Our previous article '2017 Insight of China eCommerce - People | Product | Place - 1/3Three insights that the eCommerce Managers are now talking in China. How to be the winner in the war of retail in the era of people-centric eCommerce?2017 Insight of China eCommerce - People | Product | Place - 1/3' focused on consumers - how could the retailer catch the people from different channels and enhance the conversion. Today, 'product' will be our emphasis and let's see how product strategy and eCommerce solution can bring more sales to your business.
How the product looks like in the era of 'New Retail'
Some marketers said, 'No matter how hard you build your brand, without good products, it won't last long.' It seems like to be an eternal truth. We can observe that those brands relying on discount and promotion fail in recent years. No one will follow a brand without good products to solve the market pain point and satisfy the needs of consumers.
Branding in the new retail era not only focuses on goodwill, publicity, and loyalty, a long-lasting connection with the consumer is raising its importance. A product is the pioneer bonding between your brand and the consumer. A consumer gets cognition with it; grows curiosity and interest; purchases and consumes the product. Good products generate customer loyalty to the brand and ignite referral and spreading. Every step seems to be a challenge to the product as well as the brand itself.
Question comes: What is a good product in the era of new retail?
In China, someone summarizes 6 characteristics of good products in the eye of the 90s generation: good-looking, fun, useful, interesting, with love (emotion) and elegant. In short, products which can bring social connection can grab the consumers' attention. So, let check how several Chinese brands play product marketing well and ignite the social connection between consumers.
Brands targeting the younger generations
Simply make some changes in the product packaging. Be creative and your brand message will simply be shared.
Weichuan Fruit Juice Creative Bottle
It seems that so many brands love playing with the bottle packaging. No matter Coca-Cola, JiangXiaoBai, Heineken, etc. Weichuan from Taiwan sells a popular fruit juice in China ‘每日C’. The new packaging became hot in the Chinese social media with the interesting elements of the outlook. There are 7 flavors of the juice and each flavor gets one Chinese character. 42 Chinese characters can generate a lot of interesting phases. There may be funny jokes and emotional expressions that are worth to spread and share in the social media. With this, Weichuan gained a lot of online social interactions and impression.
"Mum, give me a red pocket!'
TAG Heuer
‘Fans economy' is the current strategy used by many FMCG products. By appointing a popular and young celebrity to be the brand ambassador, the brand can successfully draw a lot of media and consumer attention and enhance the sales.
TAG Heuer appointed young Chinese superstars like Angelababy and Li Yifeng as the brand ambassador. TAG Heuer is a Swiss manufacturing company that design, manufactures and markets watches and fashion accessories to mid-to-premium businessmen. Apart from Angelababy and Li Yifeng, Jeremy Lin and Cara Delevingne had also been appointed by TAG Heuer, inviting fresh and entertainment elements into their brand.
Snickers x TFBoys
Probably no one could explain why TFBoys is so popular in China. Their fans only on Weibo exceed 5 million, not counting the other channels. Popularity will be one of the reasons why Snickers chooses them. Their young and energetic identity also fits the brand image.
The new TFBOYS Snickers packaging made a good sales record on the eCommerce channel. After 50 minutes of the product launch on the online store T-mall, over 10,000 boxes were sold and GMV exceeded 3.5 million Yuan within 1 hour.
Online marketing communication
Younger generation loves new and fun product and engages in social communication and spreading. New media technology like Html5, live streaming or VR could get the Internet attention and boost the popularity of the product.
Durex 100-beds Live streaming
Durex is always presenting impressive and unforgettable online social media campaign to the consumers. No matter on ad hoc topics, festival celebration, and creative campaign, Durex is able to gain consumer and media attention and positive feedback and lots of traffic. In the 100-beds live streaming campaign, Durex invited 100 pairs of couple and offer them a bed. Although there was nothing SPECIAL happened during the 3 hours live stream (some were chatting, sleeping, eating fruits, etc.), it had already gained 5 million views and become a hot search in the search engine. The sales of condom was also boosted at the mid-night after the live stream ended.
The Imperial Palace Museum
In order to get rid of the old and conservative impression of a traditional museum and catch the teenagers attention, the Imperial Palace Museum set up a series of campaign with Tencent to re-brand herself. An online Html5 '穿越故宫来看你' hit the full channels of social media in China. Impressive story-telling and fascinating drawings about ancient Chinese Emperor attracted a lot of forward via social media.
Product, branding, creative strategy and communication channels...all are indispensable to make a product and brand successful. Yet, those strategies can only help to bring a one-off traffic to the product. The best way to reply customer loyalty is the product with good quality itself. Back to the eCommerce point of view, after launching a proper product strategy, what will be the eCommerce tactic you should know in order to make your sales more successful?
eCommerce Strategy on Product
Detail Product Classification and Management
There are different labels and tags for each product. By matching the associated tag and label via the big data analysis, you can perform target marketing to a certain group of consumer. The brand should give a detail classification for each product and which will form an organized product segment. A general example will be the kitchen products should be prior targeted to female and customers who also purchased fresh food, but not a male teenager who always orders delivered food. It is the power of big data and product management.
Price Differentiation
Price analysis can be run to compare similar and competitive products on the eCommerce platform. Price differentiation highly depends on the volume of competitors and their according price. We may set price with more premium when the product is famous, less competitive and/or with good quality.
Personalize Coupon and Discount
Operation is also an important element in the eCommerce. A one-off promotion or discount sometimes cannot maximize the store revenue; personalize or targeting promotion can be more effectively trigger re-purchase and draw back old customers. When you can trace a certain customer hesitating at the payment stage, try to send him or her a discount coupon to finish the deal!
In conclusion, try to fix your brand (product) strategy, data manipulation, and platform operation. It may help your eCommerce go to the next level.
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