In fact, Budweiser beer can expand strongly in China market, and this keen insight and quick response ability to the market is the key.
At the 20 18 New Network Business Summit, martin suter shared the secret of Budweiser's transformation.
Many industrial giants, such as Nokia and Kodak, have become slow to grasp the trend because of their ruthlessness, and their resistance to the trend change is increasing. Budweiser beer didn't fall into the trap.
In order to take the lead in the rapidly changing market, it established a "subversive growth department", namely ZX Venture Capital (ZX for short), whose main job is to respond to the impact of subversive changes in the market at any time.
With the rise of e-commerce, Budweiser quickly cut in and cooperated deeply with e-commerce enterprises in China.
In 20 15 years, the beer industry encountered a general growth bottleneck. Budweiser has set up an e-commerce department independent of its parent company, and transferred martin suter, a senior executive, as the person in charge, which belongs to a "subversive growth department" reporting directly to the headquarters.
In order to rapidly expand the online market, flagship stores of seven different beer brands, including Budweiser, Fu Jia, Corona, Guinness, Miqiluo, Harbin Beer and Budweiser Craft, have been opened in Tmall, covering different product lines from high-end beer to craft.
When new retailing became a * * * knowledge, Budweiser Beer, which has occupied 50% of the high-end beer market in China for more than ten years, quickly followed suit, strategically cooperated with Alibaba, found the target customer base in a digital way, opened up online and offline, approached a new generation of consumers, and created a brand-new beer consumption experience.
Nowadays, Budweiser has become more and more successful on the road of e-commerce, and its online sales performance has begun to increase at an annual rate of 65,438+000%, making up for the decline of the offline market during the industry downturn.
Now, Budweiser and Tmall have explored a new retail "data methodology", and the e-commerce division has become the core growth engine of the "Disruptive Growth Department", and will be upgraded from 1 to "digital commerce Division" next year to participate in the overall business of the entire China market.
Beer giants rush to the China market.
After the reform and opening up, the mainland beer market began to develop wildly, and more than 800 beer enterprises appeared one after another, including dozens of foreign beer enterprises with huge capital and technology. By about 1996, China beer industry has entered an era of disorderly competition and overcapacity.
At this time, the brewery acquired by Budweiser in Wuhan began to operate. One year later, Belgian Interbrugh Beer Group, which acquired Nanjing Jinling Brewery, officially entered the mainland market. Compared with their counterparts who entered the mainland more than 0/0 years ago, these two companies are latecomers.
But fortunately, they caught up with the good times. With the improvement of economic level, the consumption of China people has also started to upgrade for the first time.
Budweiser did not compete for food in the low-end market, but took the lead in seizing the middle and high-end market with few competitors, and soon occupied a dominant position. On the other hand, Inter Blue Beer has gradually opened the door to the China market by investing and acquiring local beer enterprises.
By 2002, Budweiser has occupied 50% of the domestic beer market above 8 yuan, and its high-end brand image is deeply rooted in people's hearts. In Lhasa, Tibet, people buy three times as much Budweiser beer as Beijing. The reason is that Lhasa residents regard drinking Budweiser beer as a status symbol.
At this time, through the merger and integration of the survival of the fittest, by the end of 2002, more than half of the national beer enterprises had disappeared, leaving only more than 400.
There are fewer beer enterprises, but the output and market scale are growing at a high speed. For strong brands, the opportunity to seize the market has come. Since 2002, China's beer production and sales began to occupy the first place in the world for many years.
When China beer market was merged and integrated, the global beer market was brutally shuffled under the leadership of several multinational giants. Among them are Budweiser and InterBlue. Especially in emerging markets, they have acquired hundreds of beer brands through investment and mergers and acquisitions.
At this time, after 15 years of hard negotiations, Chinese mainland just joined the WTO, and the beer market has been fully opened. Both Budweiser Beer and InterBlue are optimistic about the huge potential of China market, and quickly joined the wave of investment and mergers and acquisitions in Chinese mainland beer market.
In 2004, Budweiser's parent company in the United States acquired Harbin Beer Company, and quickly occupied the Northeast market with huge sales.
At the same time, InterBlue and American beverage companies merged into one and reorganized into InBev Beer Group. Later, under the leadership of the new CEO Boruito, InBev Beer acquired Jin Xue Beer, the largest beer enterprise in Fujian, at a high price of 5.8 billion yuan, and became one of the major beer brands in China.
In 2008, two multinational giants, Budweiser and InBev, which have been in the China market for many years, got married under the strong promotion of Boruito and established Budweiser Group, the world's largest brewer and the fifth largest consumer goods company.
In the China market, the market size of the merged Budweiser Group quickly jumped to the third position in domestic sales. At the same time, there are dozens of domestic beer brands, and the bargaining power of the brands has risen sharply, and then they are strongly involved in the competition of all grades.
Let Budweiser Win the Second Spring of Power Line
Budweiser Group has continuously invested in the acquisition of domestic beer enterprises, and also won the sponsorship of the 2008 Beijing Olympic Games and the 20 10 Beijing World Expo. At the same time, it also entered its Harbin beer brand into the World Cup. With the help of these large-scale marketing activities, Budweiser's popularity in China quickly turned red, winning the favor of more local consumers and accelerating the pace of market expansion.
In 20 13, Budweiser acquired Moderow and won the beer brand Corona. 20 14 acquired ob, the largest beer company in Korea; In 20 16, SAB Miller, the second largest beer company in the world at that time, was acquired for 106 billion dollars.
With these mergers and acquisitions, his trading volume snowballed, firmly controlling the status of the world's number one brewer.
At the same time of the global "Buy in buy buy", it has also fully implemented the localization strategy in key China markets and made a series of large-scale acquisitions, including Henan Wei Xue Beer and Dalian Daxue Beer 20 1 1, Mudanjiang Beer 20 12 and Hebei Tangshan Beer 20 13 and 20/kloc-0.
However, with the large-scale expansion of the domestic beer industry, the rapidly expanding China beer market soon encountered the problem of overcapacity.
After the domestic beer sales reached a record high in 20 13, the whole industry entered a four-year sales decline period. Budweiser's performance growth has also slowed down. In order to optimize production capacity, Budweiser closed its factories in Dalian, Changsha and Zhoushan.
However, Budweiser has more than 500 beer brands in the world and operates more than 20 beer brands in China. Therefore, it has sufficient capital to implement multi-brand strategy in the depressed market, which can not only earn good high gross profit in the high-end beer market that has occupied half of the country, but also fight for prices and sales in the low-end market through local brands to achieve full coverage.
In such a market environment, Budweiser began to seek new channels for performance growth. After careful market research, Budweiser Beer entered the booming e-commerce market in China in 20 14. First, in-depth cooperation with Tmall to open an online beer flagship store. By 20 15, the e-commerce division was established, which was subordinate to the "Subversive Growth Division" reporting directly to the global headquarters, and martin suter, the senior executive, was transferred as the person in charge to explore the market offline.
Martin suter recalled that he and the team in the subversive growth department clearly realized that doing e-commerce is not only about making beer, but also enhancing the beer consumption experience. They made a detailed market survey and found that many people began to consume beer at home except KTV, restaurants, hot pot restaurants and other places in life. Finally, they decided to make a new scene experience to improve the situation of consumers drinking beer at home.
In the past, people mainly bought beer in traditional channels such as supermarkets and convenience stores. By 20 15 years, e-commerce has been ubiquitous in the lives of consumers in China, especially young consumers have become accustomed to sitting at home shopping through e-commerce, and they increasingly like to get together with relatives or friends at home. At this time, drinks are essential. Therefore, martin suter's team launched an advertisement for Budweiser family party, invited China star William Chan, who is deeply loved by young people, as the spokesperson, and then vigorously promoted it on the online media, which strengthened the scene of young consumers enjoying a good and warm time while drinking beer.
After the consumer experience of this scene was successfully created, the martin suter team launched holiday scenes such as Halloween. Since then, Budweiser has become more and more successful on the road of e-commerce, and its online sales performance has started to increase at an annual rate of 65,438+000%, making up for the decline of the offline market during the industry downturn.
Martin suter also said that they learned from the sales data provided by e-commerce platforms such as Tmall that more than 70% of the types of beer purchased by China consumers online are high-end beer. With these data analysis, they have a clear understanding of consumers, understand the market direction, and sell more accurately.
The old beer giants played with new retail, and one activity precipitated 62 million new customers.
Budweiser beer, which has been successful online, can't wait to start strategic cooperation with Alibaba after the emergence of the new retail model.
With the general improvement of mass consumption level in China, young consumers are increasingly pursuing personalized consumption experience. Budweiser conforms to this consumption trend and puts the battlefield of new retail in the first place in the very niche and high-end craft beer market.
As for the craft beer market, Budweiser began to set foot in it as early as 20 1 1 when it acquired the famous Chicago Goose Island craft beer, and then successively acquired American craft brands such as Blue Point, Elysee, Jinlu and 10 barrel. In 20 16, it acquired several fine brewing brands in Italy, Canada, London and Belgium.
In 20 17, Budweiser opened its first flagship store in Nanjing West Road, China, in order to improve the new retail business ecology and accelerate the construction of offline consumption scenes. In the same period, it also acquired Shanghai craft beer house Kaiba, Shanghai local craft beer brand Boxing Cat and its restaurant. Since then, Budweiser Beer has invested 60 million RMB to build a craft beer production line in Wuhan factory to supply these bars.
With the layout of these offline scenes of craft beer, on the occasion of Tmall Global Wine Festival, Budweiser Beer and Tmall created an online and offline interactive immersive marketing experience in Kaiba Beer House to cater to the interests of young consumers. Invite DJ to play the disc and invite KOL to promote it on social media. At the same time, the immersive drama "Looking for Mr. X" was launched in the open bar beer house. In this way, Budweiser provides a unique consumption experience for young consumers, and at the same time, it reshapes their brand image in their consciousness and establishes closer interaction with them.
On May 20 18, Budweiser and Tmall Interactive Bar jointly created Budweiser Tmall Super Fan Day. On May 0/kloc-0, 586,5438+00,000 fans were added, but these customers could not be reached by traditional channels. Among them, the number of fans added on the day of the event was 6.5438+0.69 million, exceeding the total number of fans accumulated since the opening of Budweiser Tmall flagship store for three years, and finally the total number of fans reached 985,000.
The speed of getting customers on Tmall is tantamount to a shot in the arm for Budweiser, whose sales in the global market are growing slowly.
This new retail game makes Budweiser a surprise gift. At the beginning of July this year, during the World Cup in Russia, Budweiser, as the official beer sponsor of the World Cup, joined hands with Tmall to open Tmall Super Brand Day. According to the preferences of China fans, a limited edition World Cup themed national altar was built, and eight teams with the highest popularity among China fans were selected to customize the exclusive cool packaging of the World Cup. The sales volume of this limited edition product reached more than 5 million cans, and last year's sales volume was completed in only 9 hours, creating a sales peak of 20 18.
During the period, the two sides also created a brand-new offline retail experience activity, and the offline national team vending machine launched a pattern answer punch card to interact deeply with offline fans. This new retail attempt not only created a new offline consumption experience, but also increased the average daily purchase users of Budweiser's official Tmall flagship store by nearly 40%. Through the integration of Tmall's multi-dimensional crowd, Budweiser has precipitated 62 million new customers, including 54.6 million football fans.
"An event can precipitate 60 million new customers, which is unimaginable under the traditional business model. This is also a very valuable consumer asset for beer brands that have no stores and counters and are difficult to reach end consumers. " Zhang Jiaxin, an expert in the operation of Tmall beer industry, said that brands can deeply operate these consumers and launch corresponding activities and products according to their needs.
The relevant person in charge of Budweiser said that since the cooperation with Tmall, not only the consumption flow has increased by 242%. It also promoted the sales of craft beer in the first half of the year, with a year-on-year increase of 136%. Tmall's superior resources can solve the pain points of localized store traffic and logistics transportation of craft beer, so Budweiser has launched the plan of "Let more consumers experience craft beer in different regions".
Taking advantage of this excitement, a few days later, Budweiser and Tmall officially announced a new retail strategic cooperation at Shanghai Goose Island Craft Beer Hall, adding all their craft beer brands such as Goose Island and Boxing Cat to the new retail camp of Tmall drinks. In this regard, martin suter, president of Budweiser China digital commerce, expressed the hope that Tmall would become a channel to further build brand culture.
At present, the big data brewing project of Budweiser's craft brands Boxing Cat and Tmall New Product Innovation Center has also been put into production. The first batch of craft beer with chocolate and orange flavors based on big data will be listed during the 20 18 Tmall New Year Festival.
As a result, Budweiser has accelerated its integration into Ali's new retail ecology.
Some people say, "If the speed of external change exceeds the internal demand of the company, then the company is not far from bankruptcy."
Budweiser beer has been in China for 20 years, keeping up with the new trend of rapid changes in China market. Whether it is the layout of e-commerce or the overall embrace of Ali's new retail, they can always seize the opportunity to interact closely with a new generation of consumers and lead the reform of the beer market.