Worth Thinking About: Where Does the Future of Baijiu Lie? Will Young People Abandon Baijiu?
The rejuvenation of baijiu is one of the future development directions of baijiu, but it is important to adopt a cautious attitude regarding the baijiu's path, which lies in the youngsters. The discussion of baijiu's route can have multiple perspectives, such as from the perspective of globalization, baijiu's path lies in internationalization. From the perspective of channels, baijiu's path lies in the integration and construction of platforms. From the perspective of consumer groups, baijiu's path lies in meeting the baijiu consumption of 80s and 70s, while actively exploring ways to meet 90s consumers.
baijiu
When we focus our attention on the issue of young people drinking baijiu, we need to clarify two concepts. First, the baijiu industry's two-eight principle is obvious, with premium baijiu such as Moutai and Luzhou Laojiao continuing to occupy the top four positions. Using Moutai's words, 'We need to position Moutai wine's main consumer group in China's 109 million middle-income population,' this shows that premium baijiu has absolute influence in the Chinese baijiu market, and young consumers are not the primary target group for premium baijiu.
How to guide young people to drink baijiu, there are two directions, first, with the passage of time, young consumers will enter society, and baijiu will be accepted by them as a certain sense of social necessity. Second, actively attack, make 80s and 90s people prefer baijiu when choosing beverages. The reason for the baijiu consumption gap is because they did not understand why 80s and 70s people drink baijiu, while 90s people do not.
Young people have not experienced the social gatherings, business banquets, and human relationships faced by 80s and 70s, and lack contact with baijiu. Time will solve everything, when young consumers are no longer young, they will still drink baijiu. Actively through design upgrades and wine body innovation to meet the baijiu exploration of young consumers is a way to achieve baijiu rejuvenation effectively. From the perspective of consumer groups, combining baijiu production volume, we must clearly recognize that so-called baijiu rejuvenation, although it has development prospects, its market share is limited.
What is baijiu rejuvenation, let's take an example, Kongfu's Ziyou. Traditional baijiu packaging and bottle designs are like Chinese ink paintings, while Ziyou's design has a comic feel. Traditional baijiu bottle bodies are generally shiny and bright, and Ziyou's bottle body is matte. Traditional baijiu packaging is generally paper boxes containing a bottle of wine, and Ziyou not only sends a bookmark but also includes two cups. This can be seen as making baijiu younger from the 'external' product.
Jiang Xinyi is baijiu rejuvenation from the inside out, with the popular Jiang Xinyi's quote and also unique wine body design. Traditional baijiu bottles are generally shiny and bright, and Jiang Xinyi's bottle body is matte. Because of the different positioning, many people complained that Jiang Xinyi's wine body doesn't taste good, because Jiang Xinyi understands that young people like baijiu is this taste, not pursuing cellar flavor and complexity, but subtle sweetness and fragrance, pursuing light-mouthness.
Baijiu's path is a large subject, not easy to talk about, but the baijiu market in the future will definitely be more segmented, from the scope, national famous brands and local leading brands, from price point, luxury baijiu and civilian baijiu, from consumer groups, young baijiu still has some prospects. Wine companies should carefully study their own positioning and based on this to formulate suitable development plans and operating methods, in order to share the rapid development of the Chinese baijiu market's red dividends.
Author Zhou Jincheng, a researcher in the liquor industry, and assistant expert of the 'China Wine Industry' Think Tank, Ouyang Qianli
