NEW DISTRIBUTION RESEARCH TOPIC
What structural changes are reshaping China’s FMCG channels?
Analysis of distribution restructuring, channel economics, and the changing roles of brands, distributors, and retail outlets in China.
Related research and analysis
2301 articles · Page 4 of 96
How AI Can Turn Millions of Retail Outlets into Growth Nodes
A six-year project involving Swire Coca-Cola used computer vision, mobile workflows, competitive intelligence, and connected coolers to improve outlet execution across a highly complex beverage network.
New Distribution46.7%! 657 Million Middle-Aged and Elderly People Are Reshaping China's Consumer Market
Over the past 25 years, China has undergone a silent yet profound demographic revolution that has reshaped the nation's population and is completely rewriting the rules of the business world. With 657 million people aged 40 and above now accounting for 46.7% of the population, a new consumer era driven by mature consumers is emerging, fundamentally altering the underlying logic of China's consumer market.
王小博、李相如7-ELEVEn's New Business in Front of the Mirror
In the global convenience store industry, Japan's 7-ELEVEn has set a benchmark with its innovative strategies, supply chain restructuring, and deep user value cultivation, evolving from a simple product sales channel into a comprehensive service ecosystem. Its latest move, a hair styling tool rental service in partnership with ReCute, exemplifies a shift from selling products to providing 'state services' that address customers' immediate needs, signaling a new competitive frontier for convenience stores.
RBF内容组“Innovation Leading, Crossing Mountains and Seas”: The Strength and Vision of a Leading Dairy Enterprise with 100 Billion in Revenue!
As China's dairy consumption enters the true second half, with factors such as supply-demand imbalance, weak consumption, declining market growth, and slow sales across all categories, dairy enterprises face multiple challenges including intensified competition and pressure on revenue growth. Only by continuously breaking through original boundaries and precisely grasping demand can they stimulate the recovery of dairy consumption and restore market vitality. How to transition from simply pursuing 'volume growth' to fully entering a 'quality improvement' environment oriented by diversified and refined demands, and find breakthroughs, is an urgent issue facing the industry...
AmandaChicken Soup Instant Noodles Enter the 'Pure Fresh' Era: Master Kong Gives a New Answer
China's instant noodle industry is undergoing a profound transformation, with younger consumers demanding higher quality and expecting 'eating well' rather than just 'eating enough.' In this upgrade, 'broth noodles' have stood out, especially old hen chicken soup noodles, whose market size surged from 280 million servings in 2020 to 2.19 billion servings in 2024, a CAGR of 67.2%, according to the white paper 'Development Status and Prospects of China's Old Hen Chicken Soup Instant Noodle Industry.'
AsherRetail Channel Upheaval: FMCG Brands That Fall Behind Will Be Eliminated!
As 2025 draws to a close, the FMCG industry continues to navigate macroeconomic pressures. Many brands are struggling to protect existing market share while seeking new growth, with the root cause pointing to structural changes in offline channels—declining foot traffic in mom-and-pop stores, traditional supermarket overhauls, discount chain expansion, and the rapid penetration of instant retail. The traditional distribution network is being disrupted, and channel fragmentation seems inevitable. Sticking to old maps will never lead to new lands. How can brand manufacturers deeply understand this transformation and proactively prepare? It's not just 'important'—it's a matter of survival and development.
邢仁宝People's Daily Online interviewed two companies in Beijing, one listed three days later, what's the other's secret?
On December 9, People's Daily Online released the high-end interview 'People's Living Room' in Beijing, with JD Industrial's vice president attending. On December 11, less than three days later, JD Industrial went public! Also participating was Zhou Shaojie, dean of the Institute for Contemporary China Studies at Tsinghua University, who interpreted the industry's development direction for the next five years from a national policy perspective. The interview also featured another company—Tongfu Group, whose innovative model has become the most promising business model of the moment. Authoritative media setting the tone, experts interpreting trends, and capital landing for giants... Behind this lies a wealth opportunity—the deep integration of industrial internet and consumer internet (referred to as 'dual-network integration').
王丹Five Judgments on 2026 Liquor Industry Trends
This article provides a comprehensive, macro-level analysis of the development trends in China's baijiu industry in 2026. The author believes that the industry will complete its cyclical bottoming out in 2026 and enter a new stage of recovery characterized by structural growth. Growth drivers will shift from the traditional dual engine of volume and price to a deep focus on value concentration, category innovation, channel restructuring, and global expansion. The industry is expected to achieve moderate growth of 4%-5% in total scale, with market concentration (CR5) historically crossing the 50% threshold, marking the full solidification of an oligopolistic competitive landscape.
思考派Why Local Consumer Language Matters in Chinese Oral Care
The “internal heat” concept shows how a culturally familiar problem can reveal unmet oral-care demand, but functional positioning must be supported by compliant evidence, perceptible benefit, and repeat purchase.
New Distribution2026 Content Consumption Trends: The Ordinary Person Above All
Based on observations of everyday details, this article argues that grand narratives are receding and the power of ordinary people is rising. It presents the '2026 Content Consumption Trends White Paper: The Ordinary Person Above All', analyzing shifts in entertainment, marketing, and consumer behavior, and urging brands to connect authentically with everyday life.
梁将军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China Instant Noodle Industry Report: Master Kong's Gross Margin Rises for Three Consecutive Years, Uni-President Has Four Products in Top 10 by Sales
The Chinese instant noodle industry faces dual pressure from food delivery and pre-prepared dishes, leading to declining sales. However, the market is rebounding with a shift toward health and mid-to-high-end products, as evidenced by Master Kong's three consecutive years of gross margin growth and Uni-President's four products ranking in the top 10 by sales volume.
专注消费的From Deep Distribution to Super Sales: A Veteran Company's Nationwide Breakthrough
Founded in 1982 and headquartered in Zhengzhou, Henan,金星啤酒 (Jinxing Beer) has evolved from a regional player into a key modern enterprise in China's beer industry, especially in the craft beer segment. In the past two years, it has successfully transitioned to the Chinese-style craft beer track, with a strategic transformation that has drawn attention. This article analyzes the challenges it faced and the four-pronged strategy (new products, new channels, new communication, new organization) that drove its success.
公方刚“We've Done Everything We Should—Why No Sales?”
Over 20 years ago, when I was deputy editor-in-chief at Sales & Marketing, frontline salespeople at monthly editorial meetings would often complain: “We've done everything we should, but sales aren't growing—what can we do?” This topic later disappeared as deep distribution models revived growth. Now it has resurfaced, signaling that current marketing models have become ineffective. The solution lies in finding the next standard action template, such as bC-integrated user operations, to stay ahead in competitive markets.
刘春雄Don't Get Swept Away by Traffic! Instant Retail Is Just Redoing the 'New Terminal'
Over the past six months, the entire FMCG industry has been chasing instant retail. Platform subsidies refresh daily, flash sales wars rage on, and lightning warehouses have expanded from thousands to tens of thousands. Many have concluded that traditional marketing is obsolete and must be reinvented. However, I'd argue that instant retail is not the end of marketing but the return of terminal marketing. What has changed is the terminal's 'operating system'—from physical rules to algorithmic rules, from weekly/monthly rhythms to daily/hourly rhythms.
陈思廷Ren Wenqing of New Distribution: Warehouse-as-a-Store Becomes the New Terminal, Brands Must Occupy Positions Early
On November 25, 2025, the '2025 Instant Retail Supply Summit and First Instant Retail Warehouse-Store Product Matchmaking Conference' was held in Hangzhou, where Ren Wenqing, CEO of New Distribution, delivered a keynote speech titled 'Viewing Supply-Demand Matching from Instant Retail: How Brands Grow in an Era of Surplus?' Core viewpoints: 1. Warehouse-as-a-store becomes the new terminal. 2. The logic of instant retail development is supply-demand matching. 3. Matching is the first growth law in the era of surplus. This article is a core summary of the speech. Instant retail has moved from traffic wars to supply wars. Today, brands...
任文青AndyThe Next Five Years Will See a Major Shakeout Among Distributors
Based on recent visits to distributor businesses across the country, the author observes that the industry has reached a turning point. The biggest challenge distributors face is not market shrinkage but cognitive lag, and it is predicted that 80% of distributors will exit the market in the next five years. To survive, distributors must shift from a cost-saving mindset to a data-driven approach, using tools like product and customer quadrant analysis to illuminate their operations and build replicable growth capabilities.
杨博帆、张雨薇Beware of the "Street-Loitering Salesperson"!
Salespeople, once the vanguard of market expansion, are now becoming a burden for many liquor companies and distributors amid industry adjustments and channel fragmentation. The root cause is not the sales role itself but the "street-loitering" work style that prioritizes superficial visits over value creation, leading to poor performance. The solution lies in bC integration, which redefines the salesperson's role as a terminal sales booster, and in shifting management from result-oriented to process-empowering approaches.
朱朝阳Lightning Warehouses Change, Brands Panic
On October 31, Taobao Flash Purchase launched 'Taobao Convenience Stores', marking a shift in instant retail competition from traffic to supply. Brands must now focus on controllable supply, moving from 'goods suppliers' to 'brand service providers' to win in the new warehouse-store system.
任文青AndyBeyond Distribution and Volume: Chinese E-commerce Retailers Entering Brazil Must Understand Consumers and Respect the Market
Chinese e-commerce platforms and sellers are aggressively expanding into Brazil, drawn by its high growth and low penetration, but they face challenges such as complex taxes, underdeveloped logistics, and intense competition. Success requires respecting the market, focusing on high-value products, and adapting to local conditions.
洋紫Heavyweight | Latest Inventory of Lightning Warehouse Systems in 2025!
Since March 2025, with JD.com's entry into food delivery, the three major platforms have sparked fierce competition in the delivery market. As subsidies wane, the six-month subsidy war has subsided, and the market landscape is stabilizing. This battle has subtly shifted user preferences and consumption habits, transforming the instant retail narrative from 'new' to 'real'. In this supply-side restructuring, lightning warehouses—a format between front warehouses and mom-and-pop stores—have been pushed to center stage.
汪海Don't Doubt It: European Giant EDEKA Is What Chinese Distributors Will Look Like in Ten Years
The traditional business logic of distributors is collapsing. In the past two decades, Chinese FMCG distributors have almost all followed the same growth logic: take goods, distribute goods, and push inventory. As long as you have brands, channels, and relationships, you can scale up. This logic was correct in the 'era of growth.' At that time, channels were scarce, shelves were empty, and consumers were hungry. Whoever could deliver goods to the end terminal was the hero. But today, everything is reversing. The market has entered a zero-sum game, with saturated channels, homogeneous products, and shrinking profits. Most importantly...
陈思廷Half the Difficulty in Business Is Caused by Office Staff
At a meeting, functional departments discussed how to push work forward, proposing stricter assessments for salespeople. Companies are imposing more and heavier assessments on frontline sales, making it harder for them to earn money even when they meet targets. Salespeople are increasingly burdened with endless forms, complex evaluations, meetings, and rules, leading to the sentiment that salespeople suffer under office staff.
金名Three Major Trends in the Beverage Market at the End of 2025
As the Chinese beverage market enters its off-season and prepares for the more competitive 2026 cycle, 'building foundations' has become the core task for industry players. This article, based on observations from the 113th National Sugar and Wine Fair in Nanjing, identifies three key trends: affordable juices, larger packaging, and precise functional benefits.
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