AUTHOR ARCHIVE
Articles by 赵波
Browse 345 New Distribution articles by 赵波.
Published articles
345 articles · Page 1 of 15
Mom-and-Pop Stores Won't Disappear
In recent years, life has become increasingly difficult for small stores. Their core advantage is proximity. However, with the rise of instant retail, bulk discount stores, and membership clubs, their business is being eroded. Yet, small stores can survive by understanding customer tasks, leveraging regional supply chains, and forming strategic alliances with B2b platforms.
赵波AI Is Reorganizing Consumer Decision-Making
AI is moving beyond content generation into the pre-purchase steps of consumer decisions, such as understanding needs, filtering products, and completing orders. This shift will reshape how brands, retailers, platforms, and distributors operate, as consumers increasingly delegate shopping tasks to AI agents.
赵波How Distributors Can Use AI to Manage Business, Read the Market, and Lead Teams
Many distributors have been experimenting with AI, initially using it for writing copy. However, the real value of AI for distributors lies not in content generation but in helping owners identify business problems earlier and decide what to manage first. By exposing hidden wastes in resources, manpower, inventory, and opportunities, AI can transform from a content tool into a business management tool that improves revenue, profit, and efficiency.
赵波The Way Out for Hypermarkets Lies in the 'Wet Market'
A recent report by Qince Consumer Research shows that from 2019 to 2024, the share of consumer traffic for fresh food purchases in free markets rebounded from 40.9% to 42.2%, while large retailers dropped from 35.1% to 21.8%. The report also indicates that nearly 60% of fresh food retail now occurs in community settings, shifting competition toward immediacy, experience, and value within community living circles.
赵波Young People Won't Take Over, Baijiu's 'Old Story' No Longer Works
A recent news item about the decline in personal housing loans at major banks signals a deeper issue: assets are being de-financialized. This applies to baijiu as well, which has long been more than a consumer product, serving as a social, gift, and quasi-financial asset. The real problem is that the financial attributes of baijiu are receding, and the old narrative that someone will always take over is collapsing, as younger generations no longer buy into the old stories.
赵波Beyond the Reports: How Regional Managers Use AI to Manage Their Markets
Many assume that the higher a regional manager climbs, the easier the job gets. In reality, the opposite is true. Regional managers face a flood of information from multiple cities, supervisors, projects, and reports, yet this abundance often obscures rather than clarifies. This article explains how regional managers can use AI, specifically the 'Lobster' tool, to focus on cities, supervisors, and results, turning it into a true regional management assistant that surfaces key issues, prioritizes actions, and enhances control over outcomes.
赵波Zhao Bo of New Distribution: In the Post-Truth Era, No Narrative, No Brand?
What is narrative? Let's start with a story. Wan Weigang, in his course 'Modern Thinking Tools,' shared a case: In the 1980s, Texas had a serious highway litter problem. The state government tried fines and campaigns, all to no avail. The main culprits were young men aged 18-35 who drove pickups and listened to heavy metal, priding themselves on rebellion. An advertising agency came up with a brilliant slogan featuring a football star and a blues singer, which solved the problem: 'Don't mess with Texas.'
赵波Zhao Bo of New Distribution: 36 Years of FMCG Marketing in China—How Marketing Power Shifted from Channels to Consumers, and Now to Algorithms
In March 2026, while working late, the author asked an AI assistant for a drink recommendation, which led to a realization that marketing power has shifted again. Over 36 years, it moved from channels (1990-2010) to consumers (2011-2023) and now to algorithms and AI (2024-present), fundamentally changing how brands must operate.
赵波New Distribution Zhao Bo: How Distributors Can Raise, Install, and Nurture the Lobster
Over the past two years, distributor owners have all asked the same question: Can AI really help me do business, rather than just chat with me? Yes, but only if you "raise it right." If you ask me "how to install the Lobster," the answer is simple: go to Tencent Cloud and do a one-click, foolproof installation. Installation is not the point; the key is how to configure it, feed it data, install skills, and finally let it monitor your operations. Many owners find that after installation, the answers seem okay, but soon they feel "it's just so-so." The problem is usually not the Lobster, but...
赵波Zhao Bo of New Distribution: How Frontline Sales Supervisors Use AI Lobster to Monitor Teams, Stores, and Results
Many frontline FMCG supervisors are busy all day but still feel a sense of helplessness at night. They monitor people, visit stores, send messages, make calls, and review reports, yet real problems still slip through: which salesperson was slow to follow up, which store's sales dropped without early detection, which product was distributed but didn't sell, and which area looked busy but didn't convert to sales. This article explains how frontline supervisors can use AI Lobster to effectively monitor their teams, stores, and results, turning it into a practical management assistant.
赵波Zhao Bo of New Distribution: The Crisis and Opportunity for FMCG Practitioners in the AI Wave
As generative AI sweeps across industries, the FMCG sector—a traditional field deeply tied to human interaction and billions of consumer needs—is undergoing structural changes. From category decisions at retail stores to supply chain coordination, AI has penetrated every link of the industry chain. The question for every FMCG professional is no longer 'Will AI affect us?' but 'How do we stay firm in this transformation?'
赵波New Distribution's Zhao Bo: How the FMCG Industry Should Embrace Change in the AI Era
In this speech, Zhao Bo from New Distribution argues that FMCG is one of the first industries where AI will see large-scale implementation and tangible results. He outlines how AI is reshaping consumer decision-making, brand-channel connections, and internal business operations, and provides a three-stage roadmap for companies to adopt AI, emphasizing the importance of starting with real problems and preserving human insight.
赵波New Distribution Zhao Bo: When AI Starts Making Decisions for Consumers, FMCG Becomes the Frontline Battlefield
In the FMCG industry, AI is not just changing a few 'tools' but the consumers themselves: who makes decisions, how they are persuaded, what prices they see, what journeys they take, and to whom they remain loyal. This long article, written entirely from the perspective of FMCG practitioners, systematically deconstructs the five dimensions AI is rewriting, starting from the consumer. Why FMCG is becoming the frontline battlefield for AI rewriting consumer behavior: if AI is reshaping every industry, then in the consumer sector, FMCG is almost the first to feel the change. The reason is not the technology itself, but the structural characteristics of FMCG consumption.
赵波How Should Distributors Survive in 2026?
If asked about their biggest feeling in 2025, most distributors would likely say anxiety. The traditional agency model—the 'brand → distribution → retail' chain—is being replaced by new models. Distributors' value comes from the industry ecosystem, with upstream and downstream defining their role. Over the past 40 years, China's consumer boom has created unprecedented prosperity for distributors, but today, giants are entering the market, and new retail models are emerging, encroaching on traditional retail's territory.
赵波The Ideological Stamp: How Childhood Engraves Consumption Habits into the Body
In the novel 'The Three-Body Problem,' there is a crucial concept called the 'ideological stamp,' which is implanted into the brain by a machine and is both indelible and believed by the individual to be their own free will. This article argues that everyone carries such stamps, shaped by their childhood environment, and explores how these stamps drive generational differences in consumption behavior.
赵波Compensatory Economics: Why Modern People Are Using the Wrong Tools to Complete Their To-Do Tasks?
We are not consuming; we are 'pain-relieving.' Most modern consumption is not about meeting needs but easing unfaceable pain. This article introduces 'compensatory economics,' where tasks from one dimension are shifted to another, and explores how brands can either exploit or repair this dynamic.
赵波Zhao Bo of New Distribution: Why You Haven't Truly Understood the User's Job-to-be-Done (JTBD)
We spend our entire lives solving our own problems—financial, health, emotional, intimate family, life relationships, self-existence, social, etc. In general, the problems people need to solve can be divided into eight dimensions: 1. Survival dimension: (body, safety, resources) 2. Relationship dimension: (intimacy, belonging, ranking) 3. Ability dimension: (skills, execution, growth) 4. Narrative dimension: (meaning, goals, values) 5. Emotional dimension: (experience, regulation, patterns)...
赵波Ten Conclusions on FMCG B2B for 2026
In recent years, B2B sales have declined, distributors are finding it harder, mom-and-pop stores are losing foot traffic, and even strong chains like 7-Eleven and FamilyMart are showing downward curves. Many attribute this to a bad economy, industry downturn, or consumption downgrade, but these are just surface symptoms. The real structural change is the reconstruction of the underlying logic of Chinese retail. When an era's logic fails, it doesn't die quietly; it collapses with a shout. Today's B2B stands at such a critical point. The old B2B model is ending, and a new supply chain growth model is being born.
赵波Let's Sentence the ABCD Outlet Classification to Death
The traditional A/B/C/D outlet classification, based on the assumption that all consumers are alike and that distribution plus visits plus merchandising will grow the business, is outdated. Today's retail market is oversupplied, and outlets have become highly differentiated by time, location, and consumer behavior, so brands must shift to a multi-dimensional model that defines outlets by people, time, scenario, and behavior.
赵波Zhao Bo of New Distribution: Why Is the More Useless, the More Valuable?
Usefulness is a way of thinking. I've noticed that people born in the 1980s and earlier tend to evaluate products by their practical utility, a mindset rooted in growing up in material scarcity. However, today's younger consumers, who have never experienced such scarcity, are willing to pay a premium for 'useless' items that provide emotional or symbolic value. This shift from functional to meaningful value marks the beginning of a new era in consumption.
赵波Using Packaging to Give Consumers a 'Justifiable Reason'
Scenarios have been popular in recent years, and everyone knows to use OBPPC for sales, but from first principles, we must return to analyzing user behavior within scenarios. Different jobs-to-be-done represent different consumption motivations and needs, but since scenarios and tasks are hard to describe with limited language, we need to collapse to specific user behaviors: how are users transacting? As I mentioned before, consumer purchase behaviors can be roughly divided into four types: buy, browse, stock up, and follow; these represent immediate, impulsive, planned, and social purchases.
赵波Why Store Brands Are Not the Same as White-Label Products
Many people are discussing supermarket private labels, but there is a common misconception in the industry that equates them with white-label products. In fact, the underlying logic of product development differs fundamentally. This article explores these differences from a product development perspective, offering guidance for distributors and retailers.
赵波The Ten-Dimensional Impact of the Food Delivery War on Distributors
As food delivery subsidies roar, the noise obscures the seismic shifts affecting distributors who underpin the retail 'ground network.' This is not a simple traffic shift but a rewrite of channel rules. In this war seemingly focused on dining, what are distributors losing, and what defensible or attackable business opportunities remain? Brands are directly connecting with platforms, flattening channels.
赵波Zhao Bo of New Distribution: Emotional Awakening, Supply-Demand Restructuring and Business Breakthrough in the Third Consumption Era
Zhao Bo, founder of New Distribution, discusses the shift to the Third Consumption Era, where emotional value and identity drive consumption. He proposes a PEST strategic model (Position, Emotion, Scene, Tribe) to help brands navigate supply-demand mismatches and achieve growth in an era of overcapacity.
赵波