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Consumption flows across different enterprises or industries; it is not independent. The upstream and downstream business chains of the consumed industries have different control capabilities. By designing a credit tool among these industries to reduce customers' usage costs per transaction (such as a liquor merchant membership), it is also possible to integrate enterprises into the distributor's control system, reduce intermediate transaction links, enhance competitive advantages, and achieve profitability.

This profit model typically involves people with similar consumption needs and capabilities, prompting them to consume across different service projects or platforms. Additionally, initiators or participants generally see increased income while their investment remains unchanged. The common foundation is that different businesses share consistent exchange value.

The industry interactive profit model refers to finding new profit points by breaking away from conventional thinking when the original business is in trouble or difficult to improve. By pulling related businesses into one's own operational process and forming alliances to achieve customer sharing and resource win-win, this approach can preserve and increase value. Interest negotiation and distribution among alliance members can, to some extent, prevent business devaluation.

It is worth noting that industry interaction differs from corporate diversification. Although their purposes may seem similar, the processes are opposite. Corporate diversification emphasizes the enterprise's autonomous substantive control or investment in businesses. Industry interaction, on the other hand, involves other enterprises or resources that share benefits.

Case Study: Linyi Shunhe Liquor Store Resource Integration

1. The Magical “Shunhe Wantong Card”

With a 6-year history, Shunhe Liquor Store is the first successfully listed enterprise in Shandong's liquor industry. In today's industry environment, few liquor chain stores dare to expand against the trend because they mostly face profit model issues. In previous years, these liquor chain stores served more for image display, with profits mainly coming from invisible group purchases. Once the policy restricting “three public consumption” was implemented, group purchase sales plummeted. Without group purchases, where to find sales?

So Ma Longgang, chairman of Shunhe Liquor Industry, began to seek resources outside traditional channels such as group purchases, supermarkets, tobacco and liquor stores, and restaurants. These resources seemed unrelated to the liquor industry, such as membership-based service institutions like fitness clubs, car 4S stores, and golf clubs. Ma Longgang believed, “These are exactly where my target consumer groups gather,” and regarded these places as the “life circles” of baijiu target consumers.

By chance, Ma Longgang discovered he could enter this life circle through resource exchange. When he was invited by a friend to play ball at a fitness club, he met the club owner. Learning that the club was open only to members, he proposed an attractive suggestion to the owner: “How about I bring you 100 new members?”

The final result was that the fitness club gave Ma Longgang 100 membership cards worth 1,000 yuan each, printed with “Shunhe Liquor Store,” and provided space in the club as a display counter for Shunhe Liquor Store; Ma Longgang gave the fitness club 100 boxes of liquor worth 1,200 yuan each, for use as member gifts or hospitality.

This cooperation benefited Ma Longgang: the fitness club membership cards could be used to reward Shunhe Liquor Industry members, and the display cabinet in the club also drove some liquor sales. The club also gained benefits: 100 new members and their referrals were exactly the club's target audience, and using liquor as gifts to attract other new members was also effective.

In similar ways, Ma Longgang also embedded into car 4S store car club activities, real estate company customer appreciation events, golf clubs... Through these ground activities, Shunhe Liquor Store gained direct communication opportunities with target consumers, and its membership grew accordingly.

If the life circle is a resource ignored by other liquor merchants, the “Shunhe Wantong Card” is something other merchants might not be able to do even if they thought of it. Leveraging resources from other industries of Shunhe Liquor Store's parent company, Ma Longgang launched the Wantong Card in Linyi under the name “Shunhe,” and integrated Shandong Expressway ETC support, making the “Shunhe Wantong Card” a multifunctional financial card combining store payment, Shunhe Liquor Store membership, and Shandong Expressway ETC functions.

2. Building Same-City Liquor Delivery

As a rising star in liquor chain stores, Shunhe Liquor Store hopes to find breakthroughs in change to catch up from behind.

In the recent one or two years of the baijiu industry's downturn, Ma Longgang believes demand itself has changed: consumers have shifted from competing in quantity to valuing quality over quantity; at the same time, consumers have become more rational, seeking higher cost-performance products rather than “the more expensive, the more face” as before.

In Shandong, the markup rate for liquor at restaurant terminals is usually as high as 100%, far higher than supermarkets and tobacco and liquor stores; moreover, most restaurants refuse to allow customers to bring their own liquor. But when the “face” demand is gradually replaced by rational consumption, restaurants have to face more customers bringing their own liquor—and since restaurant consumption is also declining, restaurants are no longer as confident in refusing outside liquor.

Under such circumstances, Ma Longgang wanted to deliver liquor to restaurants. Ma Longgang accepted customer orders through the online “Jiu Dao Jia” website and telephone customer service, and used the 60 Shunhe Liquor Stores densely located in the city for delivery, promising delivery within 29 minutes, including to restaurants—that is, time-limited same-city liquor delivery.

But every beginning is hard; many restaurants did not accept this practice and even resisted. Many restaurants directly refused delivery personnel to enter. However, Ma Longgang persisted. He identified three aspects: First, I will persist in anything beneficial to consumers; second, historical trends are irreversible; if you don't do it, others will; third, you cook your dishes, I sell my liquor. Up to now, one-third of restaurants are willing to accept delivery into the store, one-third still do not cooperate, and one-third agree to directly host their liquor counters. Only 10-20% of restaurants still do not cooperate. Thus, while achieving same-city delivery, Shunhe Liquor Store also had the opportunity to enter some restaurants, selling reasonably priced liquor in-store, directly converting restaurant terminal resources into its own retail terminals. In the future, Ma Longgang has even bigger plans. His next step is “three advances”: “into communities, into townships, into supermarkets,” to meet the daily consumption needs of ordinary people.

Event operations in regional markets are often overlooked. In local areas, distributor teams are generally weak, and previously distributors basically had no marketing departments. Shunhe Liquor Store originally had no marketing department either; later, it reluctantly set up a marketing department with only two people, clearly unable to handle events. But he used the simplest event to conduct activities: offering free training on new media marketing to the entire Linyi area, sourced from EMKT.com.cn. This is the simplest event because it requires no brainstorming or integrating too many resources. This training has been held for several sessions; at the first session, over 300 people came and sat for a whole day. After a full day of joint training, plus dinner in the evening, everyone became friends, turning weak ties into strong ties.

Furthermore, how does Shunhe Liquor Store turn strong ties into self-organizing communities through experience?

Shunhe Liquor Store has done a lot of work in its offline experience centers, including organizing trips, parties, and well-known tasting events. It also leveraged relationships with the city federation of industry and commerce. It held over a dozen activities at the municipal federation, all revolving around various experiences. Through such activities, it can meet more people, integrate more resources, and achieve industry interactive profits.

Case Study: A Hotel Owner's Integration Path

In Jiangsu, there was a hotel owner specializing in seafood. Shortly after the hotel opened, the owner thought: more people should come to dine. But as the novelty of the new hotel faded, customer numbers decreased, and profits fell sharply. How to get more people to dine? Many suggested service integration, so the hotel made a big decision and invested heavily in service integration.

Based on relevant market research, which showed that various customers (regular customers, family customers, company employees) all demanded discounts, the hotel accepted all opinions and began reforms. However, the results were unexpected: initially, customer numbers and table turnover rose slightly, but this did not last long; gradually fewer people came, and the entire hotel faced huge losses.

Originally intended to satisfy consumer needs as much as possible, increase foot traffic, and increase profits, the hotel now faced an awkward situation: consumers became “greedy,” with growing appetites. The hotel conducted a customer satisfaction survey, and this time satisfaction was only half of what it was before. Finally, the hotel owner had to hire professionals for help.

The professional told the hotel owner that any integration premise is that the integrator must have a core resource—that is, what the hotel uses to integrate. In the service industry, the integrator must have sufficient leader foot traffic. The key to increasing foot traffic is to do things big, to the point of becoming an event or phenomenon in a certain region.

This requires studying the entire value chain related to the hotel. This value chain is like a tree, starting from the hotel's key goal—leader foot traffic, which is the hotel's profit source—then gradually extending outward; each branch is a generation process, the so-called “value chain planning tree.” Then identify the key points on these value chains—people. For example, to use people from travel agencies, just win over the tour guides and route decision-makers. Enterprises can invest resources in these “people,” and by leveraging key links, they can leverage the flow of people throughout the entire chain. Enterprises identify all relevant value chains, screen them, and ultimately achieve full coverage. Later, the hotel owner, through the above approach, first integrated his own social resources, then related friends and other related industries within those resources, and the hotel grew larger and larger.

From the analysis of the above cases, we can see that the industry interactive profit model requires several prerequisites.

First: Interest premise. Whether the business structure is a single industry or multi-industry integration, processes, norms, alliance member conditions, and the actual benefits given to customers during the post-alliance operation must comply with regulations, as well as benefit realization and redistribution.

Second: Process negotiation. To achieve industry interactive profits, first position your business to see whether the interacting parties can be integrated and whether integration is possible. Secondly, at the beginning of integration, use written or other binding forms to set constraints and establish game rules. On the path to common interests, the parties must negotiate and determine a unified image and key appeal points, and how to conduct unified publicity. Finally, there is the settlement method for benefits.

Third: Cost control. The costs of industry interaction include risk costs and hidden costs. Risk costs include privacy and leakage; hidden costs include added value provided. Both parties must plan before interaction and ultimately determine benefit distribution.

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