of Consumer Behavior**

Now, in Li Zhengquan's view, the era of 'integration'—a keyword with richer connotations—is surging forward. Let's see what this 'integration' trend is and how we need to adapt to it.

**1. Integration of Urban and Rural Consumer Behavior.**

In the past, affluent families in county towns or townships would shop in larger prefecture-level cities, and affluent families in those cities would drive to provincial capitals. But since Taobao and JD.com appeared, even consumers in the most remote and impoverished areas can enjoy shopping from afar, access superior brands at lower costs, or purchase products with better value for money online.

But the factors that can bring about the integration of urban and rural consumer behavior, and the existing factors promoting it, go far beyond this.

First, the transparency and equalization of consumer information. As long as we have a PC, iPad, or mobile phone and can access the internet, regardless of urban or rural, rich or poor, if we want to know and have similar interests, a consumer in a remote Yunnan village can have exactly the same brand information as a consumer in Shanghai, including more specific details about products, promotions, and prices. The transparency and equalization of consumer information brought by the internet and mobile internet is increasingly fair to almost every consumer.

Second, the role of population mobility as ambassadors. China has a floating population of 200 to 300 million people each year, including those who move from villages to towns, from small towns to large and medium-sized cities for work, business, or tourism. This gives China 200 to 300 million brand ambassadors. As mentioned at the beginning, these brand ambassadors are smoothing out the regional gaps that previously existed in brand awareness and consumption awareness.

Third, urbanization and urban convergence. According to the National Bureau of Statistics, China's urbanization rate reached 53.73% in 2013 (Is this data real? Damn, whenever I think of the National Bureau of Statistics, I think of how the internet has helped us re-understand and re-evaluate this organization). According to plans, by 2050, China's urbanization target will exceed 70%.

In fact, we are likely to achieve the 70% urbanization target ahead of schedule, because the factors driving urbanization are no longer just relevant government departments, but also the internet that Li Zhengquan is connected to while writing, and the mobile phone and mobile internet I check from time to time—in today's world of synchronized information, mutual influence of lifestyles, and convergence of consumption choices and brand information, the concept of urban-rural or regional differences is increasingly fading.

Do you think urbanization is just the urbanization and high-rise-ification of rural areas?

**2. Balanced Integration of Online and Offline.**

The rise of online shopping platforms like Taobao has brought various new troubles to many enterprises (Can we still call them 'new' troubles now?)

For example, some companies have seen online prices even lower than their ex-factory prices, so they hurriedly issued statements saying, 'We have not supplied goods to any online shopping platform or store, and we do not guarantee the authenticity, quality, or service of the products; buyers bear the consequences.' Some companies are trying to differentiate online and offline sales through brand or product segmentation to resolve price conflicts. Some companies directly raise online prices by 10% or lower them by a certain percentage, planning to achieve relative balance in online and offline prices and profit margins through activities and fees. Some companies want to learn from Suning's so-called 'same price online and offline'...

Now, in Li Zhengquan's view, the era of balanced integration of online and offline brands, products, prices, and services, as well as the balanced integration of online and offline activities and customer conversion, is truly arriving.

First, from the consumer side: Online shopping has become a universal lifestyle.

Recently, the Ali Research Institute released the '2013 China Urban E-commerce Development Index Report,' which seems to confirm my view on the balanced integration of online and offline consumer behavior—the report, based on 53 'National E-commerce Demonstration Cities,' disclosed that 'the proportion of online shoppers exceeds 55%.' What does this mean?

It means that online shopping has become a lifestyle for the majority of people in these cities, and it is foreseeable that as post-85s, post-90s, and more generations who grew up with mice become the main consumers in China, online shopping will become even more prevalent, reaching 70%, 80%...

The popularization of this lifestyle will have two direct impacts: First, more consumers will behave more similarly online and offline. Compared to earlier offline consumption behavior, consumers who later started online shopping will more likely replicate their offline consumption behavior online, meaning they won't think 'when I think of online shopping, I think of hunting for bargains online' as before. Yes, with this, the second impact is that consumers' price sensitivity in online shopping is decreasing.

These two factors affect enterprises, meaning that from the consumer's perspective, our differentiation in brands, products, prices, and activities online and offline will not only be unnecessary but also a mistake.

Second, from the channel cost side: E-commerce channel costs and offline channel costs are becoming more balanced.

Online and offline are not two closed markets. For consumers, whether online or offline, it's one market—a market for their shopping and consumption. In a single market, the two different sales carriers of online and offline naturally adjust toward channel cost convergence, which is the natural law of market regulation. And 'the strongest force wins'—when online shopping platforms like Taobao/Tmall, JD.com, and Suning.com become mainstream consumer platforms, carrying greater sales throughput than most online and offline channels, costs exceeding those of offline and other channels is also a basic law of the online and offline channel jungle.

In fact, in recent years, due to annual fees such as consumer deposits and technical support fees, commission points, advertising, and promotions, online marketing costs have become very close to offline marketing costs. With the imminent implementation of taxes on online stores, even the tax cost difference for online sales will disappear.

Third, from the O2O side: The surging implementation of O2O business models is driving further balanced integration of online and offline.

Whether it's offline experience and offline consumption, or online experience and payment with offline pickup, or other various O2O business practices that connect online and offline, it will inevitably lead to a chain-like integration of our online sales brands, products, prices, services, and activities with offline sales—embedded and mutually reinforcing in terms of customer traffic, marketing actions, and service measures, rather than separated.

In other words, from Li Zhengquan's perspective, if we start from the point of avoiding online-offline conflicts and clearly or excessively differentiate online and offline brands, products, prices, and services, it will definitely go against the commercial spirit of the O2O model we are striving to promote.

How will these evolving trends in consumer behavior affect our marketing actions and what changes will they trigger?

**Marketing Transformation Triggered by the Trend of Balanced Integration of Consumer Behavior**

The trend of balanced integration of urban and rural consumer behavior and online and offline consumer behavior has already had a profound impact on our marketing actions and will continue to affect them.

**1. Abandon your outdated target consumer group concept.**

Our traditional 'target consumer group' has become a concept of the old era. Because the integration of urban and rural consumer behavior we discussed earlier is rounding off the edges of definitions like 'urban family population' (or with several modifiers before it), and smoothing the uneven gap between urban and rural consumer groups.

For example, for a small sanitary napkin, when it comes to Anle, many might think it's the choice of middle-aged women, even women in counties and townships. When it comes to Space 7, its main consumer group is girls or women under 25 in urban markets. But based on Li Zhengquan's travels to at least 30 county-level markets in the past year, Space 7 still has huge opportunities and actual sales in rural markets. This can be seen from its high penetration in rural distribution.

Let's listen to a grocery store owner in a town in Dujiangyan, Sichuan: 'Space 7 sells very well! Especially after October each year—many young people who work outside start coming back. They've seen more of the world and earned money, so they choose better products. Local people who rarely go out are also influenced by them and start using (Space 7).'

Yes, mobility and the internet medium have allowed brand information to cross the urban-rural awareness gap. Brand exposure, advanced lifestyles and concepts, rising income, and upgraded consumption awareness and behavior are making target consumer groups, which were previously divided by urban-rural, income, education, etc., increasingly blurred in many industries, especially FMCG and FMCG-like industries.

Indeed, in today's environment, the previously 'accurate' audience positioning of many consumer brands has become inaccurate, and there is an increasing need to revise the connotation of their target consumer groups. However, in Li Zhengquan's view, under the broad target consumer group, there are main consumer groups and one after another small, circle-based consumer groups that 'seek common ground while reserving differences.'

**2. From the consumer group perspective, online and offline really don't need to be divided so finely!**

Many enterprises have grown and developed driven by channels, and they have differentiated brands and products across different channels based on the characteristics of different channel types and the governance structure needs of channels.

Among these, deciding what to sell online and offline separately is a typical response to this logic, and it has always been a major headache for many enterprises.

But from the consumer's standpoint, what to sell online and offline has never been a problem; in fact, they hope for unification, rather than changing brands, packaging, specifications... to fool them in various ways, increasing their choice difficulty and blurring their reference points.

Now, the decision factors of the past are changing. Li Zhengquan believes that in the increasingly evolving consumption context of the internet era, the commercial interference factors between enterprises, brands, and consumers, or the commercial power of intermediate distribution channels, are beginning to change with the situation, and even show signs of fading in some areas, increasingly presenting a consumer marketing trend where public relations communication goes directly to consumers, relationship maintenance goes directly to consumers, orders go directly to consumers...

Every enterprise needs to remind itself that the more obvious and intense this yielding trend becomes, the more channel-driven factors will fade. That is, our development engine is increasingly shifting from channel-driven to consumer or consumer value marketing-driven.

Under this trend, our past considerations of which brands and products to sell online or offline, or in A channel or B channel with differentiation, gradually become less of a concern.

This is typical commercial and consumption evolution in the PC and mobile internet era.

**3. It is increasingly important to focus on key township markets and key sales periods.**

In the past, when launching a new product, we would specify in the launch notice: the product targets such and such consumer groups, is suitable for what type of market, and is recommended to launch first in certain markets, and is suitable for what channels...

That is, we would clearly define and divide our brands and products for urban markets (or based on economic development and income levels, further divide urban markets into finer types like Beijing, Shanghai, Guangzhou, Shenzhen), rural markets, and for modern trade, traditional trade, or online e-commerce channels.

But after our earlier discussion, we can see that with the expansion of consumer groups and the convergence of online and offline, our previous definitions of market and channel types will also become inappropriate or even wrong. Because brands and products we previously thought were only suitable for first-, second-, and third-tier city markets can now be popularized and expanded to fourth- and fifth-tier rural markets.

In this situation, two points become very important. First, although we may not have the resources or capabilities to deeply cultivate a wide market, we must focus on key township markets with concentrated populations, small transportation and logistics hub functions, and wide radiation. That is, we or our distributors should consciously sink our market and management focus to this level. Second, given the large outflow of population in township markets, with the peak period of returning and staying from October to March each year, or the peak of population and consumption, we must pay attention to and vigorously seize these key sales periods.

But no matter how much we talk, it's useless. To seize sales opportunities in key township markets and key sales periods, without going to key townships and truly sinking down, and without doing the basic work of distribution and market building before the key sales periods arrive, it's all in vain.

[Note] This article is excerpted from Mr. Li Zhengquan's planned book 'Changes in the Next Decade: Trend Insights on the Choices and Directions of Traditional Enterprises and Their People in the Mobile Internet Era.' Publishers are welcome to compete for the rights. For updates and more content on #Changes in the Next Decade#, follow the WeChat public account [Business Trends] (lizhengquan02).

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