No low prices and no excessive internal competition. Where should enterprises go in 2025?
As 2024 is coming to an end, looking back at this year, the consumer industry has experienced many ups and downs. Many new terms have emerged, and consumers' habits have also undergone significant changes. People are becoming more cautious in their spending, but at the same time, they are willing to spend a significant amount of money to fulfill their emotional needs. This year, the expansion of consumer enterprises abroad continues to be popular, and the wave of artificial intelligence has also swept in. In this context, some have exited the market, while new "champions" have emerged to take their place. Who are they? And how did they manage to succeed against the odds?
Authors |Chen Dazhuang, Lin Mu
Editor |Wu Yue
Image Source |Visual China
On December 27, the 2024 Consumption Ceremony of Key Roles concluded successfully in Beijing. This event was hosted by Beijing Boya Tianxia Media Culture Development Co., Ltd., and received full support from Caijing Tianxia, Daily People, and People. The conference utilized three keynote speeches and four roundtable discussions to comprehensively explore the challenges, opportunities, and new trends faced by the consumer industry this year.
Consumption is a mirror of the times. Through everyone's bills, we can catch a glimpse of the changes in the public's lifestyle and also gain insights into the changes in society. As a content creation platform, Caijing Tianxia, our goal is to describe and explain all these business phenomena, but it is the "key roles" we mentioned today who create these business phenomena.
For the key roles, it is more challenging to create new business phenomena at present. Therefore, those key roles who can still keep up with the trend or even make the trend follow them are even more precious.
At the 2024 Consumption Ceremony of Key Roles, Wang Huilin, General Manager of iQIYI Content Marketing Center, Hu Bo, General Manager of Xueersi Next Business Division, and Wang Chao, COO of Future Intelligence, delivered keynote speeches with the themes of "In the Era of Emotional Consumption, How Does Content Marketing Touch People's Hearts?", "AI + 3D, Opening the Fantastic Journey of Immersive Learning", and "Under the New Wave of Artificial Intelligence, How Does AI Hardware Break Through?" respectively.
In the roundtable dialogue session, key roles from the consumer field had a vigorous discussion on the four topics of "How Can Domestic Products Win a Battle of 'Intelligence Price Ratio'?", "Why Do Young People Love 9.9?", "Is There Really a Methodology for Successful Overseas Expansion?", and "In 2024, Which Industries Have Been Disrupted and Reborn by AI?"
At the conference site, two honors, the Annual Key Brand and the Annual Key Product, were also presented. These are the names that Caijing Tianxia has finally selected after exploring the key roles that have promoted the advancement of the consumer industry in the past year. They have demonstrated excellent product innovation ability, technological innovation ability, and market innovation ability.
The Great Power of Emotional Value
In the current consumption industry cycle, some people are becoming more and more rational in their consumption, while some are willing to spend more money to relieve stress and simply buy happiness.
"More and more young people are paying for their emotions, so we can see that the products now are not only a material carrier, but more often an emotional sustenance." Wang Huilin, General Manager of iQIYI Business Content Marketing Center, said in the speech that there is a consumption change this year that a plush toy called Jellycat has become very popular. In fact, what young people buy is not just a plush toy.
This generation of young people is different from the previous generation. They think more clearly and live more thoroughly, hoping that the money they spend can solve their emotional problems, such as anxiety and internal friction. They hope to heal themselves through consumption. Wang Huilin said that there is a popular saying that "young people choose to burn incense between going to work and making progress". Therefore, it can be seen that offline performances are very popular in 2024, and tourism income has also increased significantly.
She believes that the hit contents produced by iQIYI, such as "My Altay", "The Journey to the West of Strange Tales of Tang Dynasty", and "I Am a Criminal Police", are loved by everyone because they bring the power of emotional value.
When the content IP becomes popular, what can content marketing do to assist brand growth? Wang Huilin summarized three points. First, emotional consensus. Content can naturally bring emotions and resonances, and brands can touch consumers through such resonances. Second, scene marketing. There are a large number of rich and detailed scenes in the content, enabling products to be efficiently planted in immersive scenes. Third, the global ability. It can help brands better carry out sales conversion.
Wang Huilin revealed that Nai Xue's co-branded products with "Cang Lan Jue" sold tens of thousands of cups in just 8 minutes after the launch, indicating that film and television works can particularly stimulate the purchasing power of young people. There is also the snack brand Wang Xiaolu. Its core audience is women aged 17 to 35. An important scene for eating snacks daily is watching dramas. Wang Xiaolu seized this scene and cooperated with iQIYI's big dramas to strengthen the brand mentality of "Eat Wang Xiaolu while watching dramas". When the audience is right and the scene is right, the marketing effect emerges.
In the education industry, the application of AI has mushroomed and rapidly spread since this year. As an education enterprise, how does Xueersi make children love learning?
In the view of Hu Bo, General Manager of Xueersi Next Business Division, there is a methodology. Through "AI + 3D", a learning solution with good effects can be found.
Specifically, the so-called 3D refers to creating a virtual classroom space where students can interact with virtual characters, scenes, and objects to independently build a knowledge system and cultivate the ability to solve problems. Hu Bo revealed that in order to cultivate students' initiative in the 3D scene, his team has systematically studied many games on the market, drawing on their commercialization models to convert the paid actions in the games into learning actions.
As for the application of AI technology, it is to solve the real pain points with demand after determining the scene. Hu Bo gave an example that many children will encounter two situations when doing exercises: making mistakes or getting them right. When encountering wrong questions, many children will directly jump to the next question. To solve this pain point, English Practice Every Day uses a recommendation mechanism and an algorithm mechanism to help students truly master the knowledge points by pushing more related questions.
In addition to the education industry, the hardware industry has also been transformed by artificial intelligence. Wang Chao, COO of Future Intelligence, said that in the past ten years, there have been three waves of artificial intelligence. The first is to think in the way of logical reasoning and expert system. The second is to think and process relevant information based on the way human neurons process information. The third is to conduct in-depth learning based on a large amount of data. From the time node, the generative artificial intelligence triggered by ChatGPT and OpenAI in 2022 has opened a new wave.
"The wave of artificial intelligence hardware has arrived, and a new era has come. It will be everywhere like water and air." Wang Chao believes that a real AI intelligent hardware is summarized as having AI computing, AI interaction, and AI decision-making.
In Wang Chao's view, hardware can be used as a person's eyes, mouth, and ears to collect and process relevant data. He judges that the headphone market will always exist and the market size is very large, with a global annual sales of 400 to 500 million units.
And Future Intelligence initially entered the market through conference headphones and is currently gradually developing in the direction of "AI Assistant in the Office Field".
No Internal Rollover, Searching for New Growth
In 2024, there is a new term called "Intelligence Price Ratio", which takes over "Cost Performance Ratio" and becomes a concept that more and more consumers agree with and follow.
Regarding this, different guests gave different explanations. As the host of the roundtable forum, Tan Yaxing, the founder and CEO of MSC Consulting, initiated the discussion by saying that he hadn't heard much about the term "Intelligence Price Ratio", so he asked 9 people around him in advance. Three of them immediately felt that their consumption was like this, while three others didn't feel much and thought it was just a new term.
The person in charge of the Outdoor Equipment Business of the JD Retail Fashion Business Group said that as a retailer, she thinks the term "Intelligence Price Ratio" is indeed quite novel. When it comes to "Intelligence Price Ratio", "Cost Performance Ratio" and "Quality Price Ratio" have to be mentioned. Literally, "Cost Performance Ratio" essentially competes on price, and "Quality Price Ratio" competes on quality. In fact, there is no right or wrong, and it more depends on the users' focus.
All consumers hope to buy products with better quality at the same price or buy products with the most favorable price at the same quality. She believes that from the perspective of enterprises, they must move towards the trend of "Intelligence Price Ratio", because if enterprises roll prices without a bottom line, they will inevitably sacrifice quality at the cost, and the final result is that there are no winners.
Sun Yuanwen, the founder and CEO of TOP TOY, believes that now consumers are more concerned about the satisfaction of their inner needs and real needs. Everyone's consumption concept is more rational and wise, and the ability to distinguish good things has also improved. Brands that insult consumers' intelligence cannot survive.
From this point of view, "Intelligence Price Ratio" means that consumers are both careful in calculation and ensure the quality of life. What are the opportunities and challenges for domestic brands to break through in this new consumption trend of "wanting both and having both"?
Maybe some people will think that TOP TOY is an irrational consumption. Sun Yuanwen said, "There are always excellent IPs emerging in this world. The most important thing is that the brand should make a difference and do a good job in the supporting core competitiveness based on what kind of business cognition and underlying cognition."
Sun Yuanwen described the change in TOP TOY's thinking process in the search for "Intelligence Price Ratio". "Previously, the company team would put the products they thought were right in the mall and sell them to consumers. Later, we spent more time and resources on co-creation with consumers. For example, if consumers like healing and cute things, we have made more than 1,000 IPs based on these preferences. If consumers say yes, I will launch it. If consumers say no, I will not. This is a complete change in the underlying logic."
The person in charge of the Outdoor Equipment Business of the JD Retail Fashion Business Group said that in terms of the creation of the entire value chain, JD has a "Ten-section Sugarcane" theory. They divide the value chain of the entire consumer goods industry into creativity, design, research and development, manufacturing, pricing, marketing, trading, warehousing, distribution, and after-sales. The first 5 links are handed over to the brand side, and the latter 5 links belong to the retailer. They perform their respective duties, and the ultimate goal is to serve consumers well.
In addition to "Intelligence Price Ratio", some enterprises have begun to expand abroad to find new increments, and they have chosen Southeast Asia as the outpost for going abroad.
As an outstanding enterprise in the field of going abroad, Zhang Yanmei, Vice President of Xiabu Group, said that the company values the "similarity" between Southeast Asian countries and China, including trade and humanities. Han Jindu, the partner and vice president of Canban Oral Care, emphasized that Canban Oral Care sees the "mismatch between supply and demand" in the Southeast Asian market. Specifically, in Southeast Asian countries, the proportion of young consumers is very high. These young people have quickly entered the 5G era from the PC Internet era, received more information and more creative content, but the demand has far from been met.
What is the biggest challenge in the process of going abroad? Regarding this question, Xiabu Group and Canban Oral Care gave the same answer - compliance and localization.
Zhang Yanmei gave an example that Singapore does not allow the sale of animal blood products. In order to be compliant, Xiabu Group replaced the duck blood that was popular in China with braised pig's trotters. In addition, Xiabu Group has also made many explorations in terms of employment, operation, and the establishment of a localized team. For example, Xiabu Group will cater to local consumers in terms of taste, use local ingredients, and launch unique flavors.
Han Jindu said that in order to comply with the laws and regulations of the target country, Canban Oral Care will make advance arrangements and leave enough time for relevant certifications. In addition, in order to meet the needs of local consumers, the Canban Oral Care product team will go to the local area to understand consumers' preferences, living habits, aesthetics, taste choices, etc. One example