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.

Related research and analysis

4701 articles · Page 93 of 196

Consumer & Categories

A 15-Day Battle for Million-Dollar Collections: A White Liquor Operator's COVID-19 Review

The sudden outbreak of COVID-19 has thrown many businesses into crisis, forcing them to adapt or perish. This article reviews how a provincial white liquor operator in Henan, with annual sales of 30 million yuan, executed a five-step self-rescue plan, including internal morale building, targeted promotions, public welfare campaigns, and post-pandemic market strategies, successfully collecting over a million yuan in just 15 days.

1号子弹
Brand Marketing

2020 New Opportunity: Junlebao Launches a Range of Probiotic New Products with Precision!

At the start of 2020, the sudden outbreak of COVID-19 caught everyone off guard, especially the FMCG industry. As the epidemic stabilizes, brands and distributors must focus on recovering from losses and embracing new challenges. This pandemic is a temporary black swan, yet it brings new opportunities, such as heightened health awareness and growth in categories like household supplies and health foods.

New Distribution
Brand Marketing

Beverage Peak Season Arrives: Yili, Six Walnut, Mengniu, Uni-President, Want Want... Launch These New Products!

As living standards and incomes rise, consumer demands for food have evolved from mere satiety to a variety of snacks and beverages. Despite the special Spring Festival in 2020, food and beverage brands have continued to launch new products. Here is a roundup of new food and beverage items released from the beginning of 2020 to the end of February.

长袖
Brand Marketing

Lessons from the Pandemic: What Did Coca-Cola, Yili, Feihe, Nongfu Spring, and Others Do Right in Marketing?

As of the end of February, the pandemic had lasted over a month, witnessing rapid national emergency responses and the hard work of medical staff. This black swan event disrupted many companies' marketing plans. By analyzing the pandemic marketing of Coca-Cola, Yili, Nongfu Spring, and others, we found the right way to market during a crisis: user-need-oriented, empathetic actions for three key groups, and maintaining appropriate boundaries.

阿图
Brand Marketing

Overnight, Community Group Leaders Were All Snapped Up!

If there was one of the hottest keywords in 2020, it was community group leaders. Major FMCG brands from beer to beverages to food to condiments to daily chemicals suddenly made the position of community group leader the top searched job in the FMCG industry, becoming the apple of every FMCG company's eye. Overnight, community group leaders were all snapped up! The community group buying channel was enthusiastically embraced by manufacturers, who placed their hopes on it as a lifeline during the pandemic. My article 'Ten Questions: The Marketing Model of Recruiting Community Group Leaders in FMCG' also sparked heated discussion among FMCG practitioners and marketing gurus.

1号子弹
Brand Marketing

Offline: Build One Store Well; Online: Build One County Well

Offline, build one store well—this is the requirement for connection dimension and depth; online, build one county well—this is the requirement for communication density after three-dimensional connection. The operational logic of three-dimensional connection can be summarized in one sentence: offline, build one store well; online, build one county well. Offline, building one store well means the store is the best unit for initiating three-dimensional connection, starting from a single store, expanding to communities, then to networks, thereby connecting three spaces. Online, building one county well means the county is the smallest unit for judging communication and transaction density. In marketing, density is cognition, and density is brand. Achieving high-density communication ignition in a county can be replicated in a city or province.

方刚
Consumer & Categories

2020 Hurun Global Rich List: Zong Qinghou Family 86B, Yan Bin 81B, Haitian Weiye's Pang Kang 77B

The Hurun Research Institute recently released the 2020 Hurun Global Rich List, with wealth calculated as of January 31, 2020. There are 2,816 billionaires globally, an increase of 346 from last year, with China having the most at 799, followed by the US at 626 and India rising to third.

鲸落
Consumer & Categories

Dairy Sales 'Halved' as Industry Faces Post-Pandemic Supply-Demand Imbalance

Following the COVID-19 outbreak, milk sales plummeted by over 50% in major cities, leading to massive milk powder production, inventory buildup, and farmers dumping milk. Experts warn that the pandemic may force some dairy farmers out of the market, and as consumption recovers, the supply-demand gap for raw milk could widen, compounded by global uncertainties.

林超 安路蒙等
Consumer & Categories

As Beverage Peak Season Approaches, Nongfu Spring Launches 250ml Mini Bottles - Will They Be a Hit?

As the beverage peak season approaches, Nongfu Spring has introduced a series of 250ml mini bottles, including tea π, Nongfu Orchard, Water-soluble C, and Vitamin Water. This move aims to attract young consumers through packaging changes, but whether these 'happy source bottles' will succeed remains to be seen.

李青林
Capital, Earnings & M&A

Some Go Public, Some Sell Out: Is the 2020 Snack Food Industry Reshuffling?

On February 23, after six years of preparation, the snack brand Bestore finally went public, surging 44.03% on its first day to hit the daily limit, with a total market value of 6.87 billion yuan. This brought the so-called 'Big Three' of Chinese snack e-commerce—Three Squirrels, Bestore, and Be & Cheery—together on the A-share market. However, just before Bestore's listing, Be & Cheery was sold by Haoxiangni to PepsiCo. In 2016, Haoxiangni acquired Be & Cheery for 960 million yuan, but on February 22, it sold the parent company for $705 million (about 5 billion yuan).

澄韵
Consumer & Categories

Tsingtao Beer's Three Axes: Can They Open the Path to Social E-commerce?

In 2020, beer distributor Lao Wang and his brand owner Zhang are anxious due to the pandemic's impact on sales. Tsingtao Beer launches a three-pronged strategy—community group buying, contactless delivery, and a distributor program—to enter social e-commerce, leveraging its early layout and integrated online-offline logistics. This move is seen as a long-term strategic initiative to enhance brand power and consumer engagement, not just a short-term remedy.

李青林
Consumer & Categories

Instant Noodles Sales Surge Due to Pandemic; Where Are the Opportunities After It Ends?

The pandemic has been a stress test for investors. How to identify, invest in, and support companies with rapid growth potential that remain resilient during crises is a key question. Convenience foods have become essential companions at home and work, meeting demands for speed, nutrition, and taste. The rise of new-generation consumers is driving the industry toward premiumization, health, innovation, and regional flavors. Traditional food companies and emerging brands each have strengths, and both may share in the growth of the convenience food market.

彬复资本消费组
Consumer & Categories

The '5-Yuan Era' for Beverages Has Arrived!

If you haven't noticed that the beverages we consume daily have quietly become 4-6 yuan, you might be drifting away from the younger generation. In consumer goods research, people over 30 rarely buy beverages proactively, so they miss new brands like Genki Forest's fruit-flavored sparkling water, Jian'ai's zero-additive yogurt, and Coca-Cola's new coffee cola, all priced above 5 yuan. Your awareness of these new products can roughly indicate whether you can still call yourself 'young'.

苏醒
Brand Marketing

After Work Resumes, Re-strategize Marketing to Embrace the New Normal

In the past two days, except for Hubei, the focus has shifted from epidemic supervision to work resumption supervision, and another economic battle has begun. Before the Spring Festival, I outlined three major marketing growth strategies for 2020: product upgrade growth, channel squeeze growth, and three-dimensional connection growth. Now, the original plans and pace have been disrupted, but there are unexpected gains: new marketing tools such as community groups, live streaming, and home delivery services have accelerated the adoption of the three-dimensional connection growth model across industries.

刘春雄
Brand Marketing

Revelation: The Epidemic Is a Mirror Reflecting Many Internal Problems of Enterprises...

The epidemic acts as a mirror, revealing internal problems in many enterprises, causing some complacent leading brands to stop smiling, some top managers leveraging corporate platforms to scratch their heads, and some large distributors to be mired in difficulties. From another perspective, Chinese culture emphasizes the balance of yin and yang, and this epidemic can be seen as the mutual transformation of 'yin' and 'yang', 'crisis' and 'opportunity'. Some excellent enterprises, though unable to fully recover losses, operate their systems orderly, while others are in a fluster, like firefighters missing tools, unable to do what they want.

海游
Brand Marketing

Heavyweight | 2019-2020 Brand FMCG B2B Cooperation Survey Report (Download Included)

Since its emergence in 2013, FMCG B2B has developed over six or seven years into a distribution force that cannot be ignored in the FMCG industry. Most domestic brand manufacturers are also cooperating with B2B platforms. Although B2B business accounts for a relatively small proportion of overall sales for FMCG brands, B2B's strong supply chain management and digital distribution capabilities have shown many brand manufacturers prospects for further growth and development. To better understand the actual cooperation between brands and B2B, from November 2019 to February 2020, New Distribution conducted a survey of senior and mid-level managers from 65 well-known FMCG companies.

新经销咨询团队
Consumer & Categories

Preparing for the Post-Pandemic Recovery of the Dairy Industry: A Look Back at China's Dairy Development History to Foresee the Next Decade

The National Health Commission recently issued dietary guidelines recommending dairy products to boost immunity, and despite short-term sales declines due to the pandemic, the long-term outlook remains positive. This article reviews the four main stages of China's dairy industry since the 1980s, analyzing the competitive dynamics and predicting future opportunities and challenges.

FBIF
Brand Marketing

How Should FMCG Manufacturers Plan Their Marketing in the "Special" Year of 2020?

The epidemic has basically moved from the outbreak period to the post-epidemic period, with the peak already passed. Many companies resumed work around the 20th, and the previously tight production capacity, especially for grain, oil, and instant food products, should ease. It is foreseeable that road closures and city lockdowns will be lifted by the end of the month, and transportation nationwide (except Hubei) will gradually return to normal. Offline retail will also gradually recover as the epidemic subsides. The sudden outbreak caught the entire industry off guard. But...

赵波
Brand Marketing

BC Integration: Both an Emergency Response to the Pandemic and a Marketing Trend

During the COVID-19 pandemic, two terms became popular in the marketing world: livestreaming and community groups. While 'livestreaming' is a marketing tool and 'community groups' are a means to connect with users long-term, the deeper trend is BC integration—connecting B-end (distributors/retailers) with C-end (consumers). This article argues that BC integration is not just an emergency measure but a necessary marketing path, emphasizing the importance of activating public domain traffic through community groups rather than building private domain traffic.

刘春雄
Brand Marketing

Under the Pandemic, How Can Chinese Brands Break Through?

A recent article calling for discussion on the economy has gone viral, reflecting anxiety and hope about China's economy amid the pandemic. While most analyses focus on industry-level impacts, this piece examines the macro and micro changes in Chinese brand building under the new variable of the pandemic, and how Chinese brands can maximize certainty in a changing landscape.

陆星集
Brand Marketing

An A-round Entrepreneur's 20-Day Battle Against the Epidemic

Wu Qinghui, founder of the hair care chain brand 'Hei Aomi' (also known as 'Zaichufa'), returned to his hometown in Jiangxi for the Chinese New Year. As the COVID-19 outbreak escalated, he led his company through a rapid transformation from offline to online operations, implementing a 60-day emergency plan that kept 75% of their 600+ stores generating revenue within 20 days.

New Distribution
Brand Marketing

Nestlé, Mengniu, Uni-President, Coca-Cola and other FMCG companies resume operations...

Recently, social media has been flooded with posts saying 'I am at work, working online.' Major companies have responded to the national call to delay work and promote online office to avoid crowd gatherings and slow the spread of the epidemic. However, the epidemic has persisted, and the number of confirmed cases is increasing daily. Regardless of the epidemic's changes, society must continue to live and consume. On February 11, at a State Council press conference on joint prevention and control of the pneumonia epidemic, Cong Liang, member of the Party Leadership Group and Secretary-General of the National Development and Reform Commission, stated that provinces outside Hubei are gradually resuming work and production, especially in key areas such as medical supplies, energy, food, transportation, and logistics. Meanwhile, major food and beverage companies have also resumed production to ensure market order and stable supply during this special period.

New Distribution
Consumer & Categories

Is Beer's Foray into Community Group Buying a Good Business?

The COVID-19 pandemic in early 2020 severely impacted China's FMCG market, with many offline stores closing and distributors facing inventory backlogs, while home delivery services saw a surge in demand. In response, beer brands like Tsingtao, Budweiser, and Snow launched community group-buying recruitment plans. This article analyzes whether this move is a viable business strategy, considering factors such as professional teams, differentiated products, distributor support, and pricing stability.

李青林
Consumer & Categories

Yili, Mengniu, Nongfu Spring, Tsingtao Beer, Snow... All 'Open Groups' - Is It a Temporary Rescue or a Model Exploration?

As the epidemic has not fully subsided and FMCG manufacturers have not fully resumed work, home delivery services have surged across regions due to lockdown measures. Manufacturers are now recruiting community partners to extend home delivery, which serves both short-term inventory clearance and long-term strategic exploration.

袁来