Shoe Clothing Enterprise Channel Development Is Facing "Prisoner'S Dilemma"

With the end of the 2008 Olympic year,

Shoes and clothing enterprises

At present, the domestic footwear and clothing enterprises generally adopt the terminal business format as exclusive stores, shopping malls, special counters or hypermarkets.

Prisoner's dilemma in game between firms

The so-called "prisoner's dilemma" is that the two sides are seeking the maximization of their own interests in the process of cooperation, but in fact, what they gain is not the maximum benefit.

Specifically, under the agent mode, the shoes and clothing enterprises generally adopt the policy driven futures drive mechanism. Under this mechanism, the enterprise's thinking is based on the hope that the agents "dare to order, order more, order goods", and after ordering, they must execute the order index well, pay for the goods on time, and rely on their own digestion of inventory, and demand less support from the enterprises. The agent's starting point is that the enterprises should make fewer orders for themselves, do not give the order index which is difficult to achieve, and get the credit support of the enterprise, pay more capital and less capital pressure on the payment of goods, at the same time, they can return the goods to the enterprises when they have stocks, or get the policy support of the enterprises to digest the inventory.

This game state leads to two extreme discordant states: "big shop bully" or "big customer bully", which will undoubtedly destroy the efficient development of the channel.

The "prisoner's dilemma" mainly exists in the agent mode. At present, it is the core issue affecting the shoe clothing enterprises to achieve efficient channel expansion.

Regional market development is extensive and fragmented.

This problem exists in three modes.

We find that a large number of shoe and clothing enterprises seldom have a clear understanding and systematic planning for the market capacity, consumption trend, business circle layout, competition situation, channel pattern, entry strategy, expansion step and resource input of a regional market to be developed.

These enterprises are accustomed to extensive policy guidance and investment order mode of operation, only to provide products and sales policies, and then wait for the money, as to how the market should operate, I am sorry, let the agents think for themselves.

A common result is that the level of agents' operation determines the quality of the market development in this area. The thinking, experienced and powerful agents often perform well, otherwise the difference is bad.

In this way, it is reflected in the entire regional layout of enterprises that the expansion of their channels is very extensive and fragmented. There is often lack of integration among regions, and brands and terminals are hard to achieve full momentum, so that they can not quickly build brand influence in the market, thereby restricting the effectiveness of enterprise channel expansion.

Lack of standardized selling mode for terminals

This problem is also very common.

At present, most shoe and clothing enterprises are relatively extensive in marketing operation, many belong to the production type, the business mode stays in the stage of product guidance, they can not operate the enterprise with the retail thinking, nor can they provide a set of systematic operation mode for agents and franchisees in the operation of terminal stores. Agents and franchisees can only find their own feeling through their own grope, and the business performance is difficult to guarantee.

In addition, franchisee's experience of small peddler type experience can not guarantee the sustained growth of store performance. Enterprises can only engage in some empty and conceptualized training, and can not provide mature shop selling mode, which will not help solve their specific problems.

In this way, there is a lot of heart to heart. Who has confidence in joining the brand?

Integration of manufacturers to break the prisoner's dilemma

Aiming at the bottleneck of "prisoner's dilemma", some shoes and clothing enterprises have realized that they should strengthen cooperation with agents and start to build agents' operation system.

However, we find that there are still several problems in promoting this work, which affect the implementation of integrated cooperation.

1, there is a lack of joint planning with agents in strategy.

Some enterprises are more focused on the degree of propaganda and oral request, and have not gone deep into the strategic planning of market development with agents. The agents themselves lack direction and standards for how to build the corporate system including how to build the organizational system, how to configure the marketing team, how to design the business process, how to build the incentive system, and how to build the management system.

In the end, the actual operation of many agents is not satisfactory.

Therefore, shoes and clothing enterprises must set up a complete set of regional market overall strategy planning templates at headquarters. With this template, as long as agents provide some basic sales data, the marketing center of enterprises can help them analyze and formulate a systematic marketing strategy plan, so as to provide a clear basis for their corporatization operation.

The regional market personnel and agents of many enterprises have great opinions on each other. The reason is that these regional market personnel lack strategic planning ability and can not provide valuable suggestions for agents. If the regional market personnel can plan well, it is not difficult to get approval from agents.

2, there is a lack of proper organizational cooperation between the regional team and the agent team.

We find that there are two kinds of bad tendencies in the process of promoting the corporatization operation of shoes and clothing enterprises. One is: in order to save personnel costs, the enterprises only pay basic wages to the regional market personnel, and the bonus assessment and payment are paid to the agents. Thus, the regional market personnel are often subject to the requirements of the agents and become the agents of the agents, instead of standing on the position and height of the enterprises to promote the corporatization operation of the agents; secondly, some enterprises bear the wages and bonuses of the regional market personnel, but push the travel expenses of the market personnel to the market to the agents, so that some agents will not arrange the market for the personnel of the enterprises to save the market.

Both sides of the company are trapped in their own "small account" situation, which is bound to be not conducive to the effective expansion of the market.

The way we take service in enterprises is to help enterprises build a regional management center (virtual, actually a business office), but in name, they also pull agents together to form and undertake corresponding management functions.

The institutions directly under the management center, whose wages, bonuses and daily travel expenses are borne by the enterprises, do not bring any burden to the agents. The market personnel fully promote the agents to expand the market effectively from the angle and height of the enterprises.

Facts have proved that this model is very effective, which can fundamentally dispel the concerns of agents and integrate them with the agents from the organizational mechanism.

3, there is a lack of standardized management system for the regional team.

The regional market development of many shoe and clothing enterprises basically depends on the experience of policy guidance and regional market personnel, and most of the market personnel come from other enterprises, who are incompatible with the current enterprises with the instilled ideas and behaviors of the past enterprises, thus resulting in the embarrassing situation that the strategy of enterprises is difficult to land.

Shoes and clothing enterprises must change their extensive management methods. In addition to formulating sales targets and policies, they should also build up a standardized market expansion system, embody the strategic priorities and working norms of enterprises, and integrate the work of regional market personnel into the overall planning system.

In addition, it is necessary to establish a reasonable performance incentive system according to the strategic focus. The focus of incentives should not only be on the outcome indicators, but on the key links conducive to the implementation of the strategy, such as the goal of shop opening, the goal of store construction, and so on, so as to create a regional marketing team that allows agents to identify and convince and have strong executive power.

To sum up, the shoe and clothing enterprises must fundamentally break through the "prisoner's dilemma". They must shift from the former policy oriented marketing mode to the management oriented mode, sink the management focus to the agents and regional market teams, and build the corresponding organization system and management system from this point of view.

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Regional focus on intensive farming and market explosion

In view of the widespread and fragmented bottleneck of regional market development, enterprises must change the extensive regional market expansion mode in the past, build a focus on intensive farming operation system, carry out systematic, targeted, systematic and planned expansion to the regional market, so as to enhance the success rate of the regional market, create a solid strategic base, consolidate the market base for brand expansion, and effectively respond to market competition.

If a regional market does not have enough market capacity and growth potential, only the strength of the agent is not enough to make the market a key market, the resources of enterprises should not be put there.

If a regional market has full potential for development, even if the strength of the current agent is not enough, enterprises should focus their resources on the regional market to ensure the success of market expansion.

An idea that enterprises must always bear in mind is to judge whether the key inputs should be based on the development of the regional market, rather than just depending on the strength of the agents, so that the enterprises can jump out of the inherent thinking that relies entirely on agents.

When enterprises set up a key regional market, we need to build a systematic operation system focusing on regional intensive farming. We call it the ARS mode, that is, regional rolling market expansion. The key point is that through the in-depth analysis of the regional market, the enterprises can extract key markets with great development potential and mutual support in the region, formulate systematic market strategy planning according to the market competition situation, then focus on investing large resources, strive to build their strategic base in key markets, and play a leading role in the market share and brand influence.

When the key market achieves the goal, the enterprise will extract other potential market areas, and focus on resources to build its own strong market, so that it can build an advantageous market position on the whole market and improve the efficiency of the regional market development.

The limited network strength of a regional market is thin. But if we concentrate on the layout of a region and form the brand momentum, the market will inevitably be detonated.

Standardized store sales to achieve rapid expansion

Aiming at the third bottleneck, the key to the solution lies in refining a standardized terminal store sale mode.

From the actual situation, this is also the weakest and most difficult and most promising development for shoes and clothing enterprises.

It can be seen that the more mature enterprises have the mode of selling, the more rapid expansion of scale can be achieved.

At present, the standardization of shoes and clothing enterprises relies more on training, but this can not fundamentally play a role.

If the enterprise can extract a unique and strong terminal selling mode, not only can the performance of the direct store be guaranteed, but also fundamentally dispel the concerns of agents and franchisees, and efficient expansion can also be realized naturally.

We advocate shoes and clothing enterprises according to their brand positioning and retail format positioning, dig out the key links in the retail store process, and extract them into a set of standardized shop selling mode, standardize the work of shop salesmen in the sale of key links, and then form a set of standard operation manuals, and through training, require the salesmen to strictly enforce them, so as to rapidly enhance the performance of terminal stores, and build up a replicable shop selling system, and then apply them to the mode of direct agents, agents and franchisees, and ultimately achieve efficient expansion of channels.

Just like McDonald's operation, only the concept is not enough, and there must be a set of operational business models. Shoes and clothing enterprises must also provide agents and franchisees with a business model that is simple, risky, and visible in the short term, so that they can impress them from the bottom of their hearts.

The old way of advertising investment and policy investment, I am afraid, will no longer be easy to bite.