Recently, people are always talking about two topics. One is that unknown enterprises suddenly enter our field of vision and become star enterprises. The other is that once brilliant enterprises suddenly disappear from our vision and become declining enterprises.
We have deeply thought about Le Kai and Fuji, two once brilliant film companies. Now, one of them has gradually withdrawn from the market, and the other has been reborn through transformation and reconstruction.
Mobile phones have become a part of people's way of life, but we use Mr. Jobs's "customer scream" to lament the glory of Nokia and Motorola. Samsung and Huawei are also companies that we often praise.
Total surplus is the main contradiction of current economy. The main reason for the total surplus is the overcapacity caused by repeated construction, and behind the overcapacity is the surplus of homogenized products.
We often say that there are great opportunities behind the problems. In fact, the huge business opportunities of differentiation and personalization are hidden behind the total surplus.
Through more than 20 years' observation and research, we find that behind the periodic or universal problems, there must be local opportunities or opportunities of the times. This opportunity is the trend.
Trend is the advantage in the future, and the later exhibition is to be good at discovering trends and then build advantages with trends.
Mr. Darwin said: survival of the fittest. It means that things that can adapt to the trend can survive, and those that can't adapt to the environment will be gradually eliminated.
What is the future trend?
Consumption Trend: Pleasant Consumption Based on Good Life
After 30 years of rapid development, China's consumption has changed from subsistence to enjoyment. Healthy consumption has become the mainstream consumption.
Consumption upgrading is the fundamental reason for the end of the era of homogeneous products. Personalization and differentiation replace homogeneous products.
The beer industry has been declining for 28 consecutive months. Everyone agrees that overcapacity and serious overcapacity in the beer industry are common problems. First-line beer brands, such as Snowflake and Qingdao, expand their production capacity by grabbing market share, while the shrinking market share of second-and third-line beer brands brings about insufficient start-up and gentle surplus. Enterprises such as Venus Beer are struggling, trying to stabilize production capacity by increasing market share, and even trying to maintain their industry position through increment. Similar to Taishan puree beer and Tianhu beer, these second-and third-line brands have found their own living space on the basis of differentiated craft beer.
When the traditional beer industry entered a difficult period, the investment in craft beer became hot. According to incomplete statistics, in 20 16, there were at least 5 craft beer enterprises with an additional scale of over 50,000 tons, with an investment scale of over 2 billion.
Enterprises that invest in craft beer have seen the consumption trend, and they have seen that consumers no longer focus on food and clothing consumption, but mainly on enjoying consumption. See consumers' higher purchasing power and greater new demand.
Product trend: the era of buying points is coming
Our enterprise must keep in mind two basic changes. One is that in the Internet age, information is completely symmetrical. In the past, our consumption was carried out under the environment of asymmetric information. We often say that from Nanjing to Beijing, the buyer is not as clever as the seller. Now this sentence is out of date, because "Baidu" consumers will fully understand.
The information is symmetrical, and the product era based on concept hype is over. The product development of an enterprise must be based on real technological innovation and truly create value for customers. There is a word in management called "full delivery of value". Without real value innovation and promotion, relying on concept hype will enter the posterior road of "Chinese turtle essence"
At present, the biggest dilemma of the food industry is the total surplus and the lack of structure or personality. Consumers change from survival type to enjoyment type. Consumers' demand for food is not simply satiety or nutrition, but screaming after satisfying consumers' taste buds.
After visiting a large number of food enterprises, we found a common problem: no sales.
Why not sell it? Nothing more than two reasons.
One is that manufacturers still operate the market in the traditional way, that is, around convenient purchase and happy purchase, they invest a lot of money in channel construction, ignoring the pull of consumers. The root of this immobility is "some people sell, but no one buys".
Another is the lack of buying points, and manufacturers are still Wang Po-style "selling points". The era of selling points is over, and the era of buying points is coming. Manufacturers must deeply understand the process of customers' consumption of products by entering the customer's lifestyle, and find the purchase point of their products from this process.
Please give the customer a reason to buy, which is the first question we keep asking ourselves and the enterprise in the consulting service. A product that can't find customers' reasons for buying must be a failed product. Many enterprises will ask us in confusion: How can we find customers' reasons for buying?
In order to find the reason for customers to buy, it is necessary to enter the customer's lifestyle and explore the purchase points that make customers scream during their product consumption.
Food enterprises are accustomed to competitive thinking mode, and always regard price or promotion as the basic point of product success. They stubbornly believe that as long as the price is cheap, they can be slightly better than competing products, and with their own efforts to promote, they will certainly make the products successful.
Since then, Master Kong has launched the old altar instant noodles, which has exceeded 3 billion in three years and continuously achieved more than 6 billion. After that, we focused on product research and development, and launched products that made consumers scream, such as full banquet, Tang's adult, champion list, full banquet, and accompanying a city.
It can be seen that it is not competitive thinking, not just customer thinking, but customer lifestyle that changes the unified destiny.
To find out the reason why customers buy, we must find the periodic law and nodes of demand "iteration". After the rapid development of dairy products in China, the protein demand era of white milk is coming to an end. Bright Dairy, which is a little quiet, found the periodic law and node of this demand "iteration" and timely launched the fermented milk with momchilovtsi flavor. Successfully completed the category occupation and market attack, this product not only makes the bright dairy industry have unlimited scenery, but also makes the subsequent dairy industry regret it.
Consumer demand is constantly upgrading and changing, and this change has periodic laws and nodes. Successful product development must be able to deeply understand and understand this point. At the same time, by entering the customer's lifestyle, we use the reconstructed thinking system to study the customer's needs and the products we need to buy to meet these needs.
Forgetting the selling point is the first step for food enterprises to get out of the misunderstanding of competition and realize the success of product development. Finding the point of purchase is the cornerstone of successful product development. If you can't find a buying point, let alone a good product, let alone wasting time and resources for a product without a buying point.
We should remember that the era of customer first is the era of buying products. Please forget the selling points and find some.
Competitive trend: service is king
The Internet that everyone has been exclaiming is coming, and many industries and enterprises are facing subversion. We have written an article before, "It is never technology but customers that will subvert the enterprise", which has caused a lot of heated discussion and thinking in the society.
We believe that all technologies serve our humanity, and technology is a means to improve the service ability of enterprises. Without the promotion of product value, no technology will achieve sustained success. This is the best example, whether it's the baked wheat cake of Huang Taiji or the carved beef brisket.
The arrival of the era of customer sovereignty means that tangible products must be supported by intangible services in order to form sustainable success.
From June 2065438 to June 2006, we accepted the invitation of a famous beer company to do a "study on consumers' purchasing behavior of Internet e-commerce platform" for them.
The background of this beer company's invitation to us is this: they think that their market coverage is very high and it is convenient for customers to buy, but compared with the same period of 20 15, the sales of e-commerce platforms such as Tmall have increased greatly, and the prices of online and offline purchases are basically the same. To this end, they believe that the low distribution rate of dealers may lead to the platform e-commerce receiving a lot of orders. Among them, nearly 30,000 orders were received in June.
We conducted a detailed return visit and investigation on 600 consumers who bought beer from the enterprise on the e-commerce platform, and reached the conclusion that the distribution rate of dealers is very high and consumers also have very convenient purchase conditions. There are two reasons for the increase in the purchase rate of consumers on e-commerce platforms. One is based on the change of buying habits, but this is only the change of buying habits, which is not directly related to the price; The other is that consumers get service, even if they buy 6 cans of small packages online, they also have on-site service, and such customers with purchasing psychology account for an absolute proportion.
Therefore, we believe that the future products and services are the magic weapon for the sustained success of enterprises, or the magic weapon for latecomers to catch up.
From another point of view, there may be limited room for product value improvement in the future, but there is unlimited room for improvement based on product services. The way for enterprises to improve their service ability is to enter the lifestyle of customers. It is the basic direction of enterprise products and services to think of their services as customers and let them enjoy them all the time.
(The author is the founder of reconstruction theory and the author of "Reconstruction, the Way of Enterprise Rebirth")