Trends on Marketing in the Consumer SectorTrends on Marketing in the Consumer Sector
1.Increasing Online Consumer Behavior
In recent years, with the continuous improvement of digital infrastructure, China has developed the world’s largest e-commerce system and online consumer market. Particularly in the past three years, online consumption industries such as fresh food e-commerce, online entertainment, and online education have experienced rapid growth. The value of online consumption has been elevated once again, transforming from a business form related to offline retail consumption to a fundamental value core for new consumption. According to statistics from China’s Ministry of Commerce, from January to October 2023, online retail sales reached 12.3 trillion yuan, a year-on-year increase of 11.2%. Among these, the online retail sales of physical goods amounted to 10.3 trillion yuan, marking a year-on-year increase of 8.4%. The proportion of online retail sales in the total retail sales of social consumer goods reached 26.7%, maintaining a strong growth trend overall.
2.The Growing Influence of Social Media on Consumer Behavior
In the context of the shift towards online shopping, social media platforms like TikTok and Xiaohongshu has become an important part in the online consumption. Research by iResearch Consulting reveals that beyond exploring products on dedicated shopping platforms, about 38.7% of consumers also turn to non-shopping platforms – including social media platforms, video platforms, and forum platforms – for product-related information. Notably, nearly 95% of consumers use multiple platforms to gather information about products. With the growing penetration of content communities, an increasing number of consumers are recognizing the benefits of sharing and receiving information with others. This trend sees consumers not only seeking out reviews from their peers but also actively sharing their own product recommendations and discount tips on these platforms.
3. High-Quality Marketing Requires Precision, Personalization, and Professionalism
At the same time, the diversity and complexity of information channels have led to an influx of disorganized marketing content in the market. Consumers, frequently bombarded with irrelevant
marketing messages, are witnessing a decline in the precision and effectiveness of these campaigns. To better adapt to industry and market developments, consumer goods companies need to
undergo a digital transformation in their marketing strategies. This involves adopting a consumer-centric approach, leveraging media like social media and short-video live streaming for niche marketing, fan-based marketing, and influencer/KOL marketing. The focus is increasingly on interactive experiences, aiming to achieve precise and personalized marketing to consumers and providing specialized product recommendations and insights.
Current Opportunities and Challenges in the Consumer Sector
Fragmentation of Marketing Tools and Methods
The consumer goods industry is saturated with a plethora of marketing tools and methods, making selection and management a complex task. To address this challenge, it’s necessary to establish an overarching, systematic solution to effectively utilize and integrate various marketing tools.
Barriers in Data Mining and Analysis
The industry faces the challenge of needing comprehensive and ready-to-use data for analysis. Acquiring data that supports complete solutions is becoming increasingly difficult. Overcoming this challenge requires the adoption of advanced data mining and analytical techniques to integrate and utilize data from various sources.
Unbalance of Precision and Efficiency in Marketing
There’s a delicate balance between precision and efficiency in marketing activities. The consumer goods industry needs to further enhance and optimize this balance to ensure precise targeting of customer segments while improving marketing efficiency.
Digital empowerment unlocks more business value
The consumer goods industry can leverage enhanced digital capabilities and the penetration of online tools for more accurate and scientific marketing effectiveness assessment. This opens up new possibilities for evaluating the Return on Investment (ROI) of traditional marketing activities.
Ecosystem construction accelerates the assetization of data
Despite the challenges in obtaining sufficiently comprehensive and prepared data, establishing data partnership relations or utilizing third-party data provider services can help bridge this gap. By accessing more comprehensive and accurate data sources, the consumer goods industry can support the development of more complete solutions, including business scenario mining and use case accumulation.
High-Quality marketing stands out
By implementing high-quality marketing strategies, the consumer goods industry has the opportunity to positively influence consumer shopping decisions. Offering valuable content, personalized communication, and exceptional brand experiences can strengthen consumers’ intent to purchase.
Our Approach and Solution (BEST)
iResearch has established long-term, in-depth partnerships with major operators in China, boasting industry leading sample sizes and data mining capabilities. This enables the analysis of users’ online catalyst behaviors and offline geographical location identification, helping businesses to precisely target their brand’s audience (TA). Based on customized TA selection and platform content mining, iResearch has developed a comprehensive marketing insight solution for our clients: BEST (benchmark, evaluation, strategy, and track).
1. B – Benchmark: Industry Overview
This aspect focuses on tracking market hotspots and grasping the overall industry trends and popularity by examining the interests and content published by audiences. Additionally, it involves delving deep into user discussions to analyze market demand scenarios.
2. E – Performance Evaluation
Based on the Brand Equity Management Pyramid theory, a brand reputation monitoring system is established to continuously gain insights into the brand’s market performance. This involves a comprehensive analysis of the main interaction volumes and sources of voice for various brands, examining brand-related hot topics, and tracking the market competitiveness and health of the brand.
3. S – Strategic Insights
Utilizing data from operators and social media big data, and combining custom audience criteria, the strategy precisely targets the brand’s intended audience (TA). This is followed by aligning with the social media data of this audience group and applying iResearch’s recommended index measurement model. This approach enables a comprehensive insight chain, from pre-investment strategic suggestions and resource selection to post-investment content analysis and effectiveness evaluation.
Targeted analysis of KOL advertising reach rate and the backlink conversion effect of target audience
- Reach rate is the percentage of people who visited the KOL’s piece in a given period of time as opposed to those who visited the piece’s platform in that period of time.
- The conversion rate of the reached population refers to the percentage of the reached population of the KOL’s work that has entered the APP/official app for a certain period of time
4. T – Tracking Improvements
Basic profiles of the target audience (TA)are systematically created through all-encompassing touch points insights. This includes an in-depth analysis of the audience’s online catalyst behaviors, such as habits related to apps, mini-programs, and video series content, and conducting a cross-comparison with the broader industry audience.
Client Stories and Our Experience
1. Digital Marketing Strategy Consulting Project for an International Maternity and Baby Brand on Social Media (Xiaohongshu)
WHAT
In the current climate where social media platforms are traffic hubs, Xiaohongshu has become a key battleground for brand promotion. The challenge for brands is to explore the characteristics and preferences of their audience and create content that encapsulates the brand’s value to unlock the secrets of traffic.
WHY
The client, an international maternity and baby FMCG brand, sought to more precisely target its brand audience (TA), understand their online catalyst habits, hot topic preferences, and trends. The goal was to enrich the brand’s user profile and selectively target vertical and broadly related KOLs to help the brand optimize its marketing strategy and enhance future marketing effectiveness.
HOW
iResearch provided a customized solution through the integration of telecom big data and social media data. Initially, telecom data was used to collect TA group tag information and offline location characteristics, preliminarily filtering target research channels and content. Then, by tracking the TA group’s online catalyst behavior across platforms, we analyzed the preferences and habits of the target audience and provided targeted marketing recommendations
OUTCOME
The project redefined the brand’s TA criteria and reconstructed the user profile. Based on the TA catalyst behavior analysis, it identified top 50 influencers in vertical and broadly related industries as marketing suggestions, helping the brand to break through data barriers across different platforms and industries, thereby enhancing the precision of marketing.
2. Strategic Consulting Project for Offline Retail Channel Transformation and Upgrade of an International Sports Brand
WHAT
As the economy and consumption enter a dual recovery in the post-pandemic era, offline formats remain the most direct touch point for brand manufacturers. The challenge lies in how to efficiently and precisely stock and market products based on the user characteristics. The clients want to understand whether the customer acquisition and conversion strategies need adjustment compared to the prepandemic period.
WHY
An international sports retail brand expects to innovate products, track new items, and conduct marketing activities based on stores/districts. The brand urgently needs to gain insights into the regional target audience, monitor user characteristics and changes within a gridded area, and know their mobility features . Adjusting store strategies based on the research helps to cope with the complex and rapidly changing market,assess the operating conditions of stores/districts better and expand business
HOW
iResearch, integrating operator major customer data and corporate data, reconstructed the client’s user tagging system. By studying the online and offline behavior characteristics of users, we enhanced the comprehensiveness and precision of user profiles. We also customized a BI Dashboard for the client, providing a visualization solution for real-time data tracking and feedback.
OUTCOME
The project systematically established comprehensive online and offline user profiles for the client, customizing over 20 major tag categories and more than 100 subcategories. At the same time, it realizes nationwide grid heat monitoring of business districts and brand stores, and builds customized Dashboard+monthly report delivery combined with user data to support real-time data needs of multiple departments on the client side, forming a channel transformation and upgrading strategy centered on target customers.
3. Online Customer Marketing Strategy Consulting Project for a Domestic Sports Brand
WHAT
For conglomerate companies with a diverse brand matrix, precise operational analysis for each business format targeting specific markets is essential. With the high cost of customer acquisition, the brand aims to understand the consumer’s shopping chain, key touchpoints, and driving factors under the goal of achieving both brand and efficiency, thereby reducing costs and increasing effectiveness.
WHY
The client, a domestic sports brand, wanted to more precisely target its brand’s intended audience (TA). By leveraging big data insights, the brand aimed to comprehensively understand the online catalyst behavior, preferences, and consumer journey of this group, thereby aiding in marketing decisions.
HOW
iResearch utilized operator big data to collect comprehensive tag information for the TA , offering suggestions for subdividing the TA . Based on these criteria, we further explored the online catalyst behavior of the audience and conducted in-depth analysis of the online conversion chain using the AIPL model.
OUTCOME
The project redefined the standards for identifying the brand’s segmented user base, dividing the core TA and four major sub-categories.By identifying the behavioral characteristics and preferences of the subdivided TA, the project analyzed 8 typical online conversion links according to the AIPL model. This provided a clear strategic guideline for the brand to reconstruct the user profile and adjust the corresponding customer and marketing strategies to promote the sustainable growth of performance.
Our Thoughts Towards Future
Drawing from our accumulated consulting and research projects in the consumer goods sector, coupled with our experience serving clients across various industries, we believe that a complete, systematic approach is vital for the future of digital marketing and digital branding in consumer goods companies. This approach should be guided by strategic insights, empowered by digital products, and enhanced by intelligent operations.
In addition to the aforementioned cases, it is important to highlight that we offer digital marketing and brand digitization services to a diverse range of clients spanning multiple industries. With this core principle in mind, the collaborative team of iResearch and Typhoon Consulting leverages their extensive experience and expertise to assist our clients in effectively navigating future challenges and capitalizing on opportunities. We are dedicated to delivering top-notch consulting and marketing services, enabling our clients to maintain a strong competitive advantage within the industry.
1.Insight into Macro Trends
In the midst of this “once-in-a-century transformation,” it is imperative to pay close attention to macroeconomic trends, industry development, and shifts in consumer behavior. The joint team of iResearch and Typhoon Consulting possesses systematic tracking tools, a long history of in-depth research and implementation capabilities, and a keen insight into strategies and solutions. We are committed to helping our clients gain early insights and confidently navigate through various changes.
2.Focus on Operations Management
In operations following strategic planning, our focus should be on value creation, engaging in in-depth cooperation at the business operational level and delving into use cases based on business scenarios, rather than merely concentrating on strategy or analytical work. To achieve this goal, the joint team of iResearch and Typhoon Consulting includes seasoned business strategy consultants, marketing research experts, and data scientists. Our team is capable of providing clients with comprehensive, end-to-end operational support services, ensuring long-term value returns for our clients.
3.Strength in Digital Infrastructure
In terms of infrastructure, it is crucial to continually enhance the systematic construction and capabilities of the entire digital marketing chain. This necessitates having advanced digital technologies and implementation capabilities to support clients’ needs in digital marketing. Currently, the joint team of iResearch and Typhoon Consulting is able to offer our clients comprehensive digital solutions. These include automated data analysis and insights, development and implementation of digital tools, as well as ongoing technical support and operational maintenance services.
Contact Us
If you would like to learn more about our services, please feel free to contact us. We are happy to meet with you face-to-face to share more details about our experience, provide you with more information, and answer your questions as best we can.
Notes and Index：
- Press Office of the Ministry of Commerce of the People’s Republic of China, “The person in charge of the Department of Consumption Promotion of the Ministry of Commerce talked about the situation of China’s consumer market in October 2023”, 27 Nov. 2023, http://www.mofcom.gov.cn/article/syxwfb/202311/20231103455936.shtml
- iResearch Consulting,“2023 China Consumer Insights White Paper”, P18
- iResearch Consulting, “2023 China Consumer Insights White Paper”, P23
- National Bureau of Statistics of the People’s Republic of China, “National Data”, 27 Nov. 2023, https://data.stats.gov.cn/easyquery.htm?cn=A01&zb=A0706&sj=202201
- iResearch Consulting, “2023 China Consumer Insights White Paper”, P20
