What is NIO’s intention in crossing over to sell coffee?

Exploring the brand strategy behind NIO's cross-border coffee business, this article analyzes how companies can reach young consumers through innovative marketing. It is recommended for readers who are interested in brand marketing and the automotive industry.

NIO sells cars, but it does more than just sell cars. Recently, NIO, a new Chinese car manufacturer, has started selling coffee, specialty drinks and children's drinks on food delivery platforms through its NIO Service Center. This business has been launched in 10 stores in Shanghai, covering many popular local areas, which has sparked heated discussions. It is understood that the NIO Center has actually been providing coffee services to consumers, but it was previously provided to in-store users, and now it has chosen to open up to the public. What is NIO's purpose in choosing to cross-border sell coffee at this time?

1. Use coffee elements to build a new scenario for brands to reach users

Regarding Weilai selling coffee, the discussion on social media mainly revolves around two points. On the one hand, the competition in the coffee industry has entered a white-hot stage, and 9.9 yuan seems to have become the "lifeline" of the brand. The price of the products that Weilai chooses to launch ranges from 28 to 48 yuan, which makes #Weilai sell special drinks at 48 yuan a cup#

It has become one of the focuses of public attention. On the other hand, cross-border robbery is nothing new. Brands such as China Post, Tong Ren Tang, Li Ning, PetroChina, and Wang Lao Ji have been selling coffee for a long time. However, NIO is the first car company to sell coffee. As the first brand to take the lead, it is natural for NIO to attract attention by selling coffee. Moreover, NIO's takeaway coffee is not operated independently. It launched the "charging coffee business" in the brand battery swap station, and proposed "three minutes to swap batteries, one minute to buy coffee" to highlight the brand's service.

First, it can highlight NIO's differentiated services and explain how convenient and fast battery swapping is, which only takes a cup of coffee. As NIO's core competitive service, the brand wants to make it another business card of itself, and needs to spend some time to "educate" users on how to save communication costs. NIO chooses to use the coffee element, which is highly recognized by the public, to create a new scene, linking the battery swap time with the coffee waiting time, so that consumers can immediately understand the convenience and speed of the brand's battery swapping.

Secondly, what NIO sells is coffee, and what it wins is the "future". Brand marketing has multiple missions to win consumers and gain attention. NIO's current marketing behavior not only needs to win the main force of future consumers for the brand, but also needs to link the paths of attracting new customers, retaining existing customers, promoting activation, and converting customers based on traffic. By choosing to sell coffee, NIO is largely catering to the current consumption trend of young people.

Firstly, cross-border coffee selling itself can easily arouse users’ curiosity. Secondly, using coffee products that are familiar to the public to approach consumers can break the one-way communication situation between brands and consumers that has existed in the past, and transform consumers’ passive acceptance of information into active understanding, allowing users to develop a sense of actively exploring and leading new trends, and turning users into disseminators of brand marketing, thus forming a herd effect.

From this perspective, NIO's coffee sales are more like using coffee elements to build a new, immersive experience scene for brand marketing. In addition to highlighting the brand's core competitiveness, it uses high-quality coffee to reach the target customer group and make more consumers believe that the NIO brand is trustworthy.

2. What is NIO selling when it sells coffee?

Originally, the relationship between car companies and coffee was clearly distinct, but due to the highly consistent target customer groups, these two unrelated elements have become inextricably linked. NIO chose coffee as its entry point, hoping to establish more connections with consumers in a diversified way. Selling lifestyle

In terms of product pricing, the 30-40 yuan range is more likely to make consumers associate. Is NIO trying to become the Starbucks of car companies by benchmarking against Starbucks? The concept of the third space provided by Starbucks has long been deeply rooted in people's hearts, which coincides with the brand mission proposed by NIO. Compared with traditional 4S stores, today's new car brands emphasize more on experience, technology and service. At the same time, experience stores have a natural advantage in reaching users and conveying brand values ​​to consumers.

More importantly, as a personalized service window for products, experience stores can bring consumers a more intuitive experience and continuously strengthen the brand's tone. The impression left by car companies' experience stores is that they are for test driving and buying cars, while NIO proposes to provide high-performance smart electric vehicles and ultimate user experience to create a pleasant lifestyle for users. It not only shoulders the brand's mission, but also extends NIO's car culture to the user's leisure lifestyle, providing consumers with a reason to go to the NIO Center, and can also achieve the brand's core appeal - to occupy the minds of more consumer groups.

1. Add social attributes

In the social era, with the popularity of coffee, it has been endowed with social attributes by contemporary consumers. It is not only a medium for communication and ice-breaking, but also a good companion for gatherings and leisure. NIO chooses to sell coffee, not only to sell drinks, but also to provide coffee and car enthusiasts with a social experience with multiple emotional values. In addition, the brand has also launched the 2024 NIO Coffee Masters, which has attracted many consumers to participate and show their entries and the process of the competition on social platforms. Invisibly, it has created momentum for the brand's dissemination, helped the brand to expand its voice, and accumulated more traffic for NIO to sell coffee.

In the NIO Center, consumers can enjoy and socialize in a comfortable manner, view cars and test drive them. This also solves the problem of brands having difficulty attracting users and retaining customers, thus maximizing the value of social interaction.

2. Build a new brand ecosystem

NIO's choice to sell coffee is not only an expansion of the product level, but also a part of the user experience and ecosystem construction. At the brand level, the sale of coffee products related to the brand's core competitiveness is more like conveying a lifestyle with elements familiar to consumers, providing users with a rich experience and building a new imprint that is unique to the NIO brand. At the same time, emphasizing the pleasant and comfortable fast-moving consumer product experience can invisibly influence users' love for the brand and help improve conversions.

At the user level, the target audience of coffee products covers users of multiple age groups and is the common choice of most working people. NIO's choice to sell coffee not only caters to user consumption trends, but also creates a diversified leisure experience and realizes the deep cultivation of the user ecosystem. NIO also uses coffee as a carrier to build an immersive experience that efficiently conveys brand concepts, values ​​and lifestyles. In the long-term and continuous accumulation, it has achieved the expansion of brand voice, triggered word-of-mouth communication, and made users continue to gather around the brand, thus building a two-way interactive communication and sales closed loop.

Author: Mr. Bingfa; Source public account: Marketing Bingfa (ID: 1075056)