Lining: Wrong Positioning, Bear Fruit

In July 7, 2011, the Li Ning Co issued an early warning.

Over the past year, companies in the sporting goods industry have been

Market background stimulation

The 2008 Olympic Games will undoubtedly stimulate the development of the sporting goods industry. Lining, Anta, XTEP, China Trends and other brands, whether through sponsorship or other marketing activities, as long as the large-scale market promotion during this period, will naturally get a high growth.

The relevant sporting goods brand has gained the best opportunity for development through the market promotion of the Olympic Games. In the first half of the year, Lining, Anta, XTEP and China (KAPPA) achieved an increase of more than 50% year-on-year, when XTEP's earnings surged by 174.3% over the same period last year.

By the first half of 2009, the turnover of the 4 enterprises increased by 33.5% compared with the previous year, but in the first half of 2010, the turnover of the 4 enterprises increased by 22.6%, the highest in 2009.

At this time, Lining, Li Ning Co sales in 2009 exceeded 8 billion.

According to public information, since Lining listed six years ago, the annual compound growth rate of sales revenue was 34.9%, the net profit compound annual growth rate was 50.5%.

Contrary to the Olympic Games' stimulating market growth, what aspects of the promotion after the Olympic Games are around?

Is it through sponsorship to pull up the brand to achieve high growth?

Or is it growing on a large scale?

Or is it to gain market share through the sinking of channels?

All these problems revolve around the brand of sporting goods industry.

The sharp drop in the price of the sports industry brand can be regarded as the result of these problems. This coincides with the natural integration rule of the market after the rapid development of the whole industry. From this point of view, the decline of the whole industry after rapid growth is also an inevitable rule.

Strategic positioning error

At the end of June 2010, at the celebration of the 20 th birthday of Li Ning Co, the new Logo of "Lining cross action" appeared. At the same time, the new brand slogan "made the change (let change happen") replaced what consumers already know "anything is possible". The target is directed at the "post-90s", and is eager to take the lead and occupy the future consumption force.

This positioning is essentially a subdivision of the age of the consumer group. Its change stems from the Li Ning Co's 2006-2007 year market survey. It is found that the overall age of Lining's actual consumer population is larger than that of the population aged 35-40 and over 50%.

On the other hand, young consumers' impression of Lining's brand in "cool" and "fashion" is slightly inferior to that of international brands.

Can the change of positioning change Lining's current competitive development?

From Lining's own consumer groups, Lining's core consumer is 30~40 years old. With the gradual growth of Lining brand, it is facing the aging of the old consumer groups. The emerging consumer groups can not get the recognition of reality, because Lining's consumer groups are gradually aging, and Lining's brand is gradually facing the aging.

But the question is, which brand is abandoning its original consumer group because of its aging consumer groups, so as to locate a new consumer group?

Moreover, from the age of 30-40, the new consumer group, which is repositioned after 90, is very large in terms of age, consumption concept and brand. Can old consumers accept it?

Can new consumers agree?

It's all unknown.

From the positioning of sports brand, whether it is Nike or Adidas, its leading sports spirit is the essence of its brand positioning, and it also gives up the brand positioning of the target age collectively.

Both Nike and Adidas drive the brand by promoting the brand and driving the brand with the spirit of sports. This is totally different from the positioning of Lining's post-90s positioning with the age of target consumers.

With the target population's global brand network age positioning, it has obviously abandoned its old consumers, taking the emerging consumer groups as the main target. Compared with Nike and Adidas, it has obviously reduced its own consumer groups compared with the sports spirit to cover the consumer groups. The final result of this age positioning is that in the first half of 2011, Lining's revenue was 4 billion 290 million yuan, which was surpassed by Anta by 4 billion 450 million yuan, and the status of the local brand leader was temporarily lost.

Channel integration

Lining tried to get a new target consumer through repositioning, so as to gain new growth.

But the channel is facing new problems.

According to public data, Li Ning Co has 129 distributors and more than 2000 distributors in 2010.

Most distributors are relatively small in scale and operate 2 stores on average.

More than 1700 distributors operate only 1 stores.

In the regional distribution of the channel, Lining's main core regional market is the two or three line city. The first-line market is already the world of Nike and Adidas, and the Jinjiang brand of Anta and PEAK are more competitive in the two or three tier market.

With the decline of the price of Nike and astas, the brand image of Jinjiang and PEAK, such as Anta and PEAK, is constantly improving. Lining is facing the impact of Nike and Adidas on the brand, and the rise and fall of brands such as Anta and Anta.

In terms of the number of development channels, the speed of Anta and PEAK's sinks is much faster than that of Lining.

On the other hand, in the channel integration, Nike started to operate the channel from the beginning of 2009, eliminating the poor dealers and concentrating the sales business on the larger dealers.

Adidas's latest plan is that by 2015, it plans to open more than 2500 stores and provide products with reasonable prices for the market segments, so as to meet the different consumption patterns of different cities. The number of cities covered by Adidas shops will also increase from 550 to more than 1400.

In the development of brand, the spirit of Nike and Adidas advocated the expansion of sports spirit with the sponsorship of large events and the spokesperson of sports image. It also made Lining unable to expand in the brand and channel. The channel integration idea also focused on the integration of 256 distributors' stores. It neither referred to the number of channels and single store expansion ideas of the same time competitors, nor concentrated the sales business to the larger dealers. At the same time, it did not move at the height of the brand.

Brand inspiration

1, market research.

Many companies look at market research very seriously, but how can we see consumer demand from market research?

How to find out suitable strategies for expansion from market research?

Is it fully adjusted according to the results of market research?

Or find some mistakes that are not suitable for self development from market research?

Lining's market research is right. The mistake is to completely change his positioning according to the results of market research, and completely change the original position to the age of target consumers.

This totally dependent on the consequences of market research will lead to the decline of all aspects of enterprises, and believe that market survey, but not only market survey oriented enterprises will get faster development.

2, strategic positioning.

When many enterprises encounter bottlenecks in their development, they will blindly seek strategic change, and positioning is included in this change. However, this change of positioning itself is likely to lead to huge strategic mistakes.

From the change of Lining's positioning, narrowing the target population to the post-90s is risking the loss of the original consumer group. The result of this blind change is bound to lead to the disadvantage of the brand in the development of competition.

Strategic positioning can not be arbitrarily changed by a market survey. It is also necessary to investigate the competitive trend, product and brand characteristics of the whole industry. Considering the market survey data alone, changing strategic positioning is bound to result in bitter consequences.

3, channel integration.

Channel integration is one of the most common strategies, but should channel integration be referred to similar competitors?

Should we look for conformity with industry development, product and brand characteristics?

Strategically speaking, Lining's channel is very necessary to integrate, but in what way does integration take place?

Is it integrated into direct camp?

Or integrate into bigger dealers?

In order to facilitate the allocation of resources?

Lining's channel integration has not been synchronized with the positioning of its own brand and the upgrading of its brand. It has not considered the way in which integration will drive the sales and brand development of the channel, so the short-term channel integration will not bring huge results to Lining.

Relying solely on the integration of a certain area will bring little change to the enterprise, or even go into a quagmire. Only when strategic positioning and brand promotion are synchronized with the development of the channel to promote the development of the whole brand, can the systematic integration of enterprise development achieve greater results.