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 57 of 196
Why a Successful Product Must Be a Successful Marketing System?
In recent years, many new consumer brands have risen, but why do many products disappear within months of becoming hits? Is it due to competitor imitation, fickle consumers, or poor marketing? While these reasons have merit, the question remains: if these factors were absent, would the product necessarily succeed? Analyzing successful brands often focuses on what they did right, such as Yuanqi Forest's sugar-free positioning or Taishan Beer's short-shelf-life focus. However, earlier brands had already used similar approaches with similar products, yet they failed. The key insight is that a brand's success is not just about the product but about a successful marketing system.
赵波The Life-and-Death Game of Childhood Flavors: Ovaltine 'Leaves', ColaCao 'Disappears'
Before home quarantine, I happened to see ColaCao's rolled cake at a convenience store near my office. ColaCao? A familiar yet unfamiliar name. Reflecting on it, it seems we haven't seen the iconic yellow can with a red lid of ColaCao's powdered drink on shelves for a long time. Even the rolled cake still on sale is squeezed into a small corner of the shelf. In contrast, Ovaltine is always visible in convenience stores and supermarkets: Ovaltine oat milk drinks, Ovaltine sandwich cookies, Ovaltine sandwich cakes, Ovaltine lava bread, and even Ovaltine-flavored ice cream... However, in our childhood memories, the most common form of Ovaltine was a powder similar to ColaCao's. As the tide of the times surges forward, why has ColaCao, a childhood memory, 'disappeared'? And why has Ovaltine chosen to step out of the powdered drink category? Two international brands with many similarities, yet why do they have such different fates today?
FBIF10,000-Word Guide: How to Build a User-Centric Brand Through Private Domain?
As the concept of private domain traffic explodes, many brands and companies invest heavily in it. Some use simple, blunt tactics like mass-sending coupons for quick conversions; others adopt refined operations with user tagging, membership programs, and standardized SOPs. While these can boost performance in the short term (1-2 years), they eventually hit bottlenecks, especially after group folding limits coupon effectiveness. The long-term core value of private domain lies in perfectly creating a 'user-centric brand'.
三十Picked and Bottled in Just 5 Days! Nongfu Spring's Oriental Leaf Spring Limited Edition Longjing Tea Raises the Industry Bar Again
According to a report by Dongxing Securities, driven by growing health awareness among Chinese consumers, retail sales of unsweetened tea beverages in China have grown rapidly, reaching 4.1 billion yuan in 2019 with a CAGR of 32.6% from 2014 to 2019, far exceeding the overall growth rate of tea beverages. It is expected to maintain over 20% growth from 2019 to 2024, with sales reaching 11.5 billion yuan by 2024, accounting for 12% of the market. On March 31, ahead of the Qingming Festival, Nongfu Spring's ready-to-drink tea brand Oriental Leaf launched its first spring limited edition product in 11 years—Longjing New Tea.
New DistributionWhy Can't Low-Alcohol Drinks Produce a 'Perfect Diary'?
The once-hot low-alcohol drinks sector is cooling off, with many brands disappearing and investors losing interest. Despite the influx of capital and new brands targeting young female consumers, the market remains niche, lacking a dominant leader and facing challenges in offline distribution and consumer education.
财天作者Dark Under the Light: A Common Ailment of Mid-Tier FMCG Brands
The article discusses the 'dark under the light' phenomenon in mid-tier FMCG brands, where companies neglect their base markets near production bases. It provides indicators to identify this issue, strategies for distribution network layout, supply chain optimization, and replication of successful base market models.
高级研究员 海游Why Are New Consumer Brands Struggling to Enter Traditional KA Channels?
In recent years, many new brands have emerged in the FMCG market, including innovative brands that created new subcategories and internet-famous products favored by young consumers. However, these brands primarily operate through online channels like Taobao, JD.com, and Douyin e-commerce, making them hard to find in physical retail stores. This situation poses two challenges for brick-and-mortar retailers: difficulty in enhancing category differentiation and segmentation offline, and aging product portfolios that fail to attract younger shoppers.
张思遥Expert: Low-Mineral Water May Hinder Children's Height Development
A survey by the Chinese Center for Disease Control and Prevention found that 65.4% of students do not drink the recommended 1200 ml of water daily, and nearly 75% prefer beverages. Experts warn that dehydration can impair cognitive function and growth, and studies show that low-mineral water may slow height growth and increase tooth decay in children.
高级研究员 海游In-depth | Snow Beer Ignites Guizhou Market, QR Code Marketing Achieves 76% Scan Rate: We Summarized 9 Lessons
In March 2022, the New Distribution team visited Guizhou and had in-depth exchanges with the China Resources Snow Breweries Guizhou Marketing Center team. Thanks to the precise impact of digital marketing,勇闯天涯superX achieved a 175% year-on-year sales growth from January to February 2022, and a 146% growth in 2021 compared to 2020, gradually forming the momentum of a core big product. How did the Snow Guizhou team do it? What are their plans and thoughts for future digital marketing? With these questions, the New Distribution team visited Guizhou again...
任文青AndyQingshan Capital: Dear Consumer Entrepreneurs, Please Face Reality
Products suddenly stop selling, capital retreats, and supply chains break. Qingshan Capital urges consumer entrepreneurs to abandon illusions, accept reality, and refocus on fundamentals, as short-term traffic and capital dividends are gone, but long-term consumption-driven growth, tech commercialization, and brand-building remain unchanged.
与创业者同行的New Choice for Nutritious Breakfast: Eating Cake ≈ Drinking Milk?
In today's fast-paced life, many young people struggle to have a quick yet satisfying meal. Xiaobai Xinli Ruan positions nutrition as its core value, selects local ingredients, and develops new Chinese-style bakery products based on research on Chinese taste preferences, aiming to provide more nutritious and convenient meal replacements.
New DistributionNew Consumer Brands Must Have the Boss Personally Lead Offline Expansion!
Many new consumer brand founders may question or even scoff at the idea that the boss must personally lead offline expansion. While it's fine if the brand aims to be a niche player, becoming a leading brand in a category requires conquering the offline market, which demands patience and a shift in mindset.
袁来A Comprehensive Analysis of Functional Foods: New Opportunities for Health Foods in the New Consumption Era
In the wave of new consumption, functional foods have become a hot track for category innovation. Whether as a supplement, optimization, or replacement for Chinese dietary habits, they are significantly reshaping the composition of modern food categories. This article aims to clarify what functional foods are, which evolutionary needs of human food consumption they address, and where future opportunities for health foods lie.
GavinCoke Gets Angry Again: A 28-Year Siege
The production of carbonated drinks is simple: inject carbon dioxide under pressure into sugar water. Interestingly, Coca-Cola and Pepsi, the two giants of global carbonated drinks, are like a bottle of cola—they fizz over if anyone loosens their cap. According to media reports, at the start of 2022, the two cola giants issued a threat: "This year, we are determined to bring down Genki Forest." "By 2022, there will be no more Genki Forest sparkling water in the market." A downstream distributor of Coca-Cola told The FunTalk that they had heard the rumors, but so far, Coca-Cola has not taken any specific targeted actions.
最话团队High-end Strategy Pays Off: China Resources Beer's 2021 Profit Surges 119%
In 2021, China Resources Beer achieved its most profitable year, with a 119% year-on-year increase in net profit, driven by the growth of its high-end product portfolio. The company is transitioning from a volume leader to a profit leader, with its premium beer sales growing rapidly.
陈思廷How Can Brand Owners Efficiently Connect with Retail Outlets? Two Key Tools Are Indispensable
In the FMCG industry, sales representatives are the crucial, often sole, link between brand owners and retail outlets, but this single-line connection carries risks such as information loss and limited interaction time. To address this, brand owners can leverage enterprise WeChat and B2b platforms to directly engage store owners, enabling efficient communication, personalized promotions, and seamless ordering, thereby building a robust customer operations system.
助力客户成功的Functional Foods: The Challenge of 'Managing Expectations' | Category Inflection Point
Based on the unique development history of China's health products industry and entrenched consumer perceptions, new functional food brands must bear high market education costs to guide consumers in managing their expectations for products. At the same time, they must manage their own expectations for industry growth under stringent regulatory conditions, and accumulate product strength over a longer period—traditional mature brands have already built long-term advantages, while new brands are just beginning their journey. The second category we choose to observe and discuss, awaiting its inflection point, is functional foods, which were blown to the forefront over the past two years but are now in an industry adjustment period.
窄播出品Ten Years in the Making, the Hidden Dragon Emerges! Asian Soda Sparks a 'Warring States' Battle in the Soda Market!
A bottle of soda not only represents a city but also a generation's memories! With the resurgence of national trends and consumer shifts toward sugar-free and diversified options, the domestic soda industry is experiencing a 'spring revival' after a period of decline. Standing at the crest of 2022, looking back, the world's 'two colas' are losing their dominant arrogance! From the rise of Genki Forest in 2016, which leveraged internet thinking and anchored on healthy, sugar-free concepts to ride the right wave, to 2020's 'Year One of Soda' when a wave of domestic sodas surged...
New DistributionA Comprehensive Guide to Brand Seeding and Harvesting on Xiaohongshu
This article focuses on the content seeding module during the brand infrastructure building phase, specifically for the Xiaohongshu platform. It provides a guide covering three parts: current development and future priorities, audience profiles and behavioral insights, and seeding logic and harvesting models.
布兰德老白From Du Guoying and Xiao Guan Tea: Brand Marketing Opportunities for Chinese Agricultural Products
In 2008, Xinhua News Agency published an article titled "China's 70,000 Tea Companies Cannot Match One Lipton," highlighting the issue of China's tea industry being "large but not strong." To this day, the branding problem in the tea industry remains unresolved, and the industry is still highly fragmented. However, Xiao Guan Tea has emerged as a benchmark case in branding in recent years. In a recent interview with Xiao Guan Tea founder Du Guoying in Li Xiang's series column "Detailed Talks," the author gained deep insights into his product development approach, which is worth learning from. Today, we set aside the tea industry to explore a deeper question: how to build a brand like Xiao Guan Tea in a highly fragmented industry.
道农After 7 Years of Entrepreneurship, How Did He Go from Only 1,000 Yuan in His Account to Selling Hundreds of Millions of Black Sesame Pills Annually, Creating a New Category?
Chen Hengjie, founder of Chen Kangkang, left his job as general manager of a book company in 2014 to start his own business. Despite facing near bankruptcy with only 1,000 yuan left, he built a brand that now sells over 100 million yuan worth of black sesame pills annually, creating a new product category. He shares his journey, challenges, and philosophy: 'Make good products, treat users as people, and see people as people.'
任文青AndyDeep Dive: What Exactly Ails New Consumption?
New consumption has fallen from grace almost overnight, but the real issue lies not in the hype but in the fundamental misunderstanding of consumer businesses. Most new consumer companies are doomed from Day 1 because they chase fleeting dividends like new media and channels, ignoring the true driver of success: brand, built on a deep understanding of user value.
JerryHouFrom Poor Sales to 50 Million Monthly Revenue: What We Did Right as a Pre-made Dish Startup
Lin Zhenghuan, partner of Dingding Lazy Dish, shares how his pre-made dish brand turned around from poor sales to 50 million yuan monthly revenue on Douyin by learning from mistakes, focusing on KOC带货 and self-broadcasting, and choosing the right platform and location.
胖鲸Guangming, Sanyuan, Junlebao: The Chaotic Battle for the Third Pole in China's Dairy Industry
Local dairy companies are struggling to challenge the dominance of Mengniu and Yili in China's dairy market. Despite the growing popularity of pasteurized milk, these regional players face significant obstacles such as lack of brand recognition, limited milk sources, and unclear industry standards.
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