New groups, new scenarios, new trends, and new consumption require new marketing!

The new consumption industry, which rapidly declined during the epidemic period, has become popular again in recent days. The author of this article interprets and analyzes the new groups, new scenarios, and new trends in the consumer market, and puts forward the view that new consumption requires new marketing. Let's take a look.

Since the term "new consumption" was proposed in the "Guiding Opinions of the State Council on Actively Playing the Leading Role of New Consumption and Accelerating the Cultivation and Formation of New Supply and New Dynamics" in 2015, new consumption has gradually evolved into an emerging track and become a new driving force for high-quality economic development.

With the continued favorable policies, the continued support of capital, and the new demands brought by new groups of people, new consumption has been "popular" in recent years.

However, due to the epidemic in recent years, the Community Marketing Research Institute found that new consumer brands are rapidly declining in 2022. In the contact and communication between our authors and investors, investors are even more shy about new consumption, and even reported that a certain investment institution has laid off its new consumer investment department. Confidence in the new consumer industry has fallen to the bottom.

However, with the end of the epidemic, consumption quickly rebounded, and new consumption has once again emerged since 2023. However, in the face of new scenarios, new groups of people, and new trends, we need to look at new consumption with new eyes and use new marketing strategies to seize the trend of new consumption.

1. New scenarios and new groups

After becoming popular and fermenting, many new consumer products have gradually penetrated into various segments and entered consumers' daily lives, becoming "new rigid needs". In addition, new consumer products are penetrating downwards, spreading from first- and second-tier cities to sinking markets represented by third-tier cities, helping "small town youth" complete consumption upgrades and giving rise to new demands.

On the one hand, with the upgrading of traditional consumption, people's consumption expectations have been continuously improved, their purchasing power has been continuously strengthened, and they have begun to accept or even actively seek higher-quality products and services. New consumption has gradually penetrated into all aspects of people's daily life, including food, clothing, housing and transportation.

Source: Morketing Research Institute

On the other hand, as Generation Z grows into the main force of the consumer era, their needs have driven the consumer industry to develop in the direction of personalization, segmentation, and diversification. In addition to the product itself, brands are also beginning to pay more and more attention to appearance, quality, and value delivery.

With the upgrading of Internet digital technology, the business model of new consumption has also been updated. In addition to traditional offline stores and online e-commerce, social platforms and short video platforms have become the "must-fight places" for new consumer brands. Online and offline are also further integrated, and "all-domain" has become the goal of consumer brands.

At the same time, short video marketing, live streaming, picture and text promotion, and other marketing methods that convey emotions through content have become a powerful means to capture the minds of consumers... Based on the new market environment, the consumer goods industry presents a "new group of people, new channels, and new marketing" business model.

The initial enthusiasm of new consumption attracted capital giants and new competitors to rush in, but what followed was further intensified industry competition, an increasingly crowded track, and serious product homogeneity. As a result, the consumer market gradually became rational and the capital market began to cool down.

Source: Morketing Research Institute

In addition, the impact of the epidemic, increased pressure on the global supply chain, rising inflation, and the peak of traffic dividends have brought huge challenges to the supply chain operation, internal and external coordination, and other aspects of many new consumer brands.

It can be seen that the new consumer industry has gone from being a hot spot to a crossroads where internal and external pressures are increasing dramatically. In the current environment, new consumer brands need to strengthen their identifiable endogenous forces to cope with the uncertainty of the external environment and achieve "brand longevity."

The above are the new scenarios faced by the new consumption industry. So what new groups are facing the new consumption?

In a survey of 1,977 new consumers, we found that consumption upgrades have quickly penetrated into consumers' daily lives and become mainstream. In this process, consumers are paying more and more attention to the cost-effectiveness of new consumer products, and are no longer simply attracted by appearance and personality. This also indirectly pushes brands to pay attention to product quality and price.

In terms of channels, long and short video platforms, offline stores, and social platforms are the main channels for consumers to obtain new consumption information. At the same time, KOL content marketing has also become the way of brand marketing that they are most receptive to. Therefore, increasing advertising investment on these platforms will also become an inevitable choice for brands.

Source: Morketing Research Institute

At the same time, different types of consumers have different preferences for different channels and marketing methods. New consumer brands need to make key layouts based on product characteristics and market segmentation needs while making comprehensive layouts.

In addition, during the "wild growth" stage of new consumption, some brands had problems such as poor quality, excessive marketing, and low cost performance, which reduced consumers' repurchase rate. These problems have focused the focus on the products. Therefore, new consumer brands can only achieve long-term development in the future if they put the focus back on the products themselves.

2. New consumption, new trends, new marketing

Regarding the development trend of the new consumption industry, third-party marketing service agencies and new consumption brands in different tracks gave different answers based on different perspectives, but they all reflected the product innovation brought about by the brand around the segmentation of market demand, as well as the growth direction dominated by the cultivation of endogenous forces such as strengthening comprehensive strength, opening up channels, and shaping core values ​​in this process. Generally speaking, it is reflected in five aspects:

First, the emergence of new groups and new demands has made the new consumer industry more segmented. As it develops, each segment gradually shows its own unique trends. In addition, the change in group demands is also reflected in the changes in the categories of products launched by the platform.

Second, the importance of spiritual resonance between brands and users is becoming increasingly prominent. For new consumer brands, digging deep into the attributes of the crowd, continuously building brand power, continuously delivering brand value to the target group, and achieving spiritual connection with users are important breakthroughs in opening up brand awareness.

Third, in the early stage, new consumer brands mostly started their development with online pilots. But when new consumer brands develop to the next stage, they are integrating online and offline channels and experiences. In addition, the "integration" of channels is also reflected in the blurring and penetration of the original channel function boundaries. In general, new consumer brands are moving towards omni-channel integration;

Source: Morketing Research Institute

Fourth, the path of new consumer brands to expand their product matrix mostly follows the following logic: after deeply exploring the pain point needs of a certain group of people, new consumer brands discover other needs derived from this group of people, thereby expanding new product categories, which to a certain extent has become the driving force for the research and development and innovation of new consumer brands;

Fifth, the current state of new consumption should gradually change from rapid release to a process of absorption and release. The so-called rapid release refers to the crazy marketing, rapid expansion, and explosive growth of the new consumer brands mentioned above.

This stage is relatively urgent. People are trying to take advantage of the trend and quickly cut the dividends to allow the "new" to grow rapidly in the consumer market. This is also a significant incremental process and is more inclined to short-term thinking.

Today, external motivation obviously cannot keep up with the pace, and new consumer brands must shift from short-term thinking to long-term thinking. Therefore, in the second half of new consumption, it is a must for every new consumer brand to shift from hot-selling thinking to long-term thinking.

Based on the five new trends in the development of the new consumer industry, the Community Marketing Research Institute has put forward several targeted marketing strategies:

1. Continue to develop and operate private domains and build trust relationships

The most direct reason behind the continuous attention paid to "private domain traffic" in recent years is the decline of the public domain traffic dividend. Private domain traffic means completely real user relationships and reusable fixed traffic resources. Through private domain, brands can achieve high-frequency, in-depth, high-quality and effective communication with users, digest user fragmented time, occupy user minds, and establish a more trusting two-way relationship with users.

2. Personalize brand IP to achieve effective user communication

As a product of the Internet era, brand IPization and personification require brands to redefine brands with human thinking and achieve a "de-commercialized" reshaping of brands. In fact, in the new consumer industry in 2022, it is not difficult to find that many new consumer brands have launched brand IPs, and even derived virtual idols, anime works, peripheral figures and other series of industries around IP.

On the one hand, the IPization of brands empowers content and achieves strong content correlation output. On the other hand, by making the brand visual, it builds goodwill in the minds of consumers and brings the audience closer.

Jiang Xiaobai releases anime, reaffirming "I am Jiang Xiaobai"

3. Create cross-border brand collaborations that go beyond imagination and achieve 1+1＞2

The purpose of co-branding and cross-border cooperation is to bring about the effect of 1+1>2, win the attention of two brands or two circles of customer groups, achieve the integration and expansion of the audience, and achieve the effect of breaking the circle.

In recent years, new consumer cross-border collaborations have become an industry trend. Users are more receptive to this novel and interesting marketing method, and its inherent discussion and topic points can easily be spread and fissioned spontaneously among user groups.

4. Focusing on content promotion, new technologies, new channels and new strategies are fully integrated

As consumers’ attention and time become fragmented, “content seeding” has become an effective marketing method to occupy fragmented time and seize consumers’ minds. The gameplay of content seeding has also developed rapidly in recent years: from KOL/KOC graphic creation, to short video implantation, live streaming, to AR/VR-led visualization and interactive content, and even the developing metaverse, they are all becoming the medium and carrier of content, and a powerful way to seed content.

In short, new consumption has ushered in new trends in the context of new scenarios and new groups of people. This requires brands to adopt new marketing strategies such as C-ization, IP-ization, and integration to respond, so as to quickly occupy the minds of users when spring arrives.

Author: Editorial Department of Community Marketing Research Institute; Proofreader: lidaxia; Layout: Manchester on a Rainy Night

Source: Community Marketing Research Institute (ID: Community_Marketing), insights into community consumption