---
title: "Zhao Bo of New Distribution: What New Capabilities Do Brand Managers Need in the Third Consumption Era?"
description: "The evolution of the consumption era and the new requirements for brand management roles. We are in an unprecedented consumption era. Looking back over the past forty years, the evolution of China's consumer market can be divided into three distinct stages: the first consumption era, centered on product scarcity and meeting basic needs, with consumption behavior dominated by functional utility; the second consumption era, with rapid economic development and abundant goods, upgrading consumer needs from mere functional satisfaction to the pursuit of quality and brand, with more refined and stratified consumption behavior; and now, we have entered the third..."
author: "赵波"
publisher: "New Distribution"
email: "zhaobo258@gmail.com"
telephone: "+8615854817671"
published: "2025-07-02"
categories: "Brand Marketing, Dealer Operations"
language: "en"
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original_source: "https://mp.weixin.qq.com/s/XySV_AzDmec2XmU70wxBlA"
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citation: "赵波. “Zhao Bo of New Distribution: What New Capabilities Do Brand Managers Need in the Third Consumption Era?.” New Distribution, 2025-07-02. https://xinjignxiao.com/en/articles/zhao-bo-of-new-distribution-what-new-capabilities-do-brand-managers-need-e74365e9/"
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---

# Zhao Bo of New Distribution: What New Capabilities Do Brand Managers Need in the Third Consumption Era?

> The evolution of the consumption era and the new requirements for brand management roles. We are in an unprecedented consumption era. Looking back over the past forty years, the evolution of China's consumer market can be divided into three distinct stages: the first consumption era, centered on product scarcity and meeting basic needs, with consumption behavior dominated by functional utility; the second consumption era, with rapid economic development and abundant goods, upgrading consumer needs from mere functional satisfaction to the pursuit of quality and brand, with more refined and stratified consumption behavior; and now, we have entered the third...

**The Evolution of the Consumption Era**
**and New Requirements for Brand Management Roles**
We are in an unprecedented consumption era.
Looking back over the past forty years, the evolution of China's consumer market can be divided into three distinct stages:
The first consumption era was centered on product scarcity and meeting basic needs, with consumption behavior dominated by functional utility;
The second consumption era, with rapid economic development and abundant goods, saw consumer needs upgrade from mere functional satisfaction to the pursuit of quality and brand, with more refined and stratified consumption behavior;
Now, we have entered the third consumption era, which marks a deeper and more abstract shift in consumer demand: after material abundance, consumers have gradually shifted from the pursuit of mere function and quality to the exploration and craving for meaning, emotion, and spiritual value.
In the third consumption era, "buying things" is no longer just a simple act to obtain functional satisfaction or display social status, but has gradually become a process of seeking identity, self-expression, and spiritual comfort.
During this period, consumers tend to express their personal value propositions through consumption, even regarding brands as part of their spiritual world. Pop Mart's blind box culture, To Summer's oriental emotional fragrances, and Saturnbird Coffee's advocacy of a "slow life" philosophy all reflect the typical characteristics of emotional and value-driven consumption in this era.
Facing such profound consumption changes, traditional brand communication logic and product marketing thinking are no longer sufficient to meet the market challenges of the new era. As the core executors of brand strategy and the main bridge for consumer communication, brand managers' role positioning and capability requirements are undergoing fundamental changes. They are no longer just simple information transmitters or product promoters, but must become "architects" who can construct consumers' emotional and cognitive worlds.
Therefore, in the third consumption era, the capabilities required of brand managers have far exceeded traditional business knowledge and marketing skills, leaning more towards a comprehensive literacy of psychology, narratology, cultural interpretation, and spiritual value transmission.
They need to have the acuity to deeply insight into consumers' inner emotions, able to perceive delicately like a poet, analyze profoundly like a psychologist, plan precisely like a director, and construct systematically like an architect.
This role transformation is not just a skill upgrade, but a comprehensive reshaping of the professional connotation and professional requirements of brand managers.
**Brand Managers**
**Core Capability Model in the New Era**
After entering the third consumption era, the competitive landscape of brands has undergone unprecedented drastic changes. Functional needs are gradually being replaced by emotional and spiritual appeals, and product competition is gradually becoming competition for brand recognition and psychological occupation.
In the past, brand managers' capabilities might have been more reflected in product function explanation, advertising communication strategy, and channel management, but today, these capabilities are far from sufficient to build long-term competitive advantages for brands. Facing complex consumer psychology and cognitive fields, brand managers must upgrade to become "architects of consumer cognition and emotional worlds" with comprehensive capabilities.
**1. Analogical Narrative Ability: "Visualizing" Abstract Product Information**
Analogical narrative ability, or what we are more accustomed to calling the ability to "make analogies," is becoming particularly crucial. With the exponential growth of information, consumers' cognitive burden continues to increase, and directly piling up technical parameters and functional selling points can no longer truly touch users' purchase desires. Brand managers must learn to map complex, abstract information into familiar life scenarios and experiences through analogies, metaphors, or stories.
For example, Apple once used the metaphor of "putting 1,000 songs in your pocket" to instantly make consumers understand the value of the iPod; similarly, Xiaomi's ecosystem chain brands often use narratives like "a health assistant for the whole family" to make originally boring data perceptible and warm. The essence of this analogical narrative ability is to reduce cognitive burden, quickly establish a channel for user understanding, and thus efficiently root the brand concept in users' minds.
**2. Emotional Resonance Ability: Insight and Response to Consumers' "Heart's Desires"**
Emotional resonance ability is essentially a deep user insight ability, which not only requires brand managers to clearly capture consumers' joys and sorrows, but also requires them to deeply analyze the root causes and psychological motivations behind emotions. In the third consumption era, emotional needs have changed from "add-ons" of consumption behavior to "core drivers."
Pop Mart's explosive popularity is precisely due to its accurate grasp of young consumers' response to loneliness. The trendy toy IPs Labubu and Molly are not just toys, but have become "companion symbols" for the younger generation's inner loneliness, anxiety, and nostalgia for childhood.
If brand managers can capture these subtle emotional needs and respond precisely with brand context, they can effectively activate consumers' emotional resonance and brand loyalty.
**3. Symbol Construction Ability: Building a Lasting and Unique Recognition System for the Brand**
Brand symbol construction ability is a higher-level requirement based on emotional resonance. Symbols are not limited to logos, brand names, or product packaging; they are a complete sensory recognition system including language, color, sound, vision, and style. Successful brand symbols can establish a clear and stable associative network in users' minds, giving the brand unique spiritual and cultural significance in consumers' memory.
Nike's "swoosh," Apple's "bitten apple," or Starbucks' "mermaid" are all powerful brand symbols. The values and emotions carried by these symbols far exceed the practical functions of the products themselves, continuously endowing the brand with higher spiritual premium. In the future, brand managers' symbol construction ability will become the key to distinguishing ordinary brands from excellent ones.
**4. Subconscious Manipulation Ability: Mastering the Code of Non-Rational Consumption Decisions**
The theoretical basis of subconscious manipulation ability comes from psychology and behavioral economics. In the third consumption era, consumers' decision paths are often full of emotional and non-rational characteristics. Brand managers not only need to understand consumers' rational needs, but also deeply understand and master the non-rational needs at the subconscious level.
For example, common promotional strategies on e-commerce platforms such as "flash sales," "discounts for meeting thresholds," and "exploiting loss aversion" are essentially cleverly stimulating consumers' subconscious non-rational preferences. If brand managers can precisely design these strategies, they can even shape consumers' consumption habits and create long-term, stable purchase impulses.
**5. Consumption Scenario Construction Ability: Creating the "Imagination Field" of Products**
Consumption scenario construction ability requires brand managers to precisely integrate products into users' real life scenarios, allowing users to clearly feel the existence and significance of the product.
For example, Xiaohongshu (Little Red Book) uses scenario-based content operations to turn products from abstract material forms into concrete life solutions. Brand managers need to master how to precisely define, create, and disseminate these scenarios, making products naturally become part of users' lives.
**6. Value Narrative Ability: From Selling Products to Selling Lifestyle and Philosophy**
One of the core competitions for brands in the third consumption era is the competition of values. Brand managers must go beyond the product itself to convey a clear life attitude and philosophical proposition.
Patagonia has shaped a clear lifestyle label by advocating environmental protection and sustainable consumption; Saturnbird Coffee, by creating a new coffee culture of "premium instant," provides consumers with a new life aesthetics.
If brand managers want to succeed, they need to grasp the deep connection between brand philosophy and consumers' life values, creating authentic and powerful value narratives.
**7. Cultural Filtering Ability: Precisely Identifying and Reaching Users' "Spiritual Tribes"**
In the current era of cultural fragmentation and stratification, every brand needs to precisely find its own position among subcultures, sub-subcultures, and mainstream culture. Brand managers need to keenly identify the aesthetic preferences and cultural characteristics of these different groups, and master the language and methods to communicate with them.
For example, the anime and manga circle on Bilibili, the life aesthetics circle on Xiaohongshu, and the literary youth circle on Douban each have unique aesthetic and cultural logic. Brand managers need to have precise cultural filtering ability to ensure that the brand can appropriately integrate into the circle and become part of the group's culture, rather than a simple "external invader."
In summary, these seven capabilities do not exist in isolation but are an organic whole that interweaves and reinforces each other. Together, they construct the core of the brand manager capability system in the third consumption era, transforming brand managers from product marketers into true constructors of brand worldview and architects of consumer emotion and cognition space. This capability system not only reflects the changes in consumer needs in the new era, but also serves as an important cornerstone for brands to build long-term competitive advantages.
**Why Are These Capabilities**
**So Crucial in the Third Consumption Era?**
The arrival of the third consumption era is essentially a fundamental change in consumption structure and demand motivation. From the gradual satisfaction of consumers' "material needs" to the significant rise of deeper "spiritual needs," the logic behind consumption behavior has undergone a huge transformation, which has made the traditional capabilities of brand managers significantly ineffective.
Specifically, the following four major trends reflect this transformation, and they are also the fundamental reasons why brand managers urgently need to master the above new capabilities:
**1. From Function-Oriented to Emotion-Oriented: The Core Change in Consumer Needs**
In the past consumer market, function and quality were the core, and the key to brand success was clearly conveying product performance and advantages. However, in today's era of material abundance and severe oversupply, consumer needs are no longer simple functional demands, but have evolved into a desire for the emotions and feelings evoked by products.
Emotion orientation is essentially a demand for consumers' inner identity, and purchase decisions are gradually shifting from rational analysis to emotion-driven.
For example, Nayuki Tea not only sells tea drinks, but also attracts users by creating high-quality consumption experiences, brand culture, and aesthetically pleasing spaces, successfully hitting the aspirations and identification of young consumer groups for a beautiful life.
If brand managers cannot master the ability of emotional resonance, they will not be able to gain an advantage in an emotion-driven market environment.
**2. From Persuasion Logic to Immersive Experience: The Transformation and Upgrade of Brand Communication Methods**
In the past, brand communication mostly revolved around logical statements of "selling points" to persuade consumers to believe in the value of the product. However, in the era of information explosion, consumers face a large number of homogeneous products and advertisements, and simple rational persuasion often fails, and may even cause consumer resistance and rejection. Consumers prefer the experience and atmosphere created by the brand, which transcends rationality and becomes an intuitive, immersive psychological feeling.
**3. From Target Groups to Identity Tribes: The Structural Change in Brand-Consumer Relationships**
Traditional marketing models are often extensive, dividing target groups by labels such as age, gender, and income, and formulating corresponding communication strategies. However, with the rise of social media and circle culture, consumers' self-identity is increasingly leaning towards the expression of cultural labels and values. The relationship between brands and consumers is gradually shifting from a one-way "push and receive" relationship to a "tribal" relationship based on culture and values.
For example, platforms like Xiaohongshu, Douban, and Bilibili all show strong tribal cultural characteristics, and users in each circle have their own unique ways of expression and communication systems. If brand managers cannot accurately identify the cultural language of different circles and integrate into the circle culture, they cannot effectively establish deep connections with consumers, let alone gain brand loyalty and long-term repurchase.
**4. From Use Value to Meaning Value: The Reconstruction of Consumption Decision Logic**
Marx once pointed out that commodities have use value and exchange value; in the third consumption era, brands have begun to enter a deeper era of meaning value. Consumers' motivation for purchasing products has gradually transcended material functions themselves, evolving into the pursuit of life attitudes, life philosophies, and even some spiritual sustenance and social identity.
**Brand Managers Should Become**
**a Combination of "Writer + Psychologist + Director + Architect"**
In the third consumption era, the role of brand manager is undergoing a fundamental evolution—from traditional marketing functions to a more comprehensive, diverse, and profound role.
They need to possess the acuity of a writer, the insight of a psychologist, the scene control of a director, and the overall structural thinking of an architect. This composite demand for capabilities comes from the profound transformation of consumption needs from functional to emotional and meaningful, thus reconstructing the core capability profile of brand managers.
**1. Like a Writer: Shaping Moving Stories and Expressions**
Writers create vivid scenes and stories through words, using the power of emotion, detail, and association to lead readers into carefully designed emotional worlds.
In the new era, brand managers face consumers who are more inclined to be moved by stories and scenes rather than boring data and functional parameters. Therefore, brand managers must learn to be like writers, good at observing details, polishing narratives, and capturing the subtle emotions and life moments in consumers' hearts with precise language.
For example, Nike never only talks about product technology in its advertising and communication, but continuously uses "Just Do It" as the core theme, using real, emotionally rich stories to inspire consumers' inner courage and self-identity. This ability requires brand managers to have both keen language expression skills and deep life experience and empathy.
**2. Like a Psychologist: Deep Insight into Human Nature and Subconscious Needs**
Psychologists are good at analyzing and understanding the emotional and subconscious motivations behind human behavior. They not only look at the surface but also penetrate deep into the heart to understand fear, anxiety, desire, and hope.
In the third consumption era, brand managers also need to have such abilities—not only to understand consumers' surface demands through market research, but also to accurately identify the emotional drivers and psychological patterns behind consumption behavior through the surface.
For example, Pop Mart's capture of young people's loneliness and companionship needs is precisely the kind of psychologist-like insight that has achieved extremely high repurchase rates and brand loyalty. This deep excavation of consumers' inner world is becoming the core battlefield of brand competition, and brand managers must master such psychological insight skills.
**3. Like a Director: Carefully Arranging the "Appearance" of Products and Consumers**
Directors are not only good at telling stories, but also good at organizing the interaction between characters and scenes, controlling narrative rhythm, creating emotional atmosphere, and conveying the theme and meaning of the story in the most appropriate way.
The role of brand managers in the new era is similar to that of a director. They not only design the positioning of the product itself, but also precisely arrange how the product appears in consumers' life scenarios, and how it interacts with consumers' real needs and emotions.
**4. Like an Architect: Systematically Constructing the Brand's Overall Worldview**
Architects emphasize the systematic integration of functionality, aesthetics, and structure in the planning and design process. They not only focus on local details, but also on the overall logic and order, using exquisite structural design to ensure that the building is both beautiful and can achieve long-term functional value.
In the new era, brand managers also need to have this systematic thinking, able to clearly define and construct the brand's core values, symbol system, communication language, and visual system, ensuring that every detail of the brand's expression is highly consistent, forming integrity and coordination.
For example, Starbucks not only sells coffee, but also systematically constructs a highly consistent brand worldview and lifestyle expression through store design, coffee culture experience, and brand visual symbols. This ability places higher demands on brand managers' structured thinking and overall planning capabilities.
In short, brand managers in the new era have transcended the simple marketing function of the past. They must become composite talents with the delicate narrative of a writer, the precise insight of a psychologist, the emotional organization of a director, and the structural thinking of an architect. Only in this way can brand managers construct a deeply rooted and competitive brand ecosystem in the third consumption era.
**How Can Brand Managers Systematically Build These Capabilities?**
Although the above capability model is abstract, it is by no means unattainable. For brand managers to effectively master these key capabilities, it is not a one-day effort, but requires establishing a systematic cognitive and action framework. The following briefly outlines the path to building these capabilities:
**1. Continuous and Systematic Cultural and Trend Insight**
In a rapidly iterating consumption environment, keenly capturing and understanding cultural trends and consumption trends is the basic foundation for brand managers. Brand managers need to develop the habit of continuously observing and interpreting market changes, social public opinion, and circle culture to maintain a keen perception of changes in user emotions.
**2. Deep Understanding of Consumer Psychology and Behavioral Logic**
Mastering the core theories of psychology and behavioral economics, and learning to use these theories to insight into consumers' subconscious emotions and decision-making patterns, is one of the core competitiveness of brand managers in the new era. The cultivation of this cognitive framework is not about blindly chasing trends, but about returning to a deep understanding of the underlying logic of human nature.
**3. Construction of Cross-Disciplinary Knowledge Systems**
Brand managers' cognitive and capability systems need cross-border integration. Brand managers should extensively dabble in knowledge from diverse fields such as literature, art, film, design, sociology, and philosophy. This cross-disciplinary knowledge structure will greatly enrich brand managers' expression tools and perspectives, helping them more effectively carry out analogical narration, symbol construction, and value expression.
**4. Practice-Oriented Capability Iteration and Optimization**
The improvement and cultivation of capabilities ultimately land in practice. Brand managers must actively participate in real brand practices and marketing cases, regularly review and self-iterate, continuously transform theoretical cognition into action ability, and form a positive cycle of continuous capability improvement.
In the final analysis, these capabilities are not limited by talent, nor can they be achieved through short-term intensive training, but require long-term and conscious systematic cultivation by brand managers. This is a profound reconstruction of one's own professional capabilities, and also a positive and forward-looking strategic response to changes in the consumption environment.
**Conclusion**
**Brand Managers as Architects of Consumer Cognition**
**and Emotional Worlds**
In the third consumption era, brand managers are no longer just executors in the marketing communication field, but higher-level strategic constructors. They need to keenly perceive changes in the times like poets, deeply understand the complexity of human nature like psychologists, carefully conceive the interaction between brand and consumers like directors, and systematically and rigorously construct the brand's overall worldview like architects.
The core value of brand managers in the new era is to shift from traditional marketing communication to constructing the deep structure of consumer cognition and emotion. Only in this way can brands truly achieve long-term and stable spiritual resonance with users, and achieve true breakthrough and long-term development in this ever-changing era.
**🔺


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## Citation metadata

- Publisher: New Distribution
- Author: 赵波
- Published: 2025-07-02
- Canonical: https://xinjignxiao.com/en/articles/zhao-bo-of-new-distribution-what-new-capabilities-do-brand-managers-need-e74365e9/
- Original source: https://mp.weixin.qq.com/s/XySV_AzDmec2XmU70wxBlA

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