2010 Accidental Death Of A Demanding And Differentiated Enterprise

The difference is the form, the market demand is the content.

Too much emphasis and blind pursuit of differentiation are all about carving a boat.

I worked in a well-known beverage group in the whole country. I personally experienced a loss of hundreds of millions of dollars for the difference between demanding and competing products.

Once brilliant

The leading product of the group is a kind of steam tea.

To be precise, it is a carbonated beverage containing tea ingredients.

In the 90s of last century, the domestic beverage products were very monotonous, and there were no similar products in the market, and few brands.

So at the beginning of group entrepreneurship, it was easy to succeed by relying on this differentiated product.

In the prime of 1998, sales reached 2 billion yuan.

The group leader has boundless scenery and various honors follow: NPC deputy, outstanding entrepreneur and outstanding communist party member.

When he meets with his subordinates, he always talks about the three major strategies of marketing, such as differentiation strategy, centralized strategy and low cost strategy, especially for differentiation strategy.

But in the later development, the group leader fell into a serious mire of self complacency and self willed self.

It shows itself out of the market reality, takes the modern marketing theory out of context, loses its direction in product development and brand extension, and makes many mistakes. It develops a series of fruit flavored soft drinks series to emulate the multi brand strategy of Coca Cola Co. However, because of its rough manufacturing, it can not compete with Sprite, Fanta, and eye-catching. It has developed a "red tea wine" in a whim and blindly realized the cross industry extension of the brand.

Banknotes cost a lot, but it never occurred to me that the most developed product line is a series of rich tea drinks, which results in an opportunity for competitors.

The brilliant achievements of the group in 1998 gave an important inspiration to Kangshifu, the mainland: there are more than a billion people on the mainland, and Chinese people have thousands of years of tea drinking habits, so China's tea beverage market has great potential.

The first brand opponent of instant noodles has found the mistake of the group: no pure tea drink has been developed. In 1999, Kangshifu first launched the hot filling pure tea series beverage, and gave the unique product appeal: green tea: Green good mood; ice black tea: ice power.

It should be said that hot filling tea from technology to content is more in line with people's tea drinking habits.

It's especially suitable for people who don't like carbonated drinks.

At that time, Kangshifu did not shoot at all, but experienced a period of pition when any brand was going to expand and expand.

Take the first half of 1999 as an example, in front of the shopping mall in various cities, we worked with Master Kang at the same time to promote sales. The advertising umbrella of the group was surrounded by consumers, but the Master Kong was very cold. In the eyes of consumers, the master and the instant noodle almost became synonyms. Suddenly, a master's tea beverage came to us.

But the development of fine products is the purpose of Kangshifu. The operation of the retail terminal is its strong point. In a very short time, Kangshifu tea beverage has a high rate of distribution, product mix and uniform display of terminal display in retail stores. After more than half a year's publicity and cognition process, although retail price is higher than us 50%, it has opened the market with the taste quality favored by consumers.

Blind innovation

At this time, if the group can seize the opportunity and catch up with it and launch the hot filling series of pure tea drinks, with the strong brand advantage of "the first brand of beverage" at the time, holding the offensive of Kangshifu at least, it is still at least confident of being equal to the master Kang, but unfortunately, the head of the group has drilled into the bull's horn for demanding differentiation. Since Kangshifu has introduced the hot filling, we are not interested in the back. We must introduce products that are different from it.

So, after grinding for more than a year, the group's differentiated products finally turned up: "change x *".

This beverage is a bottle of pure water from its appearance. The bottle mouth has a stopper, which is made of tea powder and saccharin.

The consumer should unscrew the lid when drinking, press the stopper, wait for the tea powder and saccharin to leak into the water, then twist the lid tightly, shake the bottle vigorously to dissolve the tea powder and saccharin, then open the lid and drink.

The idea is to enjoy the fun of self operation.

The so-called differentiated products developed behind closed doors have four weaknesses compared with competing products.

The main function of beverages is to quench thirst. When people are hot and thirsty, the instinctive reaction to buy drinks is to drink and satisfy thirst.

The pleasure of enjoying the process of self operation is purely subjective and does not conform to the general consumption habits.

The hot filling tea beverage of competitive products contains white sugar and honey, and the taste is absolutely superior to the strange sweetness of "changing x *" with saccharin.

"Change * *" is not suitable for ice, because iced tea powder is easy to caking and not easy to dissolve. It is contrary to the habit of people who like to drink iced drinks in summer.

The quality of the stopper is not good enough, and more than half of the stopper fingers are not fixed at all.

While shopping, a shopkeeper asked the manufacturer to demonstrate how to press the plug and shake it.

As a result, the salesmen didn't even open 6 bottles, so they were ashamed to find a slot to drill in.

To "differentiate" to the end

In view of these problems, we timely summing up the written newspaper group headquarters.

But the boss is not moved.

On the one hand, he firmly believes that his differentiation strategy is correct. On the one hand, he emphasizes that drinks are not high-tech, and are typical impulse buying products, and their main function is to quench thirst.

Quality is not the main factor.

The advertisement above is the most important thing.

But no one can read the commercials and nobody likes them.

Even if they are differentiated, advertisements should be sold to the public, such as how to press the plug, shake and dissolve, where the superior position of the hot tea filling tea is, and so on.

The commercials of "change * *" are really like magic: a man is holding a product in his hand, flying up and down, and mumbling in his mouth: "I want to change, change! Change!" the result is just like Sun Wukong's Golden hoop stick.

But the boss likes it alone.

Advertising has been played for more than half a year.

At the same time, the group also spent a lot of money to publish soft articles in various newspapers, attacking the shortcomings of hot filling tea drinks and losing nutrition, but consumers still do not buy this account.

For the sake of

Actually differentiation is form, and market demand is content.

Too much emphasis and blind pursuit of differentiation are all about carving a boat.

Mengniu subdivided the sales of "breakfast milk". As a result, all brands of breakfast milk appeared. Mengniu's "yogurt" entertainment marketing was in full swing, and sour yogurt was closely followed. There were many famous brands in the country, but no one laughed.

As for the "big bone noodle", which has just been listed, it has caught up with a group of "bone soup noodle" and "bone soup noodle" later.

And so on, it seems that the pig bones and instant noodles are indissoluble in the past two years. Hebei Xiao Yang people's company has pioneered the development of milk and fruit juice "wonderful love" fruit milk beverage in China, and has achieved good sales performance. Wahaha sees in the eyes, immediately followed up the "nutrition express line".

And rely on its strong brand strength, in the advertising and market operation intensity over the former.

This year, the sales of nutrition express is more than that of "wonderful love".

The industry knows that Wahaha, a giant in the food industry, has always had very few innovative products, most of which are follow-up products, but they still operate well.

Interpretation of business schools: differentiation