NEW DISTRIBUTION RESEARCH TOPIC
How can brands grow beyond price competition?
Evidence and cases on product strategy, category innovation, marketing, and channel coordination in China’s consumer market.
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4701 articles · Page 15 of 196
Finding New Brand Dividends in the Voice of the Times
Brands that fail to understand the commercial value of Labubu may already be left behind by this era; those who question its value may also be lagging in their thinking. Its explosive popularity shows that the underlying logic of business has changed, with consumer markets and attitudes undergoing dramatic shifts. Accordingly, our understanding of brands and how we build them should also be refreshed in time.
空手The More Brand Owners Manage, the Harder It Is for Distributors to Do Business
When I first entered the consulting and training industry, I was often asked by brand marketing teams how to manage distributors. I personally dislike the term 'management' because distributors and brand owners are partners; mutual empowerment and win-win cooperation are key. They play different roles and functions in the channel chain (brand owner-distributor-operations team-outlet-consumer), being merely upstream and downstream, with no issue of who manages whom. Upstream brand owners need to achieve their own success through the success of downstream distributors, create value for them, and grow together with them...
高级研究员 海游Precise Placement of Multiple New Products: Master Kong Breaks the Homogenization Dilemma in the Beverage Market through Category Innovation
The current beverage market is trapped in an awkward situation: many new products, but few truly innovative ones. Packaging, flavors, and functional selling points are highly homogenized, leaving consumers unable to taste differences and distributors unable to command premium prices. Amid this industry-wide 'collective sameness,' Master Kong has launched over a dozen new products in the first half of the year, spanning health drinks, functional water, and vitamin fruit juice beverages, earning overwhelmingly positive reviews and signaling a shift toward category innovation.
张雨薇Qiyunshan Food, with a "rustic" flavor, rushes to Hong Kong stock market
In the highest mountain in southern Jiangxi, Qiyunshan, the wild south sour jujube that was once only favored by beasts has been turned into treasure by Qiyunshan Food. The company's pioneering south sour jujube cake has a history of 33 years. With this trump product, it firmly holds the top position in the south sour jujube food industry. Relying on the south sour jujube forest resources in Chongyi County, Jiangxi, the company has developed multiple categories beyond the cake, including south sour jujube pellets, south sour jujube jelly, and soft candies. However, its market share in the domestic fruit snack industry is only 0.6%, ranking ninth. Despite the dual endorsement of green food and geographical indication products, the south sour jujube cake still cannot shake off its local specialty background.
陈晓京Competing on Low Prices Is Not the Way Out
A veteran FMCG distributor in South China laments that prices have never been lower, yet sales have never been worse. This reflects a broader industry dilemma where price wars are failing, and the real need is to shift from competing on price to mastering the ability to aggregate consumer groups, understand their needs, and match supply precisely.
任文青AndyMore and More Distributors Are Turning to Beverages to Stay Afloat
“I’ve started selling beverages too.” When I heard this, I was taken aback. The speaker was a traditional household goods distributor who had focused on supermarket channels for over a decade, selling groceries, paper products, and kitchen cleaners, never touching beverages. Logically, such low-frequency, long-tail category operators have nothing to do with water drinks. But recently, this kind of feedback is becoming more common. Seasoning, daily chemical, and household goods distributors are all proactively adding water drinks, especially high-frequency SKUs like bottled water. They put it bluntly: “Beverages don’t make money, but they help move my original stock.”
张雨薇84-Year-Old Lo Yau Lai Reluctant to Let Go of Vitasoy
Over the past year, Vitasoy International's biggest achievement has been the return to growth in mainland China after three years of decline. This was driven by new product combinations and improved operational efficiency, though revenue still lags far behind its peak of HK$5 billion. The company's soy milk products face intense competition and changing consumer tastes, while 84-year-old Chairman Lo Yau Lai has yet to hand over the reins to the next generation.
陈晓京Traditional 'Hero SKUs' Fail: Brands Are Losing Channel Leverage
This article is the third in a series on integrated production-supply-marketing. From the brand perspective, it examines opportunities and challenges for FMCG brands in the new industry cycle. The retail and distribution sectors are undergoing profound changes that will reshape the FMCG landscape. From 2023 to now, the market has experienced three main shifts: 2023 as the first year of discounting, 2024 as the year of supermarket adjustments, and 2025 onwards as the era of integrated production-supply-marketing.
戚特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...
赵波National Candy Brand 'Golden Monkey' Returns with an Upgrade
A new face appears on Tmall's top-selling chocolate list—ugly-cute with big eyes, calling itself 'Ugly Monster'! On Douyin, this product has sold hundreds of thousands of units. It turns out this is not a new brand but a revamped classic from the national candy brand Golden Monkey, which has made bold innovations to appeal to younger consumers.
张博Data Dive into Electrolyte Drinks: Heatwaves Drive a New Surge in Professional Hydration
As summer heat intensifies, electrolyte drinks are experiencing explosive growth in China's beverage market. Data from MaxWin shows that electrolyte drinks have outpaced the broader functional and sports drink categories in sales growth, with leading brand Alien (元气森林) maintaining nearly 50% market share through product innovation and strategic expansion.
lby，文钰Beer Legend Steps Down: Hou Xiaohai Resigns as Chairman of China Resources Beer
On the afternoon of June 27, China Resources Beer (00291) announced that Mr. Hou Xiaohai has resigned as executive director and chairman of the board to devote more time to personal arrangements. The chairman position will remain vacant until a suitable successor is appointed, with Mr. Zhao Chunwu, executive director and president, temporarily assuming the chairman's duties during the transition.
陈思廷Yanjing Beer Sells Soda, Even More Aggressive Than Dayao
Backed by a beer giant with a market value of 35 billion yuan, Yanjing Beer's Beiste soda is making a strong push. This soda, which resembles Dayao, is aggressively expanding in foodservice channels with deeper discounts, offering a supply price 10 yuan lower per case than Dayao. Yanjing Beer's cross-industry move into beverages is serious, aiming to turn Beiste into a national bestseller like Dayao.
财经天下Joining the Beverage Market Fray: Is Dongpeng Beverage's 'Second Curve' Shuibula and Guozhicha Stable?
Relying on its blockbuster product, Dongpeng Beverage has already listed on the A-share market. In April 2025, the company submitted a prospectus to the Hong Kong Stock Exchange, planning an 'A+H' dual listing with a goal of globalization. However, Dongpeng Beverage is not without worries. In the prospectus, it compared per capita annual consumption of its products in Guangdong Province and nationwide, confidently indicating vast market space. Yet, the energy drink market is fiercely competitive. At the start of 2025, the energy drink market saw renewed competition, with multiple brands attempting to replicate Dongpeng's strategy using cost-effective tactics to grab market share, potentially posing challenges to its national expansion.
谢小丹From a 1 Billion Yuan Single Product to a 10 Billion Yuan Category: Man Xiaobao Aims to Be the 'King of Rice Noodles'
A distributor in Wuhan shared with New Distribution that he placed an order for Man Xiaobao's new product before even tasting it, based on trust built over years of cooperation, and the product sold so well that it was out of stock again. Man Xiaobao, a brand founded in 2020, has become a leader in instant rice noodles, launching three new products that each exceeded 10 million yuan in monthly sales within a year, and is now expanding its product matrix to solidify its position in the 100-billion-yuan category.
Asher350th! Chubang's Strategic Transformation Sets New High on China's 500 Most Valuable Brands List
Recently, Chubang, which has been selected for the 'China's 500 Most Valuable Brands' for six consecutive years, achieved a historic high with a brand value of 29.289 billion yuan (2025), up 6.05 billion yuan year-on-year, ranking 350th on the list. Just before this, Guangdong Chubang Food Co., Ltd. was again recognized as a 'National Key Leading Enterprise in Agricultural Industrialization.' In 2024, Chubang's parent company Zhongju High-Tech (600872.SH) proposed the 'Recreate a New Chubang' strategy, which is by no means simple scale expansion...
New Distribution"8 Glasses of Water a Day" Becomes a 10-Billion-Yuan Business
Young people who don't like drinking water have found a new friend. The consumer consensus on sugar reduction and the demand for light wellness converge on the need for "8 glasses of water a day." Homegrown wellness water is a remake of the unsweetened tea story, and its rise is putting pressure on the unsweetened tea market. A report predicts that the market size of Chinese-style wellness water will reach about 10.8 billion yuan by 2028. As the main battlefield of water substitutes shifts from unsweetened tea to wellness water, the latter will only face more intense competition than the former.
黎晓The "Second-Tier Distributors" That Brand Owners Both Love and Hate: How Should They Be Managed?
In the FMCG distribution chain, second-tier distributors act as both a "reservoir" for sales and a "time bomb" for pricing. They operate outside the manufacturer's management system yet directly influence terminal sell-through. Facing market pressure in an era of shrinking volumes, brand owners urgently need to reassess this group—rather than passively guarding against them, they should proactively empower them and turn them into an engine for incremental growth.
邢仁宝Daily Sales Break One Million! Post-00s Boost 'Tipsy Tool', Reviving a 43-Year-Old Henan Legacy Brand
Post-00s have created a new 10-billion-yuan tipsy market: Chinese-style tea beer. Xinyang Maojian, West Lake Longjing, lemon-scented Dancong, peanut oolong... When tea meets beer, sealed with Chinese-style visuals and Eastern narratives, it has become a hot craft beer segment in the past year. The trendsetters are mid-tier domestic beer brands.
天下网商Shuanghui, Once Cherished by the Post-80s and Post-90s Generations, Is No Longer Favored by Today's Young People?
As the ham sausage industry enters a stock market, Shuanghui faces increasingly fierce competition. Despite its dominant position, the company's performance is declining, with revenue falling for four consecutive years, and it struggles to attract younger consumers who view its products as unhealthy.
付艳翠Regional B2b Platform & Key Brand Cooperation Seminar Salon - Session 1 Concluded Successfully!
On June 18, the first session of the Regional B2b Platform & Key Brand Cooperation Seminar Salon concluded successfully. The salon focused on topics such as the cooperation framework between regional B2b platforms and key brands, implementation strategies, and case studies. Over 20 regional B2b platform owners and sales heads from 12 brands gathered in Xi'an to discuss cooperation and investment on B2b platforms, aiming to enhance brand penetration and coverage in downstream stores.
New DistributionTsingtao Brewery's Dual 'Chart-Topping' Feat: Brand Value of 280.355 Billion RMB Retains Top Spot, Sweeps First Place Across Six Major Platforms During 618
On June 18, the 22nd World Brand Conference was held in Beijing. When the World Brand Lab unveiled the 2025 'China's 500 Most Valuable Brands' list, Tsingtao Brewery once again topped the Chinese beer industry with a brand value of 280.355 billion RMB, continuing its 22-year streak of leading the list. On the same day, the 618 mid-year shopping festival on major e-commerce platforms concluded, with Tsingtao Brewery securing the top spot in beer category brand sales across six major platforms: Tmall, JD.com, Pinduoduo, Douyin, Kuaishou, and Vipshop.
诺言New Distribution Zhao Bo: Today's Brands Need to Solve Not 'What to Buy' but 'Why Buy'?
The Chinese consumer market is undergoing a profound transformation into the 'Third Consumption Era,' where psychological and emotional factors increasingly drive purchasing decisions alongside functional needs. Brands must adapt by balancing 'transactional jobs-to-be-done' (functional efficiency) with 'psychological jobs-to-be-done' (emotional value, identity, and meaning) to achieve sustainable growth.
赵波Why Is Water Placed at the C-position in Cigarette and Alcohol Stores?
Every summer, every retail outlet experiences a 'water war'. As soon as June begins, countless mom-and-pop stores, convenience stores, and even cigarette and alcohol supermarkets put water at the C-position of their shelves. In Hubei, Lv Jie, who runs a cigarette and alcohol supermarket in a lower-tier market, has made selling water a key focus for the coming months.
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