A preliminary study on the New Ecological Marketing of Tea Merchants; the public has become the main consumer

"at present, the most urgent task for the professional tea market and tea merchants is to reconstruct the marketing channels so that tea can return to the original position of the daily necessities of the common people. In addition, the problems of branding and standardization of the tea industry also need to be solved. " Before the National Day, in the face of the tea market which is still at a low ebb, Xu Qiuxin, general manager of Jinan Ruichi Qilu Tea City, sighed a lot.

With the establishment of the long-term mechanism of the central "eight regulations", the tea marketing model of public fund group purchase, collective welfare and gift giving has come to a dead end. it is replaced by a new marketing model based on network sales and experiential marketing.

The public becomes the main body of consumption.

With the introduction and implementation of the "eight regulations" of the central government at the end of 2012, the consumption demand of government "three public" consumption and corporate gifts has decreased sharply, and the domestic tea market has entered a period of adjustment.

Ms. Cao, general manager of Luran Trade, which deals in both wine and tea in Qilibao Tea City in Jinan, said that since the implementation of the "eight regulations," the consumption of high-end drinks and tea has been greatly affected, and sales have dropped by more than 30%. On the one hand, according to the changes in the market, various brands have made timely adjustments to the prices of high-end gift tea, official tea and business tea, and the prices tend to be more rational; on the other hand, the demand of the general public consumer market is not falling, but rising, and product prices are also steadily rising slightly, with products of 100m / jin and 500 yuan per jin being the mainstream of market consumption. In terms of product types, in the past two years, the market has changed from the previous "green, fat, red and thin" pattern to a "red, green, black and white" melee situation, black tea is heating up, and black tea and white tea are becoming more and more popular.

In Ruichi Qilu Tea City, located on Zhangzhuang Road in Jinan, a Mr. Zhang, who is buying black tea, told the Economic Herald, "now there are much fewer wines. I drink tea after meals every day, and my health is much better than when I used to drink every day." He said that he used to send a lot of tea, he basically did not buy tea, but this year no one gave it away, so he came to buy it himself.

The transformation of tea merchants "touching the net"

In 2013, the Dayi brand sold nearly 100 million yuan in Tmall, making it the first traditional tea enterprise to sell on the Internet. At present, Taobao, Tmall, JD.com, Dangdang, No.1 shop and so on have become the Internet platforms for tea merchants to enter. With the launch of Wechat, traditional tea merchants, especially low-end tea dealers, have once again ushered in the opportunity.

Ms. Cao said that she also wanted to open a shop online, but considering the fierce competition on Taobao and her lack of operational experience, she finally chose to give up and now started to buy a micro-store. In this regard, Zhang Yang, an expert on the operation of well-known domestic tea brands, said at the Qilu Tea Merchants Summit held a few days ago that Taobao was a separate era three or five years ago, and it was almost possible to make money by opening a shop at that time. But now, there are more than 50,000 tea shops on Taobao, and obscure small brand shops are easy to be flooded. In order to keep the search ranking at the top, the cost of tens of thousands of yuan a month is not a small number. "Taobao is not recommended in this case. It is better to transfer the Taobao store to a micro-store on Wechat, where more than 50 per cent of the tea purchases will be done through mobile phones. The backstage of the micro store is now free of charge, and the design of the program is very cheap. You can turn yourself into an official account and find a small IT company to do it with a few thousand yuan. "

Zhang Yang also said that although e-commerce is developing rapidly, stores will not die out at any stage of its development, because tea marketing is a very complex system and it is impossible to rely entirely on e-commerce. "there are years, high value, into the mouth of things need to go to the store to choose." "from the perspective of the traditional industry, there is no need to worry about the demise of stores for at least 15 years, but online stores and micro stores must be opened, which shows the difference between two different buying behaviors and purchasing needs, if only stores do not have online stores," he said. will lose some sales opportunities. "

According to the analysis of the industry, in the tea shop "blowout" today, in order to relieve consumers of the tea shop "invisible, untouchable" concerns, online transactions, offline experience of OTO e-commerce model came into being, and in the brand tea merchants' product marketing is more popular. Especially in the offline experience link, the commercial tea city that pays attention to the experience of tea culture will play important functions such as tasting tea, playing tea and socializing on the spot, so as to promote offline tea sales.

Experiential management of tea culture

At present, brand products with close prices and high quality have become the first choice of the public. Ms. Cao also said that at present, tea merchants are paying more and more attention to brands, registering trademarks and brands one after another, and striving to embark on the road of brand development.

In a number of large tea wholesale markets on Zhangzhuang Road in Jinan, a reporter from the leading newspaper visited and found that although tea merchants generally had brand awareness, the hardware facilities of each major tea market did not keep up with the trend of the mass consumer market, and most of them were market-oriented hardware packages. "the management of the market is loose, parking is difficult, and the functional layout is chaotic. Usually, the phenomenon of random parking is particularly serious, especially when it comes to rainy days, the carts pulling goods can not get out at all, which is very inconvenient." Mr. Fan, who runs green tea in a tea city on Zhangzhuang Road, is deeply impressed by this.

Industry insiders believe that the development of tea brands must be attached to the tea culture experience of the business environment, such as "Beijing Ma Liandao" this kind of experiential, shopping mall-style tea business environment, the highest degree of favor.

At the same time, in the spring tide of industrial upgrading in China, the tea industry from wholesale market to shopping mall experience will be the necessity of industry reform, and it will also be a good medicine to fill the market gap and enhance the brand of tea merchants. Xu Qiuxin said, "in this upgrading of the tea industry, shopping malls with tea culture and experience will be the mainstream places for mass consumption." In our product design, we focus on the public space of tea culture experience needed by mass consumers in shopping, combined with the combination of tea theme format and tea culture derivatives, increase atrium, catering, tea culture experience hall, tea culture leisure platform, business office supporting and so on. In order to meet the needs of tea merchants, additional hardware such as central air conditioning, parking lots, large-scale warehousing and logistics should be added to cater to the one-stop consumption experience of the public and create a reassuring business environment for tea merchants. While creating an atmosphere of tea culture, we will build a tea culture-themed shopping platform that integrates tea tasting, tea playing, social interaction, experience and other functions. " From this point, it can be seen that the emergence of tea culture experience shop-type tea city will play a decisive role in the upgrading of tea market industry, the promotion of tea merchant brand and the prosperity of tea industry.