Case Study of Logistics: Li Ning's Breakthrough in Building a New Marketing Model

In the field of traditional sportswear, Li Ning, as the domestic sporting goods market, always ranks behind Nike and Adidas, which inevitably makes Li Ning somewhat lonely. However, Li Ning, unwilling to lag behind, jumped from the traditional market to the Internet, broke through with a new marketing model, and broke out a sky of his own. Here, Li Ning is quite lonely and desperate for failure.

Have a good eye for rivers and lakes.

Li Ning, a sports brand, is a giant in the sportswear market. At the 2008 Beijing Olympic Games, athlete Li Ning ignited the spark of the Beijing Olympic Games. At the World Championships, all the players of the world champion "Spain" men's basketball team put on "Li Ning" sports equipment; In the NBA, O 'Neill, the "big shark" of the vertical and horizontal alliance for nearly ten years, has also become its brand spokesperson ... Even so, Li Ning is not satisfied.

Brand, Li Ning has been suppressed by Nike and Adidas; In terms of sales volume, national enterprises like Anta followed closely. With the development of the market and increasingly fierce competition, Li Ning is facing the embarrassing situation of blocking the front and chasing after it. Coupled with the financial crisis, the competition in the sportswear market is "a river of blood". In March 2009, Nike, which dominated the market, closed its factory in Taicang, China, and then reduced its orders to foundry enterprises (even stopped orders with several contract factories); Adidas' financial report also shows that sales revenue decreased by 2% in the first half of the year and profits decreased by 95% year-on-year. However, under the financial crisis, Li Ning did not lose its foothold, but found a new market at this time. Instead of fighting with competitors in the traditional market, it is better to open up a new world by yourself.

This new market is the online shopping market. The data shows that clothing network is a kind of commodity with consumption amount. Nearly 60% of online shopping consumers have bought clothes online, and at the same time, clothes account for about a quarter of all online shopping. The huge transaction volume benefits from the increase in the number of netizens and online shopping groups in China. According to CNNIC report, by the end of 2008, the number of netizens in China had reached 298 million, and the number of online shopping users had reached 74 million, accounting for 24.8% of all netizens. Lin li, who is in charge of developing this new market for Li Ning Company, also found in a survey in 2007 that there are thousands of online stores selling Li Ning products on Taobao, with annual sales exceeding 50 million yuan. This is Li Ning's new market.

Judging from the online marketing of the clothing industry, Li Ning's entry is not too early. Prior to this, a "fast company" like PPG opened the door to online marketing in the clothing industry, and then Vanke Eslite also achieved nearly 500 million good results in 2008. However, compared with competitors such as Nike, Adidas and even Anta, Li Ning really ran ahead of them from single offline sales to B2C online sales.

Li Ning's New Marketing Mode Path

Li Ning's entry into the field of e-commerce is quite similar to the wonderful performance of athlete Li Ning at the opening ceremony of the 2008 Beijing Olympic Games. In the interwoven picture of light and shadow, Li Ning rose into the air with a fire distance in his hand and strode forward on Ling Bo until the torch was lit. This is an extension of China people's belief, a microcosm of the national spirit and a symbol of the country's development pace. The athlete Li Ning's "fast", "accurate" and "stable" also basically explained Li Ning's brand spirit, which is why Li Ning quickly entered the B2C field.

Speaking of "fast", it took only a short year from the establishment of Li Ning's e-commerce department to the establishment of channels for formal sales, and then to the market sales of 200 million yuan. In August 2007, lin li joined Li Ning Company, and Li Ning decided to start e-commerce. June 5438 +2008 10, Li Ning's e-commerce department was formally established; In April 2008, Li Ning of Taobao Mall was launched. In June 2008, Li Ning's official online shopping mall was launched; At the end of 2008, Li Ning registered more than 400 online franchise stores, with total sales reaching 200 million yuan. In 2009, Li Ning made a unified plan for online stores, providing dedicated CI and VI systems for all online stores. ...

Speaking of "quasi", in the process of building Li Ning's B2C system, we have keenly captured the key nodes of users' online shopping and solved the concerns of end consumers one by one. Before the establishment of Li Ning B2C platform, there were a large number of sellers of Li Ning products on the Internet. Taobao data shows that in 2007, Li Ning's products had nearly 50 million sales on Taobao alone. Behind this figure is not only the share of a known market, but also the location where Li Ning consumers gather in the online market and what kind of shopping habits they have. Therefore, Li Ning did not blindly open his own B2C at the beginning, but put his first online shop on Taobao, which on the one hand produced a "pilot" effect, on the other hand, it also aggregated the original online consumers well. At the same time, Li Ning, the original seller of Taobao C2C, didn't kill him with a stick, but wisely adopted the method of "recruiting first and correcting later" in combination with the shopping habits of online users. Two months after Taobao Mall opened, Li Ning's B2C talents arrived late. At this time, netizens have become accustomed to Li Ning on the Internet.

On the "stable" side, although Li Ning Liang Jian's e-commerce is only a short year, Li Ning has achieved gradual progress from the overall Internet marketing strategy to team building, from the choice of sales channels to the later marketing, from the improvement of logistics and capital flow to the later service support. In terms of strategic layout, Li Ning is not only the first to step into the open field of Internet, but also plans to try mobile e-commerce. In terms of team structure, Li Ning has built a complete B2C team through the combination of core team self-construction and supporting team outsourcing. In terms of logistics and capital flow, Li Ning's e-commerce department has quickly met the needs of high-speed operation of e-commerce through the reform of internal and external mechanisms.

Li Ning is a light company, outsourcing the manufacturing, IT and logistics of its products to professional companies. Similarly, in e-commerce, Li Ning chose to outsource online channels instead of using online direct sales of self-built electronic malls (Giordano, Good News Bird, etc.). ), and its Taobao flagship store and discount store can only be regarded as a display platform. Network channel outsourcing aims to quickly scale channels and occupy the market in a short time.

In the marketing era of Web2.0, if we have a clear understanding of users' needs, we must use the simplest operation method to achieve large-scale development in a short time, which will soon be successful. An expert in the field of e-commerce commented on Li Ning's B2C strategy.

From marketing to sales

Li Ning is not the first company to taste the sweetness in the Internet market. In fact, Nike has already improved and supplemented the existing marketing system through the traditional online marketing model, and achieved outstanding results. NIKEiD.com was born in 1999, and China consumers can also enjoy this brand-new self-service in 2009. Consumers can choose their favorite Nike shoes, clothes and sports accessories for personalized design in NIKEiD.com.cn. By choosing a variety of colors, colors and materials, and adding personalized symbols, they can design a Nike product of their own. Once the creative and design process of the product is completed, this "customized" product will be stored in the customer's database. After confirming the product reservation, customers can receive this pair of unique personalized Nike products in the world at home through free express service within 3-4 weeks.

Of course, Nike's approach is only aimed at a few creative individuals, and it is difficult for this minority group to bring huge sales revenue to Nike. This market action of Nike has made a new interpretation of its brand concept "JUST DO IT". What do you want? Do it yourself!

Nike's online marketing actions basically explain what these traditional enterprises have done online before. From the perspective of traditional marketing, the Internet is more of a media platform, which brings more value to enterprises in marketing. Therefore, we have seen the rapid development of online marketing modes such as online advertising, channel naming, POP advertising, QQ chat advertising and virtual community activities. /kloc-in the past 0/0 years, the marketing value of the Internet as a medium has been excavated by the marketing department of the enterprise.

Li Ning is no exception. When building an Internet e-commerce platform, Li Ning tapped the marketing value of the Internet. Li Ning once named the sports channel of the network portal to create an interactive network community. However, the most amazing thing is the online virus marketing of Li Ning in 2008. Li Ning's shoes entered the market in 2008 due to the popular online vocabulary. And through the viral spread of Li Ning's online community and Netease Sports Channel, "People wear shoes" and "Shoes sell like crazy", "Shoes" sold out quickly. It can be said that the success of shoes is a case of Li Ning's realization of Internet marketing value.

Indeed, marketing value is very important for traditional enterprises, but to give full play to the marketing value of the Internet also means a lot of investment. Although B2C, C2C and other forms of e-commerce have long proved the sales value of the Internet, traditional enterprises are generally easy to get involved. In fact, commercializing the traditional sales model requires not only money investment and professional accumulation, but also the courage to change.

Internationalization and multi-brand

Looking back on Li Ning's efforts and achievements in marketing, we can find that Li Ning brand is a brand that is good at creating miracles and everything is possible.

From 1990, it took Li Ning 10 years to become the first local sports brand in China. After entering this century, Li Ning began a more ambitious dream of internationalization. 200 1, the first overseas image shop of Li Ning Company was established in Santander, Spain. In September, 2002, Li Ning Company provided competition clothes for the Spanish women's basketball team to participate in the14th World Women's Basketball Championship. In the 2004 Athens Olympic Games, the Spanish men's basketball team officially put on Li Ning's professional sportswear; In the 2006 World Men's Basketball Championship, Spain won the championship unexpectedly, which made the whole world happy. In the 2008 Olympic Games, athlete Li Ning's "micro-step" and the internationalization journey of Li Ning brand reached another peak.

Of course, these are just miniature of typical moments. How many unknown stories are hidden in the internationalization journey of Li Ning brand? From sponsoring potential international sports teams to sponsoring China's four gold medal sports teams of diving, gymnastics, shooting and table tennis; From sponsoring CCTV reporters to signing NBA star O 'Neill, people can see Ning diligent everywhere. Has Li Ning's internationalization goal been achieved? Sure! Anything is possible.

After the acquisition of Kaisheng, the first local badminton brand this year, Li Ning's brands have reached six: the main brand Li Ning; Z-DO (new move) brand distributed by the supermarket channel; AIGLE, an outdoor product brand jointly operated with Aigle in France; Italian sports fashion brand Lotto (Le Tu) has a 20-year franchise agreement; The table tennis brand Shuangxi and the newly "released" Kaisheng. It seems that Li Ning's brand camp is becoming more and more complicated. However, things are more complicated than expected. Let's take a look at Li Ning's competitors Nike and Adidas. When it comes to Nike, you think of basketball, Kobe and James, and the Lakers. Similarly, when you mention Adidas, you will think of football, Ronaldinho and Real Madrid. What can we think of when we mention Prince of gymnastics Li Ning Company? Gymnastics? Too small! This is the problem. For Li Ning in the eyes of consumers today, his sense of mass brand is far greater than that of professional brand. Looking back at Li Ning's other brands, such as leisure sports, outdoor products, table tennis and badminton, these are obviously the secondary professional division of labor in Li Ning's sports family.

The distress of the new marketing model

Even if we rely on our own "Little Li Fei Island" to cross the B2C network, Li Ning's e-commerce strategy is in trouble.

When Li Ning's B2C sales were booming, the first thing she received was the complaint from the traditional store dealers. "A consumer came to my store to buy something and told me that the same Li Ning product sold online was discounted by X. Why didn't you call here? I can only say that the internet is fake. But the consumer said it was found in Li Ning's official online store, and I was speechless ... "The same goods are better than quality, the same quality is better than price, and the same price is better than service. The conflict between entities and online stores is first reflected in the price system. Because online stores do not have the cost of booth leasing and transportation, they often have outstanding advantages in price, which also suppresses and robs the sales share of some physical stores.

Another worry of Li Ning comes from the collocation of online and offline products. In order to avoid the big price difference of the same product, Li Ning began to adopt the methods of "wrong season sales" and "misplaced sales". In the official online store, the new products in the season are the main ones, and the full price is adopted; Dealers mainly sell out-of-season products that have been listed for more than three months, with more discounts; "Dislocation sales" is to make the official online shop have both image display function and high-end positioning; Dealers pay attention to quantity and cost performance. But in this way, offline dealers often encounter the embarrassment of having consumer demand but no products, which also harms the interests of dealers on the other hand.

The quality of online shopping products and after-sales service have also brought a lot of troubles to Li Ning's B2C sales model. Because the online shop dealer qualification examination system is not perfect enough, consumers even often encounter "Gui Li" posing as Li Ning. The existence of these online stores not only damages Li Ning's brand image, but also greatly reduces customers' brand loyalty to Li Ning. In addition, the mixed online stores have also brought troubles to Li Ning's after-sales service. Various after-sales services often lead to consumer complaints, and even Li Ning's services can't satisfy consumers. ...

There are also some troubles from online shopping users. The shopping habits of online users often have a great influence on the operation of offline stores in Lining. "Go to the specialty store to try on the size and go to the online store to buy things" has become the knowledge of online shopping users, so that the physical store only increases the service cost, but the real profit is the online store; In addition, from the geographical characteristics of online shoppers, the vast majority of online shoppers live in first-tier cities. How to further develop into second-and third-tier cities will also become one of the issues that must be considered in Li Ning's B2C strategy.

How to solve the problems brought by the new model

Internet can be used as a battlefield for marketing and promotion, and also as a terminal channel for product sales. Under the oppression of the financial crisis, Li Ning will not be the first "crab eater", and certainly not the last. More and more brands have joined Taobao Mall, turning Taobao into a department store built with a mouse. Jack Jones, Kappa, Metersbonwe, Bang Wei, Bang Wei and many other traditional clothing enterprises began to try B2C sales business. The reasons for choosing to enter the network rivers and lakes are the factors of the big environment, the factors of market changes and the factors of the enterprise itself.

From the macro environment, blind expansion in the financial crisis will occupy more costs and resources on the one hand, and increase the business load of enterprises themselves on the other. B2C sales need neither site cost nor long-distance transportation, and even save the trouble of tax. For enterprises, it is a good choice to expand business scale through B2C. From the perspective of online shopping market, the increasing number of online shopping users and the rise of emerging consumer groups after 1980s and 1990s have made online Jianghu a potential gold mine. For the enterprise itself, online shopping can not only help the enterprise to expand its scale at a very small cost, but also gain huge benefits in clearing product inventory, accelerating cash flow recovery and enhancing the loyalty of end consumers.

However, doing business online is not just as simple as opening a B2C website or registering a merchant in Taobao. What enterprises need first is innovative consciousness, determination and B2C thinking with strategic vision. Where are the end consumers of enterprise online sales? What position will online stores occupy in the sales system of enterprises in the future? Is online shop the main body or supplement of offline sales channels? How long do you want to reach its market share? These problems need to be seriously considered by enterprises.

After the enterprise has a clear strategic positioning for the online shop, it needs to establish a special operation team to implement the corresponding online sales plan. Professionals who understand the operation mode of e-commerce are essential, and an independent e-commerce department is established based on the core team. Finally, there are logistics, finance and after-sales service. The rapid progress of e-commerce requires enterprises to have independent logistics system, financial system and after-sales service system to adapt to the rapid update and development of the Internet, and must not be "OUT MAN".

E-commerce is a new business model. However, Li Ning's e-commerce model is different from other clothing industries, and it takes the road of network channel outsourcing. I hope that Li Ning will get better and better on this innovative road, and I also hope that this model can give some inspiration to some troubled clothing enterprises to feel the sunshine and temperature in the cold winter.