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What is the last meter from product to consumer? Is it the most prominent position on a shelf for a beverage, or the meticulously designed product detail page on an e-commerce platform? In an era where big data has become a buzzword, precise product recommendations are already the most basic achievement. For example, Alibaba's Tmall Xiaodian (Tmall convenience stores) in partnership with community convenience stores uses Tmall's data to precisely cover consumer information in the community and surrounding areas, knowing what you want, what you lack, how much you lack, and when you need it, thereby guiding the store's inventory and sales.

Another example is that major e-commerce platforms have achieved 'thousands of people, thousands of pages' technology, where a thousand people see a thousand different product recommendation homepages. The platform knows better than you what you want and what you intend to buy, then repeatedly shows it to you, guiding you to add items to your cart and then clear it...

But why, despite such precise reach, do Tmall Xiaodian stores still hit a sales ceiling, and why are platform-recommended products less accurate than the store owner's intuition? Most companies or brands find that their conversion rates on e-commerce platforms do not justify their customer acquisition costs.

Because big data only solves the physical distance between products and consumers.

In the wave of big data, more and more marketers habitually start from data metrics to define user personas, thereby formulating sales plans or communication strategies. Big data can, to some extent, help marketers see users more objectively across dimensions such as age, education, origin, and occupation.

However, data reports are abstract. Overemphasizing data leads to a loss of complete understanding of the sales scene and communication scene. Quantified metrics can be one-sided; consumers are complete individuals, influenced by both rationality and emotion.

Big data is more like a post-hoc summary, but most consumer behavior is a spontaneous reaction. When we smell the aroma of barbecue or alcohol, we suddenly crave skewers or a drink. This is not because the consumer, being post-80s, under work pressure, with upper-middle income, decides from data analysis that they need a drink with their barbecue.

So whether it's placing the product in the most prominent shelf position or using data to display product information more precisely to those in need, they only address the physical distance.

Seeing the product is the first element, but to trigger a purchase, you must also break through the consumer's cognitive barrier—the psychological distance from product to consumer.

Scenes Narrow the Psychological Distance

A person who has just finished running or gotten off work encounters a barbecue restaurant on the way home. What do they first encounter? It's the aroma, an irresistible factor that directly triggers dopamine. You decide not to eat, perhaps because you've already eaten, or because someone at home has prepared a meal, or because your recent weight gain doesn't allow junk food, or because you're financially constrained and even a barbecue is a burden...

If at that moment, your girlfriend or close friend sends a message: "Want to grab some skewers?" Or the person you like suddenly invites you: "I've been craving barbecue lately, are you free now?" Or your boss calls: "I need to talk to you about something, how about a barbecue place?"... How would you decide?

Some might say, is reality that coincidental? Reality is exactly that coincidental, and perhaps even more complex. So in our lives, we encounter many specific situations that force us to decide whether to consume.

The aroma of the barbecue stall is the first stimulus, an irresistible 'scent marketing.' You are in a specific time and space, forced to choose whether to consume—this is a scene.

"Field" is time and space; a field is time plus space. Users can stay and consume in this space. If a person cannot stay or consume in a space, that field is non-existent or ineffective.

"Scene" is scenario and interaction. When users stay in this space, there must be scenarios and interactions to trigger emotions and involve users' opinions.

When the consumer's scene is clear, the consumption need becomes clear.

When a product's detail page on an e-commerce platform is just a standalone photo and description, you consider whether it's necessary to buy it.

When a product photo is integrated into a life scene, you consider what role it would play in your life if you owned it.

Thus, a scene directly lets you feel the experience of owning the product, giving you the possibility of 'you can have it too.' It creates the future and then helps you realize it, like using a credit card: buy now, pay later.

Credit cards pre-spend future consumption; scenes pre-experience the future.

How Companies Should Utilize Scenes

Companies often lament missing the era of traffic dividends and big data, but now that we are in the era of scenes, what should companies do?

Traditional companies think their internet transformation failed because almost all their resources are offline, and they struggle in the internet world. But with internet marketing technologies, methods, and channels now abundant and mature, why do most traditional companies still face the pain of internet transformation?

Traditional marketing treats consumers as a collection of needs, satisfying them from different angles and ways by refining needs. But scenes are the opposite: they don't fragment consumers but start from the path of a person completing a task—when, where, what they do, how they decide under different factors, and what results those decisions affect...

So traditional marketing needs are clear, but in the new era, as industries and consumers progress simultaneously, needs become blurred. Scenes become the new user demand in the internet age. 'Seizing scenes' means seizing traffic, seizing an entry point for communication with consumers, and seizing more opportunities.

It is precisely because companies have lost control over changes in consumer needs that some companies, no matter how much strength they have, seem to have nowhere to place it.

The concept of scenes is meant to remind companies to use their existing resources to construct specific times and spaces, use products to carry brand-created emotions, satisfy consumers' complex and multi-level needs, and communicate with consumers.

Misunderstanding scenes leads many to think scenes are just about creating a consumption atmosphere. Those are only superficial. True scenes involve consumers in product iteration or brand building—participation, feedback, and collision, not activities where you get a discount, like, and leave.

Why should companies start communicating with consumers? Because consumers will give feedback on the information conveyed through content. This feedback helps companies gain closer insight into consumer needs, build better scenes, and create better, more positive experiences.

So, the key for traditional companies to successfully transform online is to build a communication channel with consumers. Only through interaction with consumers can there be brand image, word-of-mouth, and continuous insight into new consumer needs.

Scenes Need Strategy

Marketing strategy is just one part of corporate strategy. Its purpose is to help companies achieve set key strategic goals, so strategy cannot lose focus or be fanciful.

Creating scenes still requires strategy. Classic examples: Head & Shoulders' strategy opened a communication channel with consumers by addressing the pain point of dandruff affecting social etiquette in social scenes. Wanglaoji's strategy opened a channel by entering the heavy-flavor dining scene that easily triggers internal heat, highlighting the cooling and efficacy attributes of herbal tea. Six Walnuts entered the college entrance exam review scene, leveraging the common perception that walnuts nourish the brain, to open a communication channel.

These cases are not replicable, and in a red ocean market, companies are segmenting consumer needs more finely, making it harder to seize such advantageous needs.

But consumers' underlying needs are constant. Our so-called strategy is how my product, in time and space, satisfies that need.

Observing classic cases, you'll find they all start from scenes familiar to consumers, reducing the sense of unfamiliarity, ensuring consumers are more easily drawn into the scene and influenced by the atmosphere. They expose consumers' life troubles in familiar scenes, highlight the product's presence in that scene, and effectively stimulate demand.

In the internet age, technological advancements allow various marketing techniques to bring consumers more distinctive consumption scenes, such as cross-industry brand marketing, using different brands and scenes to satisfy different levels of experience for the same demographic.

It's worth noting that whether in traditional or internet eras, what scenes convey to consumers must be product value. If product value and scenes don't integrate well, the product may just be a good concept, failing to drive purchases. For example, unmanned convenience stores will ultimately become mere formality.

Because in time and space, unmanned convenience stores solve no consumer pain points and have no touchpoints to stimulate consumer emotions, so they are destined to be a financing project that fades away after the novelty wears off.

The last meter from product to consumer is like a Long March.

Source: Marketing Wang Laopao (ID: wangchaolaopao)