Author | Mr. Art of War
来源 | 营销兵法（ID：lanhaiyingxiao)
Under the influence of the consumer environment, everyone is pursuing cost performance, and "replacement" has also become a good business with great potential. At the beginning, everyone was only in the field of beauty and dressing, but now, Pingti has penetrated into various consumer fields: from the hair dryer Laifen with countless fans, Luckin and Cudi, which have become fashion icons, to Miniso, which has opened stores like crazy, there are many brands that have successfully opened a position and quickly opened the market by virtue of the wind of replacement.
When the replacement of big brands has become an increasingly popular new business model, should cutting-edge brands take "big brand replacement" as their communication focus? And how should those brands that have become "big brand replacement" get out of their own differentiation after gaining a firm foothold? Let's talk about it.
01. The low-price strategy of big brand replacement ≠
Mass consensus is greater than branding
In the eyes of many people, engaging in the replacement of big names is to highlight their low price advantage, which is a kind of price war. However, looking at the entire consumer market, there are countless low-cost products, but there are not many affordable products that can be called "big-name replacement".
Compared with the popular copycat products in the early days, the big brand replacement has to "game" with consumers more times, and the similar appearance and low price can no longer affect consumers' decision-making. If you want to become a "big brand replacement" in the hearts of consumers, what you need is not top-down brand promotion, but a "consensus" that mainstream consumer groups can reach.
How do you get into the list of replacements in the minds of consumers? In fact, the logic itself is not complicated. We can divide the value of the product into "functional value" and "emotional value", and the functional value is easier to achieve, that is, to find a big brand against the target, and then give a similar quality and service. The emotional value is a relatively long process, first of all, you have to make the consumer feel that the money is well spent, and then let the people around the consumer feel that the money is well spent.
For example, Luckin and Cudi, who have brought down the price of coffee, have been able to grow rapidly in a short period of time because the brand's message is intuitive and clear. In the matter of "making consumers feel worthwhile", the brand has chosen the strategy of "quality + parity", so that many people can enjoy good quality coffee at a price of 9.9 yuan. In terms of making "the people around consumers feel that it is worthwhile", the brand has also been engaging in cross-border and co-branding, creating one hit after another, which also leaves the public with a good enough perception of the product in the category.
02. There are many pain points that need to be solved from the replacement of big names to real big names
Of course, the strategy of big name replacement is not suitable for all markets and all stages of brand development. Its precondition is that there is a fast-growing demand and stock market, there are a large number of overflowing "unconsumers", and the brand itself is constantly accumulating potential energy, and has not been strictly divided into the "high, medium, low" market classification. And there are pros and cons to becoming a big-name replacement, the advantage is that you can quickly open the market, and the pain points are also very obvious-
First of all, if the positioning of the replacement is deeply rooted in the hearts of the people, first, the quality of the product can not be reduced, and the quality reduction is easy to be eaten up by competitors, and the production cost cannot be reduced. Second, it is difficult for the price of the product to rise, and a slight change will lose price-sensitive users, and it will be difficult for profits to rise.
Second, if consumers only treat a product as a "replacement", then loyalty is generally low. If consumers have higher quality pursuits, or when big brands reduce prices and promote their own low-end markets, this group of people is easily attracted by the brands that are locked in at the beginning.
Finally, not all of them can get past the technical barriers of the big names, such as Dyson's core motor technology, which can quickly dry hair without relying on "high temperatures". This is a point that cannot be replaced by many replacement products, and if consumers are planted because of this technology, it is easy to step into the consumption trap.
03, the wind of replacement is still blowing
Brands also need to seize this opportunity
Although the replacement of big brands is not a business model that can be sustained for a long time, it can indeed be a window of opportunity for brands in the development stage. After all, in the eyes of many young people who choose "replacement", choosing cost-effective products is an attitude that can maintain a refined life while returning to rationality. If businesses want to use "substitution" to make a fuss, they also need to have a deep insight into the needs of users and prescribe the right medicine.
First, the market environment is changing, and brands need to lower their profile. Compared with the "goods-centric" business model of traditional e-commerce, the products of social e-commerce will be disseminated based on the real experience of users, and each stage may become the entrance to communication and traffic. We can often see "product reviews" on social platforms, where bloggers disassemble and compare different products. And those brands that want to become a replacement can also find answers from these evaluations. Take a look at what consumers like and mind in this category, and learn from each other's strengths and weaknesses to make yourself the most cost-effective choice among mainstream consumer groups.
Second, the mentality of consumers is changing, and brands should find the focus of communication. After experiencing the awakening of consciousness from consumption upgrading to consumption grading, consumers have become more and more rational, and the overall demand preferences are shifting to the direction of sentiment-price ratio and quality-price ratio. In other words, today's consumers no longer blindly believe in advertising and brand halo, they will return to the actual value of goods and choose products that offer great value for money. They will neither believe that "expensive is good", nor will they blindly look for "the cheapest in the category", but occupy more initiative in the process. And brands don't need to release too much content, they only need to give accurate and direct information, and let consumers judge for themselves.
Write at the end:
On social platforms with a high concentration of young people such as Xiaohongshu, Douyin, and Bilibili, there are more and more discussions about "replacement", which has led to a wave of evaluation bloggers and factory exploration anchors of replacement. These consumer trends also let everyone see that the wind of replacement is indeed promising. It's just that after sorting out what is substitution, what are the pain points, and what brands need to pay attention to, I believe that many friends also have a new understanding of the communication through substitution. In any case, brands still need to build their own moats and improve brand recognition, which is the key to standing tall in the competition.