The instant noodle industry has always been a low-profit industry with low market entry barriers, but without sufficient market scale, it is difficult to make profits. Foreign companies in this market basically rely on enlarging the market scale to win profits. . Although Taiwan Unification has been in the Chinese market for many years, it has been losing money and did not start making profits until 2000.

As a foreign-funded enterprise, expensive labor costs are an important aspect of high operating costs. The deputy general manager, financial manager, chief engineer, human resources manager and other senior personnel of Meichu are all foreign employees. In addition to paying them high wages, Meichu also has to pay them expensive apartment rent and transportation fees. This is obviously a heavy burden for a low-profit food company.

As a medium-sized food company, Meichu’s business is not small. In addition to producing instant noodles, it also produces candies, beverages, soy sauce, instant coffee, seasonings and food machinery. It operates too many varieties. , resulting in insufficient effective operation and the effect of diseconomies of scale; Meichu has its own fleet and import and export department, and the scale of its factory in Shilong Industrial Development Zone is also the scale of a large enterprise. Only two steam boilers will be burned out in a year The waste of 10,000 tons of coal is very serious. On the whole, as a medium-sized enterprise, it is very unwise to set up these complete institutions internally that are only possible in large enterprises in order to achieve self-sufficiency. This is very unwise in the trend of professional division of labor and saving resources in modern society. There is an unwritten rule in the instant noodle market that products need to frequently change packaging and flavors to meet consumers' changing taste needs. At this point, Master Kong and Uni-President surpass Meichu in terms of the speed of product updates and the width of their product lines. At the most, Meichu only had five categories of products, while Master Kong had nine categories of products, and there were many packaging specifications and changes, including ordinary packaging, small packaging, and large household packaging. This made their products It appears rich and comprehensive, able to meet the needs of different types of consumers, and the packaging and flavors are often updated, making consumers always feel that new products are on the market.

In the development of product taste, Meichu made some mistakes in the later stage. Although fried chicken with black pepper and onions was once loved by consumers, one flavor cannot always be favored by consumers. Meichu was slow to launch subsequent products, and its main products were never launched. It was not until the launch of the Singapore-style "Laowai" that Meichu's instant noodles were updated. However, because the seasonings of "Laowai" were not suitable for China Due to the lack of corresponding marketing promotion and market cultivation work due to the lack of consumer tastes, product sales have not improved. Meichu did not seriously study the taste habits of Chinese people, but believed that there is an adaptation process to taste acceptance. It has always treated "foreigners" as a long-line product, and the results can be imagined. Later, Meichu successively launched "Dashi Hui", "Dragon and Phoenix Pairing" and "Liao Noodles". Since the products basically followed Master Kong and Tongyi, they lacked marketing efforts and relied on natural sales. Basically, there was no way to compete with them. Uni-President competes with similar products from Master Kong.

The braised noodles launched by Uni-President have adapted to the taste needs of the northern market and are very popular in the Beijing market, attracting competitors to imitate; Uni-President has also segmented the target market, targeting the children's market. The developed "Little Raccoon" crispy noodles are very popular among the student market. By 1996, after years of market cultivation, Uni-President Company had put aside the baggage of the failure of "Food Legend" and discovered the market space for children's crispy noodles. It then gave the company the image of a little raccoon and successfully blocked the attack of Master Kong's "Little Tiger Team". The success of Little Raccoon Noodles did not make much contribution to the unified brand. However, the launch of this product was undoubtedly a boost for dealers and factory personnel who had been depressed due to lack of sales for a long time. New products were subsequently released one after another. , breaking away from the original idea of ??flavor differentiation, successfully launched "Manchu-Han Feast", "Unification 100", etc., and then segmented a higher-end market based on the high-end noodles established by Master Kong (with three packages of ingredients, Da Ke Zhong was the appeal), and later Hao Jingdao targeted Fumanduo and entered the low-end market, and launched "Lai Yi Tong", which directly challenged Master Kong's position as the number one brand. During this period, due to the slow follow-up of Meichu's products and the launch of no similar competitive products, the market has begun to decline; on the other hand, Meichu's research on the Chinese consumer market and market segmentation also appeared to lack planning and extensive product upgrading. The slow and slow taste did not adapt to the Chinese market, causing Meichu to gradually lose its advantage in terms of products; Meichu cultivated a group of high-quality sales teams in the early days, which is also an important factor in ensuring its market stability.

At that time, Meichu provided these market sales staff with relatively competitive wages, complete training mechanisms and standardized sales management, so that Meichu’s channels in the Beijing market have always been healthy, from first-level stores to second-level stores to In third-level stores, almost all the sales staff of Meichu can manage and communicate effectively. At that time, the sales representatives could even know the birthday and hobbies of the main person in charge of each shopping mall, and maintain a relatively good cooperative relationship with them; however, as time goes by, As Meichu's investment in China decreased and its sales force was gradually neglected, these sales personnel were gradually lost. The sales and marketing personnel who were later added have deteriorated a lot in terms of overall quality and professionalism. Without good marketing personnel, Meichu's channels It was difficult to maintain it well. Because the service could not keep up, Meichu's terminals in major shopping malls in Beijing began to lose control. There were fewer and fewer products on display, and they were almost submerged by Master Kong and Uni-President.

Meichu’s marketing has also declined from its early days of innovation to almost no decent publicity and promotion. An advertising company that has served Beijing Meichu for many years reported that the early Meichu advertising business There were still quite a lot of promotions and advertising, but later they became less and less. Even if there was business, it was basically basic things like packaging design and poster design. As for advertising, there was no action. However, with this At the same time, TV advertisements for Uni-President and Master Kong were not only frequently placed on national satellite TV stations, but in 2001, Master Kong instant noodles also broadcast advertisements during prime time on CCTV.

As a family business and a wholly foreign-owned enterprise, Meichu’s internal management problems have gradually emerged with the decline in operating efficiency. Communication barriers have arisen between the management team composed of employees of different nationalities. Mutual suspicion, difficulty in communication, and mutual opposition between employees in the factory and management departments have brought huge hidden dangers to the company's internal management and weakened the company's core competitiveness. Loopholes in management also cause continuous loss of corporate assets. For example, when Beijing Meichu purchased a vehicle, the driver lost all the car purchase procedures and the car. In the end, he only gave the driver a penalty; once, when a kind of palm oil imported by Meichu was weighed at the weighing station in the development zone, the difference was 270 per car. Kilograms; the financial statements submitted to the general manager by Chinese personnel and foreign personnel for their respective interests turned out to be hugely different. Due to foreign parties' lack of understanding of the Chinese market, it is unfavorable to supervise Chinese management. There are various signs that Meichu's management has begun to get out of control. Starting from 2000, Meitu began to have problems in the market. First, there was an incident where products on the assembly line failed to meet hygiene standards and were investigated and punished by the Industrial and Commercial Bureau. Then, in May 2001, there was an incident where the marshmallows given in the promotion were counterfeit products. When Beijing Meichu sells Meichu instant noodles, it gives a bag of "JINGTANG" brand soft white sugar with the box and states that "the box contains exquisite gifts." These soft white sugars include both genuine products purchased from regular channels and fake products purchased from wholesale markets. There are more than 20,000 bags in total, with a total price of more than 40,000 yuan. Among them, at least 8,700 bags of soft white sugar have flowed into the market along with instant noodles. . For this reason, the Beijing Sugar Industry Tobacco and Liquor Company, the manufacturer of "JINGTANG" brand soft white sugar, claimed damages from Meichu on the grounds that it had infringed its registered trademark rights. The court held that Meichu Company purchased "JINGTANG" brand soft white sugar for many times and should know whether the products it purchased were counterfeit goods; Meichu Company sold the sugar in boxes as gifts, and this act of giving away was still a common practice. a sales behavior. Accordingly, the court determined that Meichu Company’s infringement was established.

This incident was widely publicized by the media, and ultimately Meichu was fined 50,000 yuan by the Beijing Municipal Administration for Industry and Commerce. After the spread and impact of this incident, the reputation of Beijing Meichu has been severely hit, especially the sales channels, which have been fatally affected. Many shopping malls no longer sell Meichu instant noodles.