---
title: "Under the New Normal, Traditional Marketing Fails! What Drives Product Movement to Thaw the Freeze?"
description: "As the FMCG industry evolves and the information age arrives, product movement has become the primary factor determining the rise or fall of the entire FMCG supply chain. Enterprises, distributors, and retailers must all focus their efforts on driving product movement, with enterprises bearing the greatest responsibility as the industry's leading force. This industry-wide examination led by product movement poses a significant challenge to FMCG manufacturers and distributors, while also prompting a collective reflection on traditional marketing thinking."
author: "张宇"
publisher: "New Distribution"
email: "zhaobo258@gmail.com"
telephone: "+8615854817671"
published: "2016-04-02"
language: "en"
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markdown: "https://xinjignxiao.com/en/articles/under-the-new-normal-traditional-marketing-fails-what-drives-product-mov-cfc0dd57.md"
original_source: "https://mp.weixin.qq.com/s/YFsomDSmO-Tr94tl09Bz5w"
translation: "https://xinjignxiao.com/zh/articles/%E6%96%B0%E5%B8%B8%E6%80%81%E4%B8%8B-%E4%BC%A0%E7%BB%9F%E8%90%A5%E9%94%80%E5%A4%B1%E7%81%B5%E4%BA%86-%E5%8A%A8%E9%94%80%E8%A7%A3-%E5%86%BB-%E5%87%AD%E4%BB%80%E4%B9%88-cfc0dd57.md"
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---

# Under the New Normal, Traditional Marketing Fails! What Drives Product Movement to Thaw the Freeze?

> As the FMCG industry evolves and the information age arrives, product movement has become the primary factor determining the rise or fall of the entire FMCG supply chain. Enterprises, distributors, and retailers must all focus their efforts on driving product movement, with enterprises bearing the greatest responsibility as the industry's leading force. This industry-wide examination led by product movement poses a significant challenge to FMCG manufacturers and distributors, while also prompting a collective reflection on traditional marketing thinking.

As the FMCG industry evolves and the information age arrives, product movement has become the primary factor determining the rise or fall of the entire FMCG supply chain. Whether enterprises, distributors, or retailers, all work must revolve around driving product movement, and as the industry's leading force, enterprises undoubtedly bear greater responsibility.

This industry-wide examination led by product movement is undoubtedly a major challenge for FMCG manufacturers and distributors, and also a collective reflection on traditional marketing thinking in the FMCG industry. As the saying goes, product movement stems from good marketing strategies and is inseparable from good channel execution. To this end, enterprises must stand at the height of the entire supply chain, re-plan their functional positioning, strengthen their product development and marketing promotion capabilities, and at the same time closely unite with channels and collaborate with distributors to jointly break the ice of sluggish product movement.

**Product Movement Strategy Is a Complete Product Promotion Plan**

Currently, the FMCG industry generally faces the test of product movement pressure, but the problems exposed by various enterprises differ: some enterprises have good product quality and image, but do not conduct market promotion, resulting in no one paying attention at the terminal, and sales are even worse than second- or third-rate products; some enterprises have strong strength and are determined to build a brand, but after various promotions and publicity, the product is nowhere to be seen at the channel terminal. Without distribution rate, there is naturally no product movement rate; there are also enterprises that have both publicity and ground promotion, with terminal store purchases and promotional investments not lacking, but as soon as the market begins to move, the enterprise cuts investment, and the product movement situation takes a sharp turn for the worse. The product becomes popular for a short time and then disappears.

Looking at the above three types of enterprises, the first type has no marketing strategy, and the market has never seen product movement; the second type has a marketing strategy, but the strategy is not on the right track, leading to slow product movement; the third type has product movement, even popularity, but it dies too quickly, and product movement is not sustainable. This also reflects three misunderstandings in enterprises' formulation of product movement strategies:

**First, product movement cannot be separated from promotion, but is promotion alone enough?** Enterprises simply equate marketing with promotion. Under this concept, product movement strategies can only treat the symptoms, not the root cause, and may even lead to promotion syndrome, where big promotions lead to big sales, small promotions lead to small sales, and no promotions lead to no sales.

**Second, product movement is not just a single means, but a systematic measure.** For example, emphasizing high-altitude brand hype while neglecting basic channel construction makes the brand like water without a source. If channels are unclear, terminals are invisible, promotions cannot keep up, and consumers do not buy, product movement becomes empty talk.

**Finally, thinking that product movement is only a phased market launch while ignoring the continuity of strategy.** Enterprises operate the market with a top-heavy approach, attempting to open up the product movement situation by concentrating firepower in the early stage, then withdrawing firepower to reap profits from the market, but ultimately it backfires, making it difficult to achieve sustained and best-selling products.

Fundamentally, product movement is about making products sell at the terminal. The so-called product movement strategy is a complete product promotion plan formulated by enterprises and distributors, including how to create publicity, how to distribute channels, how to execute promotions, how to maintain terminals, how to manage cross-regional sales, and how to provide policy support, so that products truly move at the terminal. From this perspective, attracting distributors is only the first step in enterprise marketing actions. Product movement is the top priority. Only by working closely with distributors to distribute products to terminals and achieve substantial consumption can the entire marketing action be considered complete.

**Two Keys to Grasping Product Movement Under the New Normal**

Currently, after rapid development, China's economy has stabilized and gradually entered a stage of new normal growth. Many FMCG manufacturers believe that the macroeconomic downturn is one of the main reasons for difficult markets and slow product movement. At the same time, enterprises have to think about how to adapt to the market environment under the new normal and achieve counter-trend growth of products.

In this regard, renowned marketing expert Liu Chunxiong believes that the macroeconomic downturn has a certain impact on the market, and FMCG enterprises also face the problem of sluggish product movement. But rather than using the economic downturn as an excuse for failure, they should seriously study market changes, seek opportunities for reversal, and solve the product movement problem under the new normal with new ideas. To this end, FMCG enterprises need to proactively change according to market conditions and formulate reasonable product and marketing strategies.

**First, innovate in products to conform to the development trend of mainstream products.** Whether an enterprise's product movement is good or not depends on whether its products are mainstream. Moreover, with the continuous emergence of new mainstream products, they will gradually replace the market position of previous mainstream products, that is, mainstream gear shifting. If enterprises with product movement difficulties still cling to mainstream products from ten or twenty years ago, their markets will certainly be sluggish. So, what kind of products can be considered mainstream?

In the past, the mainstream products in the FMCG industry were double-low products, that is, low quality and low price, but they could meet consumers' demand for quantity. Enterprises solved the contradiction between consumption hunger and insufficient purchasing power. But now the contradiction is that consumers have the ability to buy high-quality products, but enterprises cannot produce high-quality products, leading to the embarrassment of market prosperity but industry downturn.

**Therefore, the characteristics of future mainstream products are: first, quality significantly improved on the original basis; second, price range one level higher than before; third, novel packaging that catches consumers' eyes. Products with these three characteristics are expected to become best-selling mainstream products.**

**Second, upgrade marketing methods, shifting the focus from distribution to promotion.** In the past, whether large or small enterprises, they all engaged in deep distribution, but ignored the risks behind deep distribution. Deep distribution is based on channel sinking, where enterprises deeply intervene in the market and proactively assume some of the distributor's functions. The cost is that the enterprise's human and expense investment is too large, even unsustainable. Therefore, deep distribution can only be used as a short-term strategic investment, gradually improving the distributor's distribution functions in the form of assistance, while avoiding excessive dependence of distributors on the enterprise, ensuring that after the enterprise exits, distributors can still ensure the healthy product movement of products.

To this end, enterprises must adhere to four principles: First, only help distributors who are willing to cooperate, only help those who cannot do it, not those who are unwilling; Second, the market pattern must be able to improve by one level in the short term; Third, manufacturers only do key work, and daily work is completed by distributors; Fourth, cooperate in distribution and gradually exit.

It is also worth noting that with market development, marketing will also enter the promotion era. **In the promotion era, marketing needs to be reordered: product first, channel second, method third, team fourth, brand fifth.** Channel marketing methods will also change, with the most notable manifestation being that the number of enterprise promotion personnel will exceed that of sales personnel. The former is responsible for promoting products to consumers, while the latter mainly maintains manufacturer relationships, which means enterprises need to have more contact with consumers.

**Stabilizing Channels and Boosting Confidence Are the Top Priorities**

Competition in the FMCG industry is not only competition between individual manufacturers and distributors, but also competition across the entire supply and marketing value chain. Under the current product movement dilemma, enterprises not only need to strengthen the chain, but also need a strong circle. Only by uniting channel partners and forming a community of interests can they effectively control the market and win time and opportunities to reverse the product movement situation.

But it must be admitted that the relationship between FMCG manufacturers and distributors has always struggled between game-playing and cooperation. When product movement is smooth, differences and contradictions between manufacturers and distributors are often masked by market prosperity. When product movement encounters obstacles, market pressure and risks become apparent and amplified, and the manufacturer-distributor relationship is bound to face challenges. At this time, the channel strategy adopted by enterprises will largely determine the direction of the manufacturer-distributor relationship.

As one distributor said: "If enterprises do not cherish distributors, distributors will become more realistic. If they can make money, they will endure and do your brand. Once the enterprise faces a crisis, distributors will not hesitate to abandon you." Therefore, the prerequisite for enterprises to get out of the product movement quagmire is to ensure the stability of the channel network. As long as distributors have the willingness to continue promoting products, the products will not die in the market. To this end, enterprises should at least do the following three things:

**First, proactively bear market development costs and encourage distributors to do more activities.** The best way to improve product movement is to increase market activity, especially when product movement becomes an industry-wide problem. Whoever proactively does market activities will achieve product movement faster. Therefore, enterprises should encourage distributors to organize tastings, carry out promotions, and deploy promoters in the front-line market, and proactively and timely reimburse related expenses for distributors.

In fact, the reason why distributors reduce investment in products is largely because the market activity expenses they advance are not reimbursed for a long time, leading to a loss of trust in the enterprise and a lack of attention to the product. To this end, enterprises must improve operational efficiency, compress review time as much as possible, and especially for expenses generated by jointly participated activities, it is best to reimburse them as soon as possible. In addition, losses incurred in business operations, such as product damage and additional terminal expenses, should also be proactively borne by the enterprise. These measures can not only improve the distributor's capital situation, but also, after seeing the enterprise's determination to improve product movement, the distributor's personnel, vehicles, networks, and other resources will also tilt accordingly.

**Second, change the channel strategy dominated by inventory loading to alleviate distributor inventory pressure.** Now enterprises must realize one point: simply loading inventory onto distributors cannot solve the problem of difficult product movement; instead, it will exacerbate the risk of near-expiry products and channel inventory risks. In the eyes of distributors, the enterprise's inventory loading behavior is a manifestation of transferring operational risks. Some distributors even face threats of having their agency rights revoked by enterprise personnel if they refuse to accept inventory. From the results, inventory loading not only does no good for improving product movement, but also greatly damages the manufacturer-distributor cooperation relationship. As mentioned earlier, the current focus of enterprise work is to stabilize channels and convey confidence. Blindly loading inventory is clearly cutting off one's own retreat.

Therefore, enterprises should adjust channel strategies in a timely manner, strengthen control over channel inventory, and actively cooperate with distributors to digest existing inventory. When distributors see that the warehouse is no longer piled high with goods, they will firmly believe that your products can move!

**Third, focus on regional markets and concentrate advantageous resources to get some distributors moving first.** Facing the dual pressure of declining sales and shrinking funds, many enterprises find it increasingly difficult to operate the national market. If they continue to hold on, they may "lose both the wife and the soldiers." Instead, it is better to combine market conditions, select several advantageous regions nationwide, focus limited resources, improve the product movement situation of some distributors, and then drive sales in surrounding markets.

In addition, to improve the survival rate of new products and avoid the situation of "one order death" for distributor customers, enterprises can position the recruitment and promotion of new products in specific regions, follow the consumption characteristics of that region, and choose more matching distributors for cooperation, thereby ensuring smooth product movement.

-END-

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