---
title: "The Essence of Deep Distribution is Building Good Customer Relations, Leveraging Store Owners' Community Ties for Transactions!"
description: "Retail is naturally community marketing, as stores rely on stable customers within their trade area. Deep distribution leverages store owners' community relationships to transmit brand information, while new retail and new marketing use digital tools to enhance these community interactions."
author: "刘春雄"
publisher: "New Distribution"
email: "zhaobo258@gmail.com"
telephone: "+8615854817671"
published: "2018-12-22"
language: "en"
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# The Essence of Deep Distribution is Building Good Customer Relations, Leveraging Store Owners' Community Ties for Transactions!

> Retail is naturally community marketing, as stores rely on stable customers within their trade area. Deep distribution leverages store owners' community relationships to transmit brand information, while new retail and new marketing use digital tools to enhance these community interactions.

**01 Retail is Naturally Community Marketing**
Retail businesses, except those in high-traffic areas like stations, airports, and commercial centers, naturally have a business radius, known as the trade area. This is typically divided into core, secondary, and fringe trade areas.
**Customers within the trade area are stable and frequent. A store's performance mainly depends on the number and spending power of these stable customers.**
For example, for a street-side store, the core trade area radius is usually a 3-5 minute walk, and even for a KA (Key Account), it's no more than half an hour on foot. The number of customers within this radius is limited; if a customer is dissatisfied, you lose one potential customer. Therefore, retail businesses naturally need to maintain good customer relations within their trade area. This doesn't require business theory; it's business instinct.
Traditional commerce can be roughly divided into KA, chain stores, and independent stores. KA businesses, due to their large trade area and separation of ownership and management, have a trade area but no relationships. Even store members, except for policy discounts, have no regular interaction.
Chain stores, like supermarket chains, have a small trade area, but the store manager is not the owner, and there is staff turnover. Unless the manager is particularly dedicated, most lack the motivation to build relationships with consumers in the trade area.
**In contrast, independent stores, because ownership and management are unified, unless the owner lacks awareness, most owners have the consciousness to build relationships with residents in the trade area. Thus, independent store marketing is naturally community marketing.**
Except for a few retailers who actively engage in community marketing, like distributing flyers in the trade area, most stores are passive. They build customer relations either through daily life (in traditional communities, the owner's life radius overlaps with the business radius) or through interactions when customers enter the store.
**02 Deep Distribution and Community Marketing**
In traditional marketing, brands cannot directly connect with consumers, so they must transmit information (awareness) through two channels: **one is "shouting" through mass media** , which Professor Shi Wei calls "advertising with a loudspeaker"; **the other is "getting close to the terminal" through deep distribution** , because the terminal has community relationships with consumers. Brands (or distributors) build good relations with the terminal, and the terminal builds good relations with consumers, using trust endorsement from relationships to transmit information (awareness).
Of the above two channels, mass media lacks precision, like "shooting birds with scattered shot," with low hit rates, so you need to invest enough "ammunition"; if you don't have enough, don't play. The relationship between store owners and consumers has a limited radius, known as the trade area radius.
To be precise, **the visible form of deep distribution is being close to the terminal and building relations with store owners; the invisible form is leveraging the store owners' community relationships** . Without the endorsement of the store owner's community relations, monetization is difficult.
Retail is the final step in commercial monetization, so marketing research must study this final step. In Western marketing, awareness and transaction are separate, but in Chinese-style deep distribution, the terminal is "trinity" (awareness, transaction, and relationship). Without the terminal's community relationship capability, deep distribution cannot continue.
**03 New Retail is New Community Marketing**
New retail reconstructs people, goods, and scenes. So, how does it reconstruct the relationship with consumers?
In traditional retail, businesses are passive and find it hard to proactively engage with customers. But a basic condition of new retail is "connecting with the C-end" through apps, mini-programs, and communities.
Traditional retail has only offline relationships with customers, but after "connecting with the C-end," stores have three relationships: offline, community, and online. This is what Professor Shi Wei calls the three-dimensional space.
In this three-dimensional space, stores have more, more convenient, and more proactive interactions with consumers, even using big data to grasp better timing and content for interaction.
For example, community group buying e-commerce can interact daily through mini-programs and communities. Similarly, KA new retail can interact with registered users via apps and mini-programs.
Compared to offline relationships, the community radius in the three-dimensional space expands. First, because community and mini-program interactions have no geographic limits, while offline interactions have a social radius; second, new retail's "delivery to home" model expands the store's business radius.
Although new retail's online interactions, online orders, and "delivery to home" expand the trade area radius, the community nature of retail remains unchanged; core, secondary, and fringe trade areas still exist. Each store must defend its core trade area and use internet connection tools to proactively engage in community marketing.
If the reconstruction of people, goods, and scenes in new retail belongs to the retail scope, then the store's promotional and interactive activities targeting customers within the trade area radius belong to the new retail scope.
**04 New Marketing Manifests as Community Marketing**
New marketing has three major facilities: first, B-chain; second, C-chain; third, full chain.
B-chain is channel digitalization, representing the deep distribution process digitally, aiming to improve channel efficiency, especially when channel staff are reduced, using big data for precise targeting and service.
C-chain is connecting with the C-end, via apps, mini-programs, and communities, using internet tools for direct or indirect interaction with users, achieving user connection, user online presence, and user privatization.
Full chain is omni-channel transactions, including short chain (direct sales), medium chain, and long chain, using different transaction channel lengths depending on the product.
C-chain is the core of new marketing. The entities connecting with the C-end can be F2C, B2C, and R2C. Among these, R2C is the main form, meaning brands connect with users through stores.
Technically, F2C interaction is not difficult. But without strong offline relationships, interactions are doomed to be brief and unproductive.
In the past, deep distribution only got close to the terminal and left community marketing to the store owner. Now, new marketing uses internet tools to connect with the C-end, still leveraging the store owner's strong offline relationships to achieve strong interaction with the C-end.
As long as store owners have offline relationships with customers, these relationships can easily transfer to communities and mini-programs, becoming interactions in the three-dimensional space.
Previously, only store owners and customers had offline relationships; through communities and mini-programs, brands can embed themselves, provide interactive content, and achieve three-way interaction among brand, store, and customer.
**New marketing's community marketing is divided into three steps:**
> Step one: Rely on the terminal to connect with the C-end, achieving connection from offline to three-dimensional space. Given that the terminal's business radius is the community, the three-dimensional space still exhibits community characteristics;
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> Step two: Interaction and online content in the three-dimensional space (brands must have content production capability). Online content and interaction achieve user online presence and create stickiness;
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> Step three: User privatization. The process of users being online is itself a process of transmitting information and awareness. When awareness reaches a certain level, user privatization is achieved. User privatization only means users have a stronger consumption tendency and feel a sense of belonging.
If deep distribution can only get close to the terminal, new marketing, through internet tools, relies on the terminal, connects with the C-end, and goes deep into the community.
**In community marketing, every terminal remains the smallest operating unit of marketing. Through internet tools, the "trinity" can still be achieved. At the same time, because it has moved from offline to the three-dimensional space, the value of the "trinity" is amplified.**
Source: Liu Teacher's Forum
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