---
title: "Product Planning for the Milk Powder Category in Stores: A Matter of Survival"
description: "A maternal and baby store on the second floor of a commercial street quietly reduced its store area earlier this year after a period of booming business, with the owner citing high rent; a newly opened store in a residential area often sees few customers, with the owner blaming intense competition. The fundamental reason for the difficulties faced by terminal maternal and baby stores is not rising rents or market saturation, but operational issues. In the maternal and baby market, some stores are losing ground not because of poor objective conditions or market environment, but because of operational problems."
author: "New Distribution"
publisher: "New Distribution"
email: "zhaobo258@gmail.com"
telephone: "+8615854817671"
published: "2017-09-27"
language: "en"
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original_source: "https://mp.weixin.qq.com/s/Od4vV2Fxw-53UxYBt8PHog"
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# Product Planning for the Milk Powder Category in Stores: A Matter of Survival

> A maternal and baby store on the second floor of a commercial street quietly reduced its store area earlier this year after a period of booming business, with the owner citing high rent; a newly opened store in a residential area often sees few customers, with the owner blaming intense competition. The fundamental reason for the difficulties faced by terminal maternal and baby stores is not rising rents or market saturation, but operational issues. In the maternal and baby market, some stores are losing ground not because of poor objective conditions or market environment, but because of operational problems.

A maternal and baby store on the second floor of a commercial street quietly reduced its store area earlier this year after a period of booming business, with the owner citing high rent; a newly opened store in a residential area often sees few customers, with the owner blaming intense competition. The fundamental reason for the difficulties faced by terminal maternal and baby stores is not rising rents or market saturation, but operational issues.
In the maternal and baby market, there are always some who thrive and others who struggle, which means that some terminal stores are losing ground not because of poor objective conditions or market environment, but because of operational problems. Taking the milk powder category as an example, some maternal and baby stores are doomed from the moment they introduce a milk powder brand! This involves two major issues that every terminal maternal and baby store must face in its operations.
**What is positioning, and does the product fit the store's positioning?**
Store positioning refers to the main operational direction and grade of the store, which determines the consumer group it serves. Precise positioning will form the store's imprint, deepen consumers' impression of the store, and attract repeat purchases. However, in the terminal maternal and baby store market, many stores fail because they lack positioning or have vague positioning.
In a recent survey of maternal and baby stores by the French formula brand Adalife, it was found that **many maternal and baby stores have turned themselves into "supermarkets."** They offer a full range of products including milk powder, toiletries, health products, and clothing, with shelves stocked with milk powder products spanning low, medium, and high grades. Store owners hope to attract more consumers by offering as many products as possible, but the reality is that trying to do everything leads to nothing. Conversely, **store owners who understand operations will use positioning to focus all their energy on "catering to" a specific consumer group. Relatively precise marketing activities and a relatively complete range of products at the same grade will make store operations more effective with less effort.**
From this perspective, building a product and service structure based on positioning is crucial for terminal maternal and baby stores. For example, as the only formula brand of the global dairy giant France Sodial Group, French Adalife tends to prefer mid-to-high-end maternal and baby stores in its two-way selection with terminal channel partners. A terminal store positioning that aligns with the brand positioning will be more conducive to creating a win-win situation for both the brand and the terminal.
**Learn to make trade-offs: only cooperate with strong brands**
Abandoning a portion of the consumer base to better serve a more defined consumer group; discarding a portion of brands to attract repeat purchases with truly good products—**the first step in precise positioning is to teach store owners to make trade-offs.** Now, in the increasingly stringent market environment for formula registration, after several "purifications," the number of formula brands will drop from the previous 3,000 to 500. Even so, store owners must still select brands that fit the store's positioning and have corporate strength, which requires screening through two major dimensions.
1. Corporate strength
Affected by the domestic milk powder incidents in previous years, consumers have become more rational and cautious in their consumption of formula. An important consideration for consumers when choosing a milk powder brand is the corporate strength that integrates factors such as milk source and production technology. Taking French Adalife as an example, consumers often notice not only that it is a French brand with 20,000 self-owned pastures ensuring safe and stable milk supply, but also that its 72 factories' advanced management concepts and strong technical advantages, which continuously produce high-quality formula, are also within consumers' consideration. Therefore, as a terminal maternal and baby store owner, the corporate strength of the brand introduced is one of the key factors that must be examined.
2. Corporate support
Nowadays, it is not uncommon for a company to operate several milk powder brands simultaneously. In such cases, according to the company's strategic development needs, the company's support for brands or categories may be prioritized, which means that even if brands or categories belong to the same company or use the same brand, the resources they receive may vary. Appropriate channel support is the best stepping stone for terminals to open the market.
At this year's Sodial Global Strategy Conference, the Sodial Group announced that it will place French Adalife in the most important position at all levels of the group's regulations and production, and will continue to increase promotion and support for the Chinese market. This means that as the only milk powder brand of the Sodial Group, and with China as a strategic highland for French Adalife, Chinese channel operators and terminal store owners will receive many top-tier advantageous resources from the Sodial Group, helping them quickly and sustainably capture the market.
As an undeniably rigid demand market, the formula field has always been in a red ocean mode. Increasingly fierce competition and a more stringent market environment will further drive the survival of the fittest. In this ultimate PK dominated by the consumer market, whoever precisely locks onto the consumer group and obtains the advantageous resources of strong companies will be the first to secure victory.
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