arcadenearme| Plastic dishes are placed and tasting sessions "eat more fish"..."out of control" liquor tasting session

Planner, Yangguan editor, coconut editor and editor, Kui Yunding

"tasting is already an outdated input", "(tasting) is very common", "a tasting will report fees to multiple manufacturers" …... After the liquor industry has entered a new round of deep adjustment, the phenomenon of intercepting fees by dealers and terminals around tasting is becoming more and more serious. And the wine industry recently found that in the price upside down, the price is difficult, these "routines" have become a tacit understanding between manufacturers.

Wine industry experts have learned that compared with the cost of tasting, what makes manufacturers feel even more helpless is that whether it is a large-scale tasting by hundreds of people or a table-by-table mini-tasting, even if it is really invested and carried out in a down-to-earth manner, its effect and function will still be greatly reduced, and the transaction rate will decline, the quality of consumers will decline, and even collecting numbers will happen from time to time.

In the long run, the BC integration of manufacturers is bound to be blocked, how to break the problem has become the key.

When the wine industry enters the stock competition, due to the limited new consumption, the tasting meeting, which is regarded as the integrated and efficient landing of BC by wine enterprises, has gradually become invalid, and some of them have even evolved into large-scale free food and drink parties.

Some people in the industry have used the number "603861" to describe the composition of large tasting parties, that is, elderly people over the age of 60 (60), women who are not the core consumers of spirits (38), and children with parents (61).

Some manufacturers said bluntly that these three groups formed part of the "basic plate" of the tasting meeting, most of which were aimed at eating and drinking for free, and very few people actually bought wine.

Unlike the large-scale tasting sessions hosted by manufacturers in various regions, one-table sketches are dominated by dealers and terminals. compared with them, they have greater autonomy, resulting in more chaos.

Qin Cheng (a pseudonym), a terminal in Shenzhen, told the winemaker: "in a small tasting meeting, usually several products take turns to take pictures, and then report the fee to different wineries, and this set of process is carried out by the distillery's salesman. We don't even have to be there." What's more, realistic plastic models are used to replace dishes to further reduce costs.

Qin Cheng said: "We only care about how much money (through the tasting meeting) can be given to us in the end, and how to operate it will be covered by the factory salesman." According to him, some winery salesmen are also happy to do so in order to maintain a good relationship with wine merchants.

As Yang Jingui, general manager of Beijing Taihe Golden bottle Culture Co., Ltd., said: "set fees are now clear rules, from manufacturers to retail terminals are accustomed to, how to make set fees look more scientific, upstream manufacturers even know."

In fact, the failure of the tasting meeting and the further arbitrage chaos reflect the predicament of liquor brands in marketing and consumer cultivation at the present stage.

"the terminal merchants and tobacco hotels within a few kilometers of the surrounding area will most likely serve the same group of group-buying customers. These group-buying customers are popular, and they are invited by different terminals and brands to participate in the tasting at different times. Over time, they also feel boring in the face of homogeneous tasting activities. There are fewer and fewer resources to attend the tasting meeting at the back. " According to Qin Cheng's observation, now group-buying customers eat and drink more for free, but they really buy less wine, which leads to more terminals not willing to do tasting in a down-to-earth manner, but to give the operating set fee to the brewery salesman.

And the wine industry also noticed in the survey that, as the invited party, core consumers, group-buying customers and other KOL are also full of complaints about this. The core consumers who were invited to participate in the tasting said bluntly to the wine industry: "there is no point in simply having a meal and drinking wine." We were invited to eat and drink by the merchant, but found that the whole night was just about eating and drinking. What's the point?Arcadenearme? Everyone's time is precious. "

It can be said that today, factories, businessmen, and customers are all wrapped in ineffective tasting, but some of the tasting will become a mere formality, auction, arbitrage and other "out-of-control" operations, making the situation of the three into a "vicious circle."

In the view of Lin Feng, chairman of Beijing Jundu Consulting Company, the reason why the tasting will become a free food and drink meeting is that the homogenization is serious and the form is more or less the same. He points out that the narrative style and scene-based communication of traditional tasting events are relatively outdated, and most tasting conferences cannot achieve self-consistency of cause and effect, which is generally lacking in the whole industry at present. In addition, the management of most enterprises is not in place, which also leads to the phenomenon of fraudulent brushing and setting fees in the process of large-scale implementation.

In fact, in a more severe environment, the means for dealers and terminals to collect manufacturers' fees for sustainable operation are far more than used in the evaluation meeting. The main reason behind this lies in the contradiction between the pursuit of high growth and meagre channel profits, which is also closely related to the periodicity of industrial development.

Wang Peng (a pseudonym), who is in charge of a second-tier soy sauce in South China, told the wine industry that when the market is good, manufacturers will naturally raise prices and increase profits. Now the industry adjustment superimposes the macroeconomic downturn, and the market price is seriously upside down, which leads to the compression of the profit space of the channel.

"the phenomenon of a set of fees such as the identification of supplies is relatively common in the industry, but it is also a last resort, otherwise there is no profit at all in the terminal." Wang Peng spoke bluntly.

As a matter of fact, in the face of the confusion of the evaluation meeting, manufacturers do not have a very good way to examine and solve it at present. Wang Peng told the wine industry: "our manufacturers are also in a dilemma. If we directly reduce the price, then the price system may collapse, and adhere to the standing price, the current market price will inevitably hang upside down."

Therefore, subsidizing profits in the form of set fees has become one of the ways to maintain the current fragile balance in the industry, and manufacturers are reluctant to upset this balance.

Yang Jingui also believes that the tasting will be very useful for dealers to set subsidies to make up for the upside-down price. In the case that the price is upside down and there is no hope of raising the price, there is a certain tacit understanding between manufacturers on the set of fees.

"manufacturers are not willing to change the status quo at the moment," he said. The logic behind this is that if the manufacturer directly reduces the price of the product, it will affect the overall situation, and the deduction from the marketing cost will have more control over the downstream of the winery. "

In addition, for some terminal manufacturers, there is also "convenience" behind the collection of manufacturer fees-there is a clearer assessment of the sales price of the product. Even if the price is upside down, the set of fees can make up for the dealer's losses and even make a small profit.

This is indeed a helpless move. Qin Cheng told wine industry owners that if we don't cut off the expenses of tasting meetings, but actually invest, then the price of the product will inevitably increase to make profits. However, compared with e-commerce prices, there is an obvious disadvantage. Many customers will choose to buy online."In the current market, if we don't keep this part of the expenses in our own hands, then we will almost have no way to operate."

However, according to feedback from some dealers, many brands have now significantly reduced the cost of tasting meetings, making it more difficult for dealers to promote at the terminal.

Lin Zhongcheng, a Guangdong dealer, said that a certain sauce wine brand has been very strict this year and cannot even satisfy itself with tasting the wine, which has greatly undermined the enthusiasm of dealers to promote it. Hunan dealer Yuan Liang (pseudonym) also revealed to wine industry owners that as far as he knew, the tasting meeting of another sauce wine brand had been completely suspended this year.

Yuan Liang believes that it is still necessary to properly conduct some tasting sessions for consumer opinion leaders. However, when most tasting sessions do have poor results, manufacturers need to make timely adjustments, otherwise it will be really difficult for the terminal to do.

It is not difficult to see that the game between manufacturers today has extended from transferring funds and suppressing goods to trivial matters such as expense write-off and promotion of materials, and the ensuing dilemma is a difficult situation. On the one hand, with the trend all the way towards C, some manufacturers have adjusted the dimension of fee investment, resulting in a decline in the status of dealers. Market expenses have not even gone through the hands of dealers, resulting in dealers having to try their best to subsidize "profits"; on the other hand, it is difficult for some manufacturers to reach core consumer groups and terminal vendors in large and deep areas in a short period of time, and still can only rely on "invalid" tasting sessions.

Regarding the effectiveness of the tasting session and the arbitrage practice of the tasting session, please leave a comment at the end of the article.