---
title: "The \"Ways of Survival\" for Food and Beverage Enterprises in the Mobile Internet Era"
description: "The marketing era is sweeping the globe at lightning speed. Jack Ma said, \"If you don't do e-commerce today, you'll have no business tomorrow.\" While many internet brands like Three Squirrels, Chu Orange, and Master Kong's Braised Beef rise overnight, many traditional food and beverage companies like Xurisheng, Jianlibao, and Taizinai are fading away. This article explores how food and beverage enterprises can not only survive but thrive in the new marketing era."
author: "蒋军"
publisher: "New Distribution"
email: "zhaobo258@gmail.com"
telephone: "+8615854817671"
published: "2014-10-29"
language: "en"
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original_source: "https://mp.weixin.qq.com/s/yfq1dYSllKOWdPFkiiNOZw"
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# The "Ways of Survival" for Food and Beverage Enterprises in the Mobile Internet Era

> The marketing era is sweeping the globe at lightning speed. Jack Ma said, "If you don't do e-commerce today, you'll have no business tomorrow." While many internet brands like Three Squirrels, Chu Orange, and Master Kong's Braised Beef rise overnight, many traditional food and beverage companies like Xurisheng, Jianlibao, and Taizinai are fading away. This article explores how food and beverage enterprises can not only survive but thrive in the new marketing era.

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The marketing era is sweeping the globe at lightning speed.

**Jack Ma said: If you don't do e-commerce today, you'll have no business tomorrow.**

Every day on WeChat, we see the birth of numerous internet brands that become famous across China almost overnight, such as Three Squirrels, Chu Orange's Beijing entry, and Master Kong's Braised Beef. At the same time, we also see many traditional enterprises disappearing or struggling to survive, like food and beverage companies such as Xurisheng, Jianlibao, and Taizinai...

Today, I read an article about how FMCG companies "die," and it left a bitter taste in my mouth. We not only need to know how other companies "die," but more importantly, we need to know how food and beverage enterprises can survive and even thrive in the new marketing era! The companies mentioned above that "died" actually had little to do with the internet; however, some companies have achieved annual sales of hundreds of millions or even billions within 3-5 years, which is closely related to the internet or mobile internet.

So, what should food enterprises do in the mobile internet era, or what are the ways to survive, to align with the major trends and live better and healthier?

**Should We Embrace the Internet?**

Many traditional small and medium-sized food and beverage enterprises only pay lip service to internet marketing and e-commerce, acknowledging it as an irreversible trend, but in product planning, brand promotion, and channel selection, they still follow traditional methods: distribution, promotion, sales promotion, and personnel follow-up. Their annual work is basically fixed: at the beginning of the year, distributors pay and stock up; then second-tier distributor ordering meetings; then joint sales and distribution; peak season consumer promotions; off-season market maintenance; and the year's work ends, waiting to go home for the New Year.

So, should we do e-commerce?

Of course! Not only should we do it, but the sooner, the better. Not only in awareness but also starting with the simplest tasks. E-commerce is a strategy, but it requires specific implementation plans and content. Where is the breakthrough? For example, start with simple WeChat marketing, combining micro-marketing with e-commerce for small and medium enterprises; also use Baidu promotion, create Baidu Baike, Baidu Knows, Baidu Tieba, etc. You can start by opening a Tmall store, building your own marketing website, and running consumer promotion activities.

**The Internet Mindset**

Some enterprises believe that traditional channels still generate significant sales, and the internet will greatly impact traditional channels, causing channel conflicts. Therefore, they hesitate and hold back when promoting e-commerce, fearing it will disrupt traditional channels. But at the same time, they want to do e-commerce, often feeling conflicted. The compromise is to develop different products or use different brands for the two businesses, meaning online and offline are differentiated, but this differentiation results in two separate entities.

Is this a good approach? I can confidently say it is not.

Many people think online prices must be lower than offline. That might have been true a few years ago, but not now. Because what offline does, online must also do: online requires design, product development, pre-sales consultation, warehousing, shipping, after-sales, and someone must be at the computer 12 hours a day. How can prices be cheaper? In the Marketing 3.0 era, online and offline are not about comparing prices; at most, online has a long-tail effect, which can be used to clear out-of-season or defective products.

Internet or mobile internet practices must achieve things that offline cannot. For example, facing a national market and consumers, you can run precise campaigns at certain times to ignite consumption; you can also sell products that are difficult to sell offline through the long-tail effect.

To do internet and large-scale internet sales, you should not use different brands. The brand should be unified, and ideally, online and offline prices should be the same. Although online may not have a significant advantage in the short term, it will eventually achieve great development. It is rare to see products developed specifically for a region or a channel achieve large sales volumes.

**Create "Big Single Products"**

Whether in the internet era or the traditional marketing era, flagship products—that is, big single products or hit products—are the foundation for high profits and continuous growth. Wahaha initially built its business on water products, creating a nationally renowned big single product. In recent years, with Nutrition Express, it achieved over 10 billion yuan in sales, supporting its annual sales of around 80 billion yuan. But in the past two years, no successful big single products have emerged. Hello C is a tactical product, while Qili and Gravis have not performed well. As a result, Wahaha's sales have hovered around 80 billion yuan each year.

**How to Combine Online and Offline**

Jack Ma and Wang Jianlin's 100 million yuan bet will never have a final winner because by then, online and offline will have merged—there will be no completely offline or completely online.

Food and beverage enterprises have well-established offline channels and marketing. For mature products, it is an excellent opportunity to develop online and mobile internet channels. Consumers can purchase packaged food and beverages in bulk for replenishment. For frozen foods or those with high delivery requirements, it may be difficult to achieve one-step delivery, but this can be solved through the O2O model.

For example, for some small-category quick-frozen foods, consumers do not purchase frequently because of small purchase volumes and short shelf life. Supermarkets and community stores usually do not stock much, which affects sales and promotion. Traditional sales methods would be ineffective. If online or mobile ordering is used, combined with cooperation between manufacturers and community stores, where community stores order and deliver based on orders, it can work well. This solves the manufacturer's delivery radius problem and also addresses inventory and shelf-life issues for stores. The only thing manufacturers and merchants need to do is make consumers see, know, and place orders, which can be done on WeChat or e-commerce platforms.

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