---
title: "When Will the Alcohol Industry Escape Its E-commerce Development Dilemma?"
description: "The alcohol industry was among the early adopters of e-commerce, yet despite years of exploration, many producers remain hesitant, with only a few like 1919 and Jiuxian.com succeeding. This article argues that social e-commerce is the inevitable path forward, leveraging the industry's social attributes and mobile internet to build structured relationships and drive transactions."
author: "谭长春"
publisher: "New Distribution"
email: "zhaobo258@gmail.com"
telephone: "+8615854817671"
published: "2017-07-26"
language: "en"
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# When Will the Alcohol Industry Escape Its E-commerce Development Dilemma?

> The alcohol industry was among the early adopters of e-commerce, yet despite years of exploration, many producers remain hesitant, with only a few like 1919 and Jiuxian.com succeeding. This article argues that social e-commerce is the inevitable path forward, leveraging the industry's social attributes and mobile internet to build structured relationships and drive transactions.

Click image for details
Introduction:
It is fair to say that the alcohol industry was one of the early sectors to engage in e-commerce operations.
However, over the years, apart from the former O2O three-way dispute and the 2B vs. 2C debate, the industry has never ceased exploring e-commerce for alcohol.
Although 1919 and Jiuxian.com are both listed on the NEEQ, aside from these two commercial enterprises and a few other pioneers, many alcohol producers have shown a "sluggish" attitude towards e-commerce operations. Even some large liquor companies are particularly cautious, allowing only headquarters to operate e-commerce cautiously, while regional subsidiaries and distributors are prohibited from casually opening e-commerce channels, under threat of heavy penalties. With the end of the mobile internet dividend and the inevitable growth of e-commerce, this issue continues to plague the industry.
What should be done?
The alcohol industry is well-suited for e-commerce
Due to the long shelf life of baijiu and wine, and the significant price differentials in the middle, the average order value and profit per bottle are decent. The products themselves are well-associated with personality, emotion, culture, and social aspects. Apart from the fear of counterfeits, they should be good e-commerce products.
Moreover, the traditional agency and distribution models in the baijiu industry have left some price differential profits at intermediate levels, providing room for price reductions, thus enabling e-commerce's disintermediation to take effect in the industry.
Additionally, e-commerce packaging can be customized to meet the increasingly personalized needs of online shoppers. We have already seen that although alcohol customization may not be mainstream, several companies are testing the waters on the e-commerce stage.
Furthermore, baijiu is consumed in many places and scenarios, and e-commerce can well cater to scattered consumption patterns. This is why various apps have emerged in recent years, allowing consumers to order anytime and drink anywhere.
Overall, the alcohol industry is relatively suitable for e-commerce operations. E-commerce trials in the alcohol industry began a decade ago, and the fact that some still exist suggests that there is still a need for in-depth discussion on alcohol e-commerce.
Of course, the industry must not forget the issue of "authenticity" in alcohol. Alcohol is easy to counterfeit, and integrity is paramount in e-commerce. If the industry cannot maintain its reputation in this regard and reassure consumers, alcohol e-commerce will always carry a hidden bomb!
How should alcohol companies approach e-commerce?
Remember the relationship marketing and group-buying marketing in the alcohol industry? Although the industry's original path of serving the privileged was blocked by the Eight Regulations a few years ago, the emotional, cultural, and social attributes of alcohol remain unchanged for millennia. These attributes are inseparable from social interaction. Therefore, mobile internet has driven social interaction in the new era. Whether it promotes industry e-commerce or requires new thinking for e-commerce development, bold hypothesis, verification, and testing should be worthwhile.
Given the social attributes of alcohol and the fact that mobile internet first changes our communication and social interaction, can we boldly hypothesize that social e-commerce should be the first choice or preferred e-commerce model for alcohol producers in the next step?
We might proceed with the following steps:
**1. Utilize the communication attributes of mobile internet tools to establish social relationships, or consolidate, strengthen, and expand our social relationships.** This is what we do every day, but is building e-commerce the same as how we currently construct social relationships? This question should be explored further; perhaps e-commerce is not about our current disorganized social relationships. WeChat has been around for five or six years, and it has been proven that unorganized communication and interaction are not suitable for e-commerce. Therefore, social relationships or systems suitable for e-commerce need to be rebuilt.
**2. Use certain social communication tools or systems, as well as structured operational development, to achieve the integration of social interaction and e-commerce.** This integration should not be merely physical, such as having both contents in one system; it should be an organic combination of social interaction and e-commerce. If it is like doing micro-business, purely relying on posting in your WeChat Moments or groups, or sending private messages to target individuals, these may not be advisable or may be too superficial to achieve transactions.
**3. Utilize the developed structured social relationships to conduct tiered and graded cooperation with agents, distributors, terminal stores, fans, and consumers**, achieving centralized intermediate communication and management, as well as the generation of free, boundary-less sales by business personnel. This is similar to our original channel strategy, where sales require various policies, plans, and means to support.
**4. Structured social interaction and its distinguishability enable both 2B and 2C operations.** This can be interpreted as business social interaction. Just as a person may be eloquent but not necessarily good at business negotiations, and may even be poor at them, e-commerce social interaction should have its basic rules and routines. That is to say, social interaction only establishes basic relationships and connections; on this basis, business docking, negotiations, and transactions still need to be conducted according to orderly business routines. One cannot casually assume that once connections are made, e-commerce transactions will be realized.
**5. Through social relationships, achieve boundary-less fission in marketing, sales, fan, and consumer operations.** Since mobile social interaction is link-based, ultimately social e-commerce can fission through social tools, generating a continuous stream of e-commerce transactions. Three-level distribution is a form of fission e-commerce, but it is suspect of direct selling and driven by profit rather than social relationships, making it difficult to have trust endorsement.
Of course, the above refers to self-operated social e-commerce. Under current circumstances, companies can also try cooperating with some innovative platforms. After all, in traditional channels, the alcohol industry mostly cooperates with intermediaries, which is the most basic phenomenon. However, in this way, profits and markets are difficult to guarantee, and with the disappearance of pure e-commerce and the emergence of new retail as mentioned by Jack Ma, this is still not a long-term solution.
Social e-commerce is the inevitable path for alcohol companies to do e-commerce
Yang Lingjiang of the professional alcohol e-commerce company 1919 is making a layout for a hundred billion scale. But even if the alcohol industry produces a few more large professional e-commerce companies, facing the 13th Five-Year Plan strategy of a trillion for baijiu alone, there is still huge space for e-commerce to play a significant role in the alcohol industry. In the traditional era, due to information asymmetry, manufacturers could obtain a large number of agents and distributors for product distribution, but now consumers, thanks to mobile internet tools, stand directly in front of you. Social e-commerce is an inevitable trend and result.
Baijiu companies have always been active in offline social interaction. Social e-commerce already has a good foundation in terms of operations, price differentials, and profits. The emotional, cultural, and social elements also facilitate better social possibilities. I believe that as long as they understand and experience the essence of social e-commerce, alcohol companies' e-commerce will shine brilliantly in the future, forming a new type of business with great vitality and life!
Perhaps this is an important breakthrough path to achieve the industry's trillion-yuan goal?!
Introduction: Tan Changchun, committed to selling any product as a fast-moving consumer good. General Manager of Huaxia Jishi Marketing Consulting Company, Chief Consultant of the Group, Special Expert Consultant of Kotler Consulting Group, Project Director of TNS Market Research Consulting Company. Founder of the Integrated Marketing System. Well-known marketing expert and trainer; invited lecturer for the China Marketing Director Qualification Exam, and special lecturer for "Frontier Lectures".
Weibo: http://weibo.com/1159426107.
WeChat public account: chnstone1.
China Sales Force: http://t.cn/RtRxd99
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