Click to read the original article for details Recently, the Alibaba Research Institute released the "2020 China Consumer Brand Development Report," which points out that in the past two years, Chinese FMCG brands have captured more than four-fifths of the market share previously held by foreign brands. Especially in the premium price band of FMCG subcategories, the survey shows that in categories such as dairy products and digital products, nearly one-third of consumers choose Chinese brands for premium products. Such data is encouraging for everyone, and for FMCG practitioners, it also shows us that Chinese FMCG brands are increasingly rising. If we categorize Chinese consumer brands by demand, they can basically be divided into three stages: the earliest was "whether they exist," a few years ago it was "whether there are many," and now it is "whether they are good." Image source: Alibaba Research Institute "2020 China Consumer Brand Development Report" If in the past, FMCG products relied on low quality and low prices of domestic brands, or high quality and affordable prices of foreign brands, to gain market share and achieve growth. Now, the consumer demand for "good things" is increasingly being met by domestic consumer brands. Domestic consumer brands have grown from nothing to something, and from something to excellence, achieving leapfrog development and growth. The report points out that the pioneers of Chinese consumer brands are also enterprises at the forefront of digital transformation. The eight key words summarizing the pioneers are: "Create Change, Integrate Product and Sales," small and beautiful brands focus on niche markets, data-driven product innovation, activate consumer assets, full-business digital intelligence collaboration, go global together, organizational acceleration, and direct sales from production areas. Image source: Alibaba Research Institute "2020 China Consumer Brand Development Report" The report specifically mentions three digital transformation cases of consumer brands: 01 Mengniu's Digital Transformation Road 02 Saturnbird Coffee's Data-Driven Product Innovation 03 Liby's Online Marketing Management System Drives Organizational Acceleration -01- Mengniu's Digital Transformation Road Mengniu, I believe practitioners are familiar with it, and its steady market growth in recent years is obvious to all. The report mentions that Mengniu's digital work focus under the "2020 Strategy" is "end-to-end digital insight." Through cooperation with the Alibaba platform, it has strengthened the digitalization of consumer-facing business processes. It has also brought revolutionary changes to Mengniu's enterprise management and industrial operations. Image source: Alibaba Research Institute "2020 China Consumer Brand Development Report" Taking strategic products for expanding the township market as test objects, product packaging is set with a unique code per item, and rights are designed to enhance QR code interaction and establish connections with target consumers, exploring and building complete digital marketing management capabilities. In terms of consumer insight, Mengniu is a demonstration enterprise in the FMCG industry for establishing a full-domain data analysis dashboard, having successively completed the digital unique ID identification of membership, products, and marketing resources for its brands such as Yashili, Dora, and Ruipuen. Through tag-based management of consumers across the entire domain, it can customize communication plans for consumer groups with different tags, implementing consumer-centric precision marketing and services. -02- Saturnbird Coffee's Data-Driven Product Innovation Saturnbird Coffee, as an innovative consumer brand in recent years, completed a B-round financing of over 100 million yuan in September. Founded in 2015, Saturnbird has maintained strong growth since landing on Tmall in 2018. After topping the coffee category on Tmall Double 11 in 2019, during this year's Tmall 618, Saturnbird surpassed Nestlé and Starbucks, ranking first in the Tmall 618 instant beverage category sales. Saturnbird is positioned as "premium instant coffee." Based on platform consumer insights, it is judged that when consumers can consume 50 cups of coffee within two months and form a 40% repurchase rate within 90 days, they have basically formed a coffee consumption habit. Based on this, Saturnbird established the fundamentals for new product development and promotional policies. Subsequent new product development, launch rhythm, and user experience also follow big data indicators and are continuously adjusted and optimized. To this end, the Tmall Innovation Center also deduced a "new product innovation process": Image source: Alibaba Research Institute "2020 China Consumer Brand Development Report" -03- Liby's Online Marketing Management System Drives Organizational Acceleration Liby Group, as a leading laundry care brand, started its marketing digitalization 3.0 project internally as early as 2015, focusing on core business and continuously upgrading business digitalization with "Marketing 3.0," "Supply Chain 3.0," and "Management 3.0." The report describes that Liby Group, through co-creation with DingTalk, upgraded its original enterprise communication tools. The customized new "Dudu" integrates the enterprise's internal information systems and more than 50 mobile businesses, combining functions such as OA, O2O, SFA, travel, shopping guide, and training. It serves the brand group and parent group company, and is the enterprise's unified and only cloud-based operational collaboration platform (middle platform). On the collaboration middle platform, a marketing management system is installed. Headquarters can understand real-time statistical data and progress in the omnichannel sales process through a visual dashboard, initiate tasks online as needed, flexibly organize and mobilize frontline employees, greatly improving the headquarters' sales management system's rapid response capability and overall management efficiency. In terms of training methods, through group live streaming, video conferencing, and other methods, the original communication methods of the distribution system have been changed. The headquarters' promotional policy issuance work, which previously required 5-8 days of offline meetings, has now been transformed into online completion within one day. All frontline sales employees use the online instant assessment module for effect evaluation after training, greatly saving time-consuming and labor-intensive communication costs. Liby Group's ecosystem partners join online collaborative operations, connecting more than 1,100 distributors upstream and downstream, over 3,500 shopping guides, as well as salespeople and delivery drivers online, closely collaborating to strengthen the network collaboration of the ecosystem. It is estimated that online network collaborative management improves efficiency by about 80% compared to traditional management methods. Image source: Alibaba Research Institute "2020 China Consumer Brand Development Report" -04- Digital Transformation Is Urgent From the above cases, we can see that when we have the ability to innovate and produce more and better products, enterprises need to rely on the mobile internet soil and digital infrastructure to achieve omnichannel scenario operations, precise consumer demand insight, and the boost of online management systems. After the epidemic, with changes in consumer lifestyles and industry development trends, every FMCG enterprise must accelerate the pace of digital transformation. Omnichannel layout, full touchpoint connection, cultivating digital talent, improving supply chain agility, and organizational response capability are the internal skills that every FMCG enterprise needs to cultivate for the long term to cope with an uncertain future.