△More content, click the image to enter the FMCG Weekly mini-program [Liu Chunxiong's Comment] A good store location means high rent; a large store area means high rent. As long as a store wants to increase sales, the result is inevitably high rent. The real involution of stores is working for the landlord. bC integration increases sales without changing the store or rent, and marginal profit becomes net profit. This is the optimal solution to store involution. Most business logic is based on "goods-place-people," which means first solving the "goods" problem, then the "place" problem, and finally the "people" problem. In simple terms, the brand produces goods, recruits channel agents to find suitable retail outlets, attracts customers through the store's traffic, and ultimately forms transactions. For example. Suppose you run a milk powder factory with a production cost of 150 yuan per can; you sell it to channel agents at 180 yuan per can, who then sell it to stores at 200 yuan per can, and the store's final selling price is 220 yuan per can. What does this traditional sales model look like? If you are lucky and the milk powder you produce just meets consumer demand, people come into the store to buy milk powder, the store needs more goods, so the distributor orders more milk powder from you. In the short term, making money seems fine. After a while, you notice sales growth slowing down, or even declining. To find out why, you spend a lot of time and energy on user research, and the results show: a large number of competitors have appeared in the market, and your market share has been taken away. You start to reflect. The current model is "goods"-driven transactions, which is what we call "product is king." In this model, if the product has unique functions or brand power, there is naturally no problem and you can continue to make stable profits. But once a large number of homogeneous competitors appear in the market, the brand's market size will be quickly diluted, and survival will become increasingly difficult. With the emergence of competitors, the market pie is severely divided. You realize that the store shelf, as the first scene for consumer decision-making and purchase, is the direct battlefield for close combat with competitors. So you decide to invest in store displays. The first step is to build good relationships with stores and require that your products be placed in the "C-position" on the shelf to seize the first visual opportunity for consumers. The second step is to produce a large number of posters, hanging flags, knife flags, and even booths to maximize product exposure and create visual impact. In the short term, your sales pick up again, and the advantage of store displays brings more sales opportunities. But the good times don't last long. Soon, more and more brands join the "store display battle," and your sales begin to flatten or even decline, but what's worse is that your costs remain high. Where is the problem this time? We can look at the model first. It doesn't change or optimize the transaction model; it simply adds a layer of investment structure. All brands are investing in store displays, but store space is limited, so involution is inevitable. If product display is passively waiting for consumers to see your product, why not take the initiative and have your salesperson recommend it as soon as consumers enter the store? So you think of "investing in store salespeople," giving them incentives to promote your products. You take out part of your profits to invest in store salespeople, but after a while, you find yourself exhausted. It turns out that most salespeople in small and medium-sized maternal and infant stores have not received systematic training, and their professional quality is completely inadequate. After finally conducting various online and offline training across the country, you find that the turnover rate of salespeople is terrifyingly high. Just after training last month, they have all changed by next month. Studying models 02 and 03, we find that the entire transaction chain model has not changed, and the relevant parties have not changed either. The brand is always making moves around the "place." Competing for store shelves and salesperson resources ultimately aims to maximize the brand's capture of store traffic, which is what we call "traffic is king." If we think more deeply, we will find that the so-called traffic is actually the end consumers. These consumers are also the store's private domain traffic (members in the store's membership group). So is there a possibility that we can let the store and the brand jointly operate C-end consumers? The answer is yes, and digitalization gives us the opportunity. With the advent of the pandemic era, store foot traffic has plummeted, making transactions difficult. The pandemic accelerated the digital transformation of the maternal and infant industry. In the BC integrated sales model, the situation where transactions are connected by "place" is transformed, emphasizing "people" as the core. How to understand this specifically? Let's go back to the previous example. The pandemic blocked store foot traffic. You build a BC integrated marketing platform and guide all cooperative stores to join it. The first step is to provide stores with professional brand materials online, assisting them in reaching consumers through community/WeChat Moments, and conducting brand awareness education for consumers. The second step is to empower stores to conduct online operational activities. Stores share the activity entrance to membership groups or WeChat Moments. Consumers participate in the activity and receive coupons issued by the brand. These coupons precisely guide users to offline stores, forming transaction conversions. Finally, users have been educated before entering the store, have a strong recognition of your product, and hold your product coupons in hand. After entering the store, they basically won't consider other brands. Your sales grow steadily, and the cooperation between the store and you will become deeper and deeper. From the above example, we find that BC integrated marketing has become the optimal solution. In this process, the brand provides operational plans, system tools, cost investment, gifts, graphic design, copywriting, and other resources. The store provides private domain traffic and the owner's credit endorsement in the minds of members. Ultimately, the brand gains members, data, and shipment volume, while the store converts group members who had no direct benefits into store foot traffic and sells goods to earn real profits. So, digitalization has transformed the awkward situation of passive brand operations. Brands begin to drive transactions, ushering in the era of "user is king." Let's talk about Junlebao again. Junlebao milk powder's production reached a new high in 2021, with sales exceeding 10 billion yuan. Behind this number are connections to over 100,000 store terminals and tens of millions of consumers. How did Junlebao achieve this? After careful research, we found that Junlebao has made a large amount of digital infrastructure investment over the long term. Take Junlebao's internal code scanning activity as an example. (Internal code, as the name implies, is a QR code printed inside the milk powder can, on the inner side of the aluminum foil membrane. You need to tear open the aluminum foil membrane to see it.)

  1. For consumers After purchasing milk powder in the store, scanning the internal can code directly gives a large cash red envelope reward from the brand. The activity has cultivated a large number of consumers and brought exponential new customer conversion. On the other hand, it has played a good role in building consumer relationships and strengthening the bond between consumers and the brand.
  2. For store terminals The brand provides digital tools, diverse activity plans, real cost investment, and a continuous stream of store foot traffic, helping stores increase sales more easily. Store terminals will also be more motivated to promote brand products.
  3. For distributors The BC linkage injects vitality into transactions. The higher the sales, the more income for distributors, so they are naturally more willing to cooperate.
  4. For the brand The internal can code establishes a connection between the brand and consumers. Every scan by a consumer is a data association and accumulation. The internal can code activity not only drives sales but, more importantly, builds the brand's private domain user pool and accumulates valuable consumer data assets. When a company has the ability to connect with a massive number of consumers, it becomes indestructible. Junlebao has fought a beautiful battle in digital transformation, so many in the industry say, "Digitalization is opening a new era for the maternal and infant industry." Indeed, digitalization has reshaped the industry's marketing landscape and business models, and it is enabling actively transforming companies to develop rapidly. In the end, the biggest beneficiaries of digitalization are not internet companies, but companies that use internet technology to transform themselves! Source: Accelerated Learning Society Author: Liao Mengmeng -END-