A Case Study of Product Brand Marketing Strategy —— Fruit Merchants: Burning Money to Promote Immature Fresh E-commerce
Since the first store was opened in June, 20 14, 10, in just over a year, this fruit merchant who calls himself "Alibaba in the fruit industry" has opened more than 300 physical stores in more than 20 first-and second-tier cities across the country. However, 20 15, 12, almost overnight, this rapidly expanding fruit kingdom collapsed, and a large number of stores in Guangzhou, Shenzhen, Dongguan, Hangzhou, Nanchang and other cities closed. 12, 16, Yi De, CEO of Fruit Camp, was taken away by the police. ...
Fruit camp, becoming the latest lander on the O2O death list? Does its collapse indicate the decline of fresh e-commerce? Perhaps, the conclusion is just the opposite.
Reverse O2O:
Under the correct concept, shiny bad fruit
In the bursting of the fruit business bubble, a lot of public opinion focused on its financing model-"partner crowdfunding" and "member prepaid card".
In particular, the former, according to a sample of a single-store investment agreement for fruit business, the investors of direct stores are limited partners of the company, do not participate in store operation, do not own store shares, and only participate in dividends. Direct store investors will get a return of 10% of monthly sales from the 45th day after payment until they get twice the investment principal. At the same time, it also obtains the long-term income of the original equity with the investment of 10%. The media also estimated that the annual return on investment of crowdfunding participants was as high as 30% according to the monthly sales of 500,000 yuan declared by fruit merchants. Generally speaking, the risk of products with annualized rate of return exceeding 10% is already extremely high.
But this does not belong to the focus of this article, because from beginning to end, the fresh e-commerce model initiated by fruit merchants, as implied by Liu Bowen's article "Orangeman's Words", is full of treasures.
Theoretically speaking, the number of ways for fruit merchants to enter the online market after laying a solid foundation by paying attention to offline services, putting talent allocation and quality control in the first place is exactly what many fresh e-commerce companies that float on the network and rely too much on online shopping mode are missing. But in the actual operation process, this is only a correct concept, which does not conform to the ground management concept.
On the contrary, from its many offline actions, it can provide a negative reference for O2O, a life service such as fresh e-commerce.
A specialty store far from the community is not called a small format.
In a soft article published by Fruit Camp in October, 2065438+2005, 165438, you can see the following words: "Convenience stores such as 7- 1 1, the whole family, etc. Competing for small community retail stores, mainly convenience stores and specialty stores, forming a small business model, which is likely to replace large supermarkets. There is no doubt that the fruit business has caught up with the general trend of the rise of small-scale businesses. "
Obviously, Fruit Camp has positioned its offline store as a small business. The media disclosed that "stores are located in prime locations in the city, with high rents and wages, so it is impossible to achieve high profits and sometimes lose money". This idea of laying out a prime location does not conform to the small business model based on the community now, but is closer to the early form of specialty stores. Throw it away or do it on purpose to show your strength and attract partners. Such a store opening plan has been abandoned by e-commerce physical stores or O2O stores.
There is a simple reason. No matter what form of e-commerce, it is based on maximizing flat channels to reduce operating costs, while stores located in downtown areas increase these costs, which are directly within the radiation range of Shang Chao business circle, which is extremely unfavorable to competition and expansion.
What is even more fatal is the confusion of ideas and operating concepts. In the earlier report of the fruit business, it has been mentioned that "through online ordering and store delivery, it will radiate a range of 3 kilometers around a single store, realize the fastest door-to-door delivery within 1 hour, and solve the problem of the last mile of fruit delivery".
However, this operation mode of "Internet plus small format" has inevitably encountered problems such as high operating cost and insufficient community demand mining in the current community O2O store pilot. Previously, it cost 654.38 billion yuan, and relying on SF's powerful logistics system and financial resources to lay out community "sex guests" is also unsustainable. However, if it really radiates within 3 kilometers according to the operation idea and opens an offline experience store in the downtown area according to the fruit business, it will be much more difficult to recover the cost.
Besides, it only sells fruit. ...
Fresh e-commerce starts with explosions.
Among many positive and negative news about fruit marketing, one message has been absent, that is, what advantages fruit marketing has.
Perhaps the cause of this trouble is even more wonderful. The fruit business, which has always been known as fresh e-commerce, doesn't even have a decent e-commerce platform. Until the second half of 20 15, the fruit merchants were still saying "after the e-commerce system is perfect ..." in their external publicity.
A fresh e-commerce company with a superficial online platform can only fight for its own offline stores. The so-called reverse O2O eventually went to the traditional fruit joining mode, but it was just the new emperor's costume of "internet plus". Fresh e-commerce is actually not a one-way street, but a simultaneous development of online and offline, just like a seesaw. No matter which end is light, you can't catch up.
But this is not the key to solving the problem of fresh e-commerce Crucially, the fruit business of offline experience stores is not much different from the fruit counters of surrounding supermarkets.
This is not because the fruit merchants who were criticized by public opinion earlier do not understand the way of fruit management, which is characterized by high loss, high price and difficulty in standardization, although this is an inevitable problem that many fresh e-commerce entrepreneurs have touched. But the lack of core competitiveness is even more fatal.
"I must know why I must choose to buy fruit from you?" For consumers, the word "fruit" in this question can be replaced by any other commodity type. However, for fresh e-commerce, the vague positioning of "fresh e-commerce mainly sells specialty and high-end fruits compared with vegetable markets and supermarkets selling low-end fruits" is not enough to solve the confusion.
Previously, a number of fresh e-commerce initiatives answered this question, especially fruits, which consumers are more willing to see and believe. Under the background of insufficient radiation in offline experience stores, the successful rise of fresh e-commerce platforms often takes explosions as a breakthrough to strengthen the consumer experience.
For example, e-commerce companies such as SF Express, JD.COM, Tian Tian Orchard and Benli Life fought fiercely in 20 13, and continued to the overseas direct cherry picking war in 20 15. In this regard, Le Jue, the person in charge of Miao Xiansheng, Tmall's e-commerce platform, once said that fresh e-commerce has made efforts to push 1-2 products from the perspective of bringing attention. Based on price and experience, consumers will
More importantly, this can make up for the shortage of offline experience stores, and "exotic" fruits will more easily form the shopping stickiness of consumers. In this way, word of mouth will extend to other common categories, and the habit of "seeing is believing" will be reversed.
Burning money to expand the scale may not necessarily enhance the stickiness.
In the whole O2O death list, a common law of death is to burn money until the capital chain breaks, and the main flow of burning money is to blindly expand the scale, with the intention of covering enough people with scale to obtain stickiness and long tail.
Taking the fruit business as an example, we will expand 300 physical stores in one year, covering more than 20 cities, and plan to open 10000 physical stores in the next three years. Such intensive store expansion will inevitably lead to the inadaptability of personnel reserve and operation mode. It should be noted that Baiguoyuan, a well-known fruit chain, has opened 100 stores in only 8 years since 2002. It took another five years, and the scale expanded to 1000 stores.
Even under the extreme expansion of "internet plus", the essence of exponential growth must be transformed from 0 to 1, or a mature template can be copied from 1 to N.
A fresh e-commerce or O2O with insufficient product functions will eventually slide to the other side, that is, once again attract consumers' "greed for cheap" psychology through burning money, subsidies and special prices, thus creating false stickiness. In the fruit business, the real attraction of various "member prepaid cards" to consumers lies in the preferential strength of "charging 1000 to 300" or even "charging 5000 to 3000". If the business is normal, this kind of promotion is understandable, but once it is forced to make money at a loss, such prepaid cards will not only attract funds, but also form a run-on wave similar to banks because of the closure of a store. This scene was confirmed at the end of the fruit camp.
A fresh e-commerce company that ignores consumers, has no real buyer's market concept, but only describes a good story, but can't form a differentiated competition pattern with surrounding supermarkets and fruit stalls in vegetable markets. It is invincible and difficult.
In addition, there are several lessons worth learning:
First, fresh e-commerce and O2O still have to flatten channels with a light attitude. For example, the original life network, which is booming online, is "originally convenient" to enter the offline life O2O project, which is to cooperate with local fruit shops instead of rebuilding. And if more fresh e-commerce companies want to break through, they can also adopt a city, a central experience store+several cooperation points to achieve effective diffusion and coverage. The final passenger entrance is still online, not an experience store.
The second is to build a big data system by using an online platform, which can at least predict a city's expectations for a certain type of fruit. This kind of big data analysis can turn the long tail of e-commerce development into a core data source, which can ensure that the fruit sent to a city will not be too little or too much, which will increase the loss or make it difficult to meet the demand. This is the key to distinguish it from traditional fruit shops.
The third is to constantly differentiate their own characteristics. In order to be successful, fresh e-commerce should actually use the long tail of goods to meet the needs of long-tail end users according to the mode of e-commerce. Everyone has his own characteristics, even if only one person has needs, he can succeed. Of course, the more distinctive, scarce and niche fruits are sold, the more expensive they are. It is more meaningful to put Internet modules such as booking and crowdfunding at the consumption level than at the financing level.
Case study of product brand marketing strategy: the secret of Japan's leading the world
Drucker said that enterprises have and only have two basic functions, namely marketing and innovation, which is also the secret of Xinri's leading the world for many years. Everyone knows the simple truth, but not everyone can do it. Let's take a look at how New Day does these two functions.
Open process and mentality,
Innovation cannot be built behind closed doors.
Whether it's "Industry 4.0" in Germany, "Re-industrialization" in the United States or "Made in China 2025" proposed by China, the guiding ideology is the same, that is, the industrialization upgrade from "manufacturing" to "intellectual creation".
As a front-line enterprise in manufacturing industry, Nippon has already grasped this wave of change. In 20 13, Xinri took the lead in developing the industry's first intelligent electric vehicle. Subsequently, the new day was out of control and made a breakthrough in the intelligentization of electric vehicles. In 20 14, Xinri established the first intelligent ecological supply chain system in the industry, and also promoted the intelligent electric vehicle to the "intelligent 3.0" stage. In 20 15, Miku, a new generation of intelligent electric vehicle independently developed by Nippon Steel, once again subverted people's understanding of intelligent electric vehicles, and won the "Taihu Award", one of the highest awards in the field of industrial design in China, by using as many as 20 world-class intelligent technologies such as one-button detection, electric quantity actuarial, remote vehicle control and emergency rescue.
Everyone knows that innovation is the only way for enterprises to establish competitive differentiation and comparative advantage, but how to innovate? Where is the direction of product innovation? For this problem, at present, more and more China manufacturing enterprises feel lost. We have seen too many such cases, such as Li Ning, Metersbonwe, Bang Wei, Bang Wei and Wahaha. In order to meet the needs of consumers in new markets, they abandoned their original positioning and constantly introduced new products, but the result was "hot face and cold ass", and consumers did not buy it at all. What's the problem?
Their biggest problem is "talking to themselves, behind closed doors" and their mentality is not open enough. In contrast, the practice of Xinri is worth learning. Sunra's openness in product research and development is manifested in three aspects:
1. Carry out extensive cooperation with universities and research institutions at home and abroad in Industry-University-Research. For example, technical cooperation with Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), Carver Institute in Amsterdam, the Netherlands, and top R&D institutions and enterprises from Israel and Japan has also directly introduced outstanding talents from abroad. For example, Takada, a senior engineering expert who once worked for Yamaha Company in Japan, is one of the "foreign AIDS" introduced by Nippon.
2. Not limited to general technical research, enter the field of basic research. For example, the flux-switched motor developed jointly with the team led by Jim, an academician of the American Academy of Engineering at Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), integrates the latest technology, and once put into production, it will probably bring a revolution in electric vehicle motors.
3. Open the whole process of R&D and production to the target users, and let them directly participate. Everyone knows that Xiaomi's success comes from "sense of participation", and there are very few enterprises that can really do it, and even fewer manufacturing enterprises. The Niri Miku, which won the special prize of Taihu Lake Award, was designed by a group of post-90s students from Jiangnan University. It is understood that in order to encourage more "post-90 s" to join the ranks of innovation, Nippon has established an open electric vehicle design platform. Every year, more than 100 college students have in-depth exchanges and integration with R&D personnel and industrial designers on New Day, and dozens of new products are designed every year.
Innovation is based on fully understanding the needs of users, and the best way to fully understand the needs of users is to let users participate in it personally.
Marketing entertainment,
Close the distance with users.
In addition to product innovation, Nippon Steel's bold breakthrough in marketing is also eye-catching. On February 7th, 20 15, at the 13th China Marketing Festival, 15, Nini Miku's "Cai Jing" series products won the "Best Product Marketing Innovation Award of the Year" in one fell swoop. The reason given by the conference is that the brand-new Miku "Cai Jing" series products of Xinri broke the inherent impression of traditional electric vehicle products and approached consumers actively in marketing. Attending the Golden Rooster Film Festival, electric cars "walk" on the red carpet; Inviting Huang Xiaoming to be a brand-new spokesperson ... A series of measures have greatly enhanced the brand image of Xinri and made consumers truly remember Xinri.
"Walking into the fashion world" is a marketing theme of Nini 20 15 throughout the year, especially the "red carpet show" at the 24th Golden Rooster and Hundred Flowers Film Festival, which has attracted the attention of stars and the media and won enough exposure and support for Nini Miku's "Cai Jing" series products. According to statistics, in just one week, Nini Miku crystal color series products have been released on many mainstream portals such as Sina, Phoenix, Netease and Sohu. , with more than 50 media reports and reposts, more than 6,543.8+million exposures, more than 2,000 comments, more than 654.38+00,000 reposts, and more than 8,000 Baidu related searches alone.
Of course, the steps of Nippon Airways towards the fashion world are far more than these: at the beginning of 20 15, Nippon Miku appeared with many leading artists in the art circle, entertainment circle, modeling circle and design circle at the "20 14 Netease Fashion Cross-border Award of the Year"; In May of 20 15, at the recording scene of Happy Camp, the new Japanese tortoise king Feng Ya 19 was incarnated as the mount of fresh meat Yang Yang outside the list, and the popular director Xu zhēng rode an electric car at night, subverting the traditional naming mode and successfully breaking into the field of vision of "post-80s" and "post-90s"; In the same year, Xinri Science and Technology Fashion Center was unveiled and established, becoming the only international professional science and technology fashion manufacturing base in the industry, and invested 20 million yuan to build the strongest fashion product advisory group, with Li Yuntao, an internationally renowned stylist, Liu Lu, a cutting-edge fashion designer from China, and You Tianyi, the queen of the new generation fashion runway, as consultants, injecting fashion and young genes into the products.
Chen Kaiya, spokesman of Nippon Steel and director of the president's office, said that for the future business world, financial writer Wu Xiaobo summed up four major trends, one of which is that "all consumption will be entertaining". Then, from the perspective of enterprise marketing, we should also conform to this trend. Nippon Steel's fashion crossover is the interpretation of practicing marketing entertainment.
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