Line line marketing and hunger marketing have always been hot topics in the catering industry. Recently, the first store of the popular tea drink brand Bawang Tea Ji opened in Nanjing, but there was no long queues. Behind this is the "anti-in-convert" competition of new tea beverage brands.
This article was originally published by Hongqi.com (ID: hongcan18), author: Yanzi.
Recently, a "strange thing" has occurred in the tea drink circle. The popular tea brand Bawang Tea Ji opened its first store in Nanjing, and there were no long queues in offline stores.
According to common sense, as a representative of tea brands that have "hot wherever they open" in recent years, the opening of the first store in Nanjing should attract a large number of consumers to "check in". It should be crowded outside the store, so why does the opening of the Nanjing store seem to be "cold" offline? Can’t Nanjing consumers catch a cold about Bawang Tea Girl?
In fact, the Bawang Tea Ji Nanjing flagship store is very popular. The results of opening are also very impressive. The cumulative sales of more than 10,000 cups in the first three days. During the first day of business, the number of online orders has remained above 700. The reason why there is no hot queuing offline is that Bawang Tea Girl intentionally does it. Through online mini-program ordering and automation equipment, customers can drink a cup of tea without having to queue up.
Today, we will start from the fact that Bawang Tea Girl "skip the line" and talk about the "queuing marketing" and "hunger marketing" in the tea beverage circle and the current "anti-in-conversion" competition among tea brands.
Customers return to rationality
The queue of " herd effect " gradually weakened
As the competition for new tea drinks intensifies, long queues and scalpers buying on behalf of others have become the standard configuration of online celebrity tea drinks, especially on the first day of the opening of the new store in New City , the queue time that refreshes consumer awareness seems to have become the most vivid reflection of the brand's strength.
Judging from past experience, queuing may be spontaneous by consumers or a marketing intentionally made by brands. For example, when some brands open new stores, they usually deliberately slow down the production speed, or close online ordering, or even hire some "actors" to create long queues and hot business.
Why are many internet celebrity tea drink brands keen on queuing up for marketing? Because for a long time, queuing up marketing can not only trigger a "herd effect" and directly attract traffic to stores, but also greatly expand brand awareness, and the results are tried and tested.
However, now, the situation has changed, and the queue effect of tea drink brands is clearly weakening. In the second half of the new tea drink, the long queue even began to arouse customers' disgust.
queuing marketing is suffering from more and more doubts and market backlash. Why is this happening?
. Consumers are becoming more rational, and the perception of "queuing = hype" is becoming more and more common
As the news of queuing in new brands' stores becomes more and more common and exaggerated, consumers are beginning to question the authenticity of queuing, such as who would queue for hours on a hot day at 40℃ to buy a cup of milk tea?
After experiencing "after waiting for several hours, the drinks I drink are just that", more and more consumers have begun to realize that queuing is a marketing method and are unwilling to blindly follow.
Although many brands have always denied "hiring people to queue up and ask for purchasing agents to hype", "anti-human queuing = marketing hype" has gradually become an irreversible proposition in the minds of consumers.
Many new brands have been lined up in the early stages of opening, but they soon returned to peace; "The king flag on the city is changing, and you just sing and I will appear" is constantly staged in the same block and shopping mall... All kinds of phenomena have also made consumers begin to doubt the sustainability of the "queuing myth" of Internet celebrity brands and the vitality of the brand.
. Internet celebrity milk tea is no longer a scarce social currency, impulse consumption is reduced
In the past, Internet celebrity milk tea is a social currency. Many consumers line up for hours to buy milk tea just to "try out" and post it on WeChat Moments.
Nowadays, new brands are emerging one after another, tea drink products are no longer scarce, and the behavior of checking in and posting orders in the circle of friends is becoming increasingly rare. With the urgent need to consume, many consumers no longer blindly follow the trend, but instead choose products and brands that they are familiar with and acknowledged.
Especially under the influence of the normalized environment of the epidemic, " wild consumption of " is no longer there, and young people who are "purchased" are more accustomed to "wait for less people before buying, watch Douyin group purchase and then buy", and gradually become immune or even boycotting the queue.
New tea drinks should be "anti-involved"
Return to the benign competition of "creating value for customers"
From the perspective of brand competition, queue marketing, hunger marketing, etc. are essentially a kind of "-involved ".
The tea drink market is fierce, and queuing is actually a means for brands to grab attention. In the short term, this method does have the opportunity to seize the flow of competitors, but in the long run, it is not a healthy way of competition.
often queues for several hours, which has seriously affected the consumption experience and will eventually be backfired by the market and is unsustainable. More importantly, this competition has completely deviated from the foundation of brand development and growth - creating value for customers.
What value should the tea drink brand provide to customers? The answer is obviously a good product and a good experience. This is the core of the brand's continuous development. It is not the flashy queue, nor is it the dazzling marketing.
From this point of view, Bawang Tea Ji took the initiative to give up the "queuing effect" and the vested interests that hunger marketing may bring, and instead put customer experience first, which may be the correct solution to the competition in the second half of the tea drink.
According to Yangzi Evening News , Bawang Tea Ji Nanjing Store actively uses online mini-program ordering and automation equipment to provide consumers with a consumption experience of shopping and drinking tea. After some operation, it has won the favor of a large number of Nanjing consumers. This time, its first store in Nanjing has sold over 10,000 cups in total, which shows the local consumers' pursuit and recognition of it.
In recent years of rapid development of the tea beverage industry, internal volume has become increasingly fierce. Many brands have more or less lost their original intentions under fierce competition. For example, in order to make new products, we have developed some "underworld formulas" with only gimmicks; we are superstitious about marketing, spend a lot of effort to promote on major social platforms; we start a price war and turn our hands on competitors to the end...
The essence of the business is to create value for customers, and the same is true for the tea beverage industry. Benefits of competition are not about focusing on competitors or focusing on marketing traffic, but about focusing on customers, truly creating value for customers, providing high-quality products and a better experience.
Only by continuously "creating value for customers"
can the brand Changhong
Take Bawang Tea Jade as an example. It is understood that Bawang Tea Jade has made a capacity reserve of more than 5,000 cups before the opening of the Nanjing store, but the on-site situation still exceeded expectations.
html opened at 10 am on the 114th. In just one hour, the order volume had exceeded 1,000 orders... The store finally had problems such as tea ordering and order delivery system crashes, multiple orders for single-machine jumps, tea collection backlogs, inaccurate meal time, unclear call number, etc.
Fortunately, the brand responded quickly and made a series of optimization actions, such as adding live oral broadcast guidance and calling numbers; urgently dispatching personnel from other stores to support; asking IT, operations, mini programs, and product staff to station on site to solve problems, and answer complaint calls in time...
htmlOn the evening of the 115th, Bawang Tea Ji posted a Weibo to explain the announcement to tea friends in Nanjing, announcing adjustments and commitments to customer experience dissatisfaction.
For example, adjust the order to open at every hour, and close the production capacity immediately after exceeding this period, "if you can't take it, you won't answer it";
extends the service life of the opening activity coupon, and it is recommended that customers "experience the peak";
sends free order coupons to tea lovers who have not received tea on the day of opening;
has shortened the average pick-up time to 3-5 minutes, and continues to increase the pick-up speed...
At the same time, 400 phone calls and store customer service phones have been announced to accept consumers' inquiries and dissatisfaction at any time.
Actively eliminate long queues, and immediately take action to improve once customers are dissatisfied; examining their own service process from the customer's standpoint and accepting consumer supervision at any time is the correct way to "create value for customers".
Automation equipment becomes a new tea drink
The only way to optimize customer experience
Look at the investment in products and experience in recent years, it may be even more difficult to understand its popularity and breakthrough.
In terms of products, Bawang Tea Ji established a product development strategy for basic large items in the early days of her establishment, and has been committed to creating her own classic items.
When the industry is competing for the speed of innovative products, Bawang Tea Ji focuses on constantly optimizing and iterating old products and upgrading the original tea. For example, Boya Juexian's product has been iterated 7 times in more than five years; before, the coconut aquatic products were criticized, the founder immediately apologized and compensated consumers...
In terms of experience, Bawang Tea Ji has also continuously optimized the tea drinking experience through more refined operations. This time, the Nanjing flagship store deployed an "automatic tea making machine" for the first time, in order to give customers a better tea drinking experience. On the one hand, it improves production speed and shortens the waiting time for customers from ordering to picking tea; on the other hand, automated equipment makes the production more standardized, which can ensure customers' consistent and stable taste experience.
From the perspective of store operations, increasing production speed also means increasing the production capacity limit and raising the ceiling of store revenue. Moreover, the automation equipment also solves the contradiction between the large mobility of tea industry personnel and standard operating procedures, making the store operation more efficient and not subject to production risks that may be brought about by employee resignation and soph difficult to remember.
In fact, automation equipment is only part of the digital upgrade of the brand. Only by digitizing and refining business activities as much as possible can we truly and continuously optimize customer experience.
The new tea drink market has entered the second half of slowing scale growth. On this battlefield, only by thinking about what customers think, being the needs of customers, and making truly popular products can we not be abandoned by the market in the competition. I hope the competition in the tea beverage industry will return to be healthy, and I also hope that there will be more and more brands like Bawang Tea Ji.
