Come and go in a hurry How many hurdles will "online celebrity Store" have to cross to become "Changhong Store"?
A flower-themed dessert shop set up different styles of photo areas, which attracted many girls to punch in and take photos; A nostalgic hot pot restaurant is decorated as a classroom, the dining table is a desk, the menu is printed on the examination paper, and ordering food is like answering the examination paper; A rotisserie gives free cans of "air" to diners, which smells like grassland … … Dong Qianqian, a Beijing white-collar worker who frequented online celebrity store, told reporters about the novel experience of punching in online celebrity restaurant in recent months.
In the world of online celebrity stores, these experiences that people can’t help but make friends circle "show off" are just the tip of the iceberg. Shops wave upon wave have made many strange moves on the track that ranks among online celebrity.
However, most of the online celebrity stores, which became popular with their face value, marketing and queuing effects, failed to escape the fate of "coming in a hurry and leaving in a hurry". There are still many obstacles that need to be overcome before "online celebrity Store" becomes "Changhong Store".
"Routine" full of popularity
At 5: 30 pm on July 26th, the entrance of a tea shop on the 1st floor of Joy City in Chaoyang, Beijing was already crowded. Ye Yuan, an office worker, also joined the queue of Punch, a online celebrity tea shop. At this time, there were 110 single rows in front, and she waited for a whole hour before drinking this cup of milk tea. The first thing Ye Yuan did when she got the milk tea was to take photos and send them to her circle of friends, waiting for friends to praise her.
First, others "plant grass" on social networks, then "pull grass" at the store, and finally show the consumer taste in social networks — — Ye Yuan’s consumption experience is the complete process for many young people to punch in the online celebrity store.
"In addition to actual consumption, consumers go to online celebrity stores more to meet the needs of social sharing, so as to have their own right to speak on social networks and shape their social image." Lai Yang, executive vice chairman of Beijing Business Economics Association, said that in the context of increasingly experiential, personalized, community-based and instant consumption trends, if businesses want to be popular, they must arouse consumers’ desire to actively spread.
Laiyang summarized the common characteristics of online celebrity stores. In terms of products, environmental decoration, services, etc., it has advanced innovation and popular elements, especially with high value and novelty, suitable for social communication; Good at topic marketing, quickly capture fans and enhance popularity with the help of new media and short videos; The "queuing effect" is obvious, and there are often many people queuing in front of the store.
However, news about some online celebrity stores paying "child care" to queue up to create a hot illusion has been reported from time to time. A person in charge of investment promotion for joining a online celebrity store also confirmed to reporters that in the stage of store support, the company will attract popularity for new stores by hiring people to queue up.
However, even knowing that the "routine" is full, many young people can’t help but "into the pit". On the list of online celebrity restaurants on a review website, the reporter saw that the key words were suitable for taking photos, sense of design, literature and art, forest style and nightclub style.
Red but three years of anxiety.
"One year is booming, two years are steady and declining, and three years will not last." It seems that being popular for three years has become the fate of most online celebrity stores.
Wang Yong, the person in charge of the joining project of a milk tea shop, told the reporter about the anxiety of a cup of online celebrity milk tea. In the past five years, the tea shop project he is responsible for has "evolved" from the fourth generation to the sixth generation, and the change speed is very fast. Last year, the fifth generation tea shop was able to return to its original capital in 6-8 months, but this year, it will take at least 10-12 months to return to its original capital. Many of his old customers are already planning to abandon the old brand and join the latest milk tea brand.
More importantly, during this period, the tea industry is also undergoing changes in production technology, from creamer and saccharin brewing to fresh tea soup mixed with fresh fruit, and then to the new consumption trend of low-calorie healthy tea … … If you can’t step on the new industry consumption hotspots, it will be difficult for the store to maintain the heat.
Good ideas are equally important for online celebrity stores to gather popularity. In March, 2018, a kind of tea called Answer Tea became a dark horse in online celebrity’s tea industry because of its "divination" creativity, and the number of franchise stores rapidly expanded to more than 200.
However, it was followed by a large number of similar products to be imitated. The difficulty of creative reproduction and the fast follow-up speed also brought a lot of confusion to online celebrity Store.
Wang Yong’s company has recently developed a new milk tea, which adopts 3D breast cover printing technology, and can print photos of couples on the breast cover to cater to young people who pursue a sense of ceremony. At the same time, they plan to introduce snacks and desserts in the shops according to the long winter in the northern market to enrich the product categories.
In order to create a topic, they also tried to invite traffic stars to the store to do activities to absorb powder. In a recent star-in-store marketing activity in a store in Guangzhou, the flow of water exceeded 40,000 yuan that day.
Wang Yong is not sure how long their ideas will be popular, but he is sure that we must try our best to make the brand popular first.
How do brands achieve "long red"?
The data shows that in the first half of 2018 alone, among the four first-tier cities in the north, Guangzhou and Shenzhen, an average of 10% of restaurants closed down every month. Among them, there is no lack of online celebrity restaurant.
Cao Lei, director of the E-commerce Research Center, told reporters that the short-term popularity of some online celebrity stores does not mean making money, and even business model fraud is hidden behind them. Some online celebrity stores have no long-term plans, and some even take a low-price strategy, making money at a loss, in order to open franchise stores, rapidly expand their scale, earn franchise fees and strive for financing.
Recently, news about the poor hygiene and product quality of restaurants in online celebrity has also been reported frequently. Cao Lei believes that this has something to do with the fact that online celebrity Store has been affected by the rapid expansion of new retail, and the pace of staking is obviously accelerated, which makes the management more difficult.
Regarding the rapid expansion of online celebrity stores by joining in, Lai Yang believes that when enterprises expand their territory under the condition that their management capabilities such as products, supply chains and terminal stores are not mature enough, it may do harm to the brand itself.
So, how can we make the vitality of online celebrity store last longer?
Lai Yang believes that if businesses only work hard on the online celebrity element and don’t invest enough in improving the quality of core consumption content, then consumers are likely to have a "round trip" and can’t become "repeat customers" for repeated consumption, so it is difficult to break the situation of "opening higher and walking lower" in online celebrity stores. What consumers ultimately value is quality, price and service.
In Laiyang’s view, the competitiveness of online celebrity store is a system, which requires not only the continuous research and development of new products by the R&D team, but also the standardized process management to ensure the stable quality of products. At the same time, it needs to be supported by corporate culture.