| Wrong way A few days ago, the founder of Zhong Xuegao was pushed to the forefront of public opinion because of a sentence. Lin Sheng said in an interview with a TV program that Zhong Xuegao has a slightly higher gross profit compared to traditional cold drink companies. The most expensive one has been sold for 66 yuan, and the product cost is almost 40 yuan. He said bluntly, “It’s at that price. Do you like it? “. As soon as this statement was made, consumers who were originally suspicious of this expensive ice cream became even more dissatisfied and said bluntly that they could not afford it. Although Zhong Xuegao later refuted the rumors that this was taken out of context, the price controversy surrounding this Internet celebrity ice cream did not calm down. Earlier, Zhong Xuegao launched a new product of quick-frozen dumplings, a bag of 16 pieces of 98 yuan, and an average price of 6 yuan for a dumpling. This news was also posted on Weibo’s hot search and attracted a lot of complaints. Why does Xue Zhonggao sell more and more expensively? There are scalpers who dare to fry everything. On Double 11 in 2018, Zhong Xuegao launched the “Ecuadorian Pink Diamond” for 66 yuan a piece, limited to 20,000 pieces, and sold out within 15 hours of going online. From this, hunger marketing penetrated into Zhong Xuegao’s popularity. After the official channels were sold out, more expensive purchasing scalpers appeared on the e-commerce platform. The more expensive it made consumers more curious and helped the brand to further strengthen the brand’s positioning as a “luxury” in the ice cream session. Since last year, new consumer brands have emerged one after another, but you will find that scalpers can be seen everywhere in the consumer boom set off by these brands. A scalper of iron, a flowing internet celebrity product “A cup of 60 yuan (including the cost of milk tea), four cups or more, delivery fee of 30 within five kilometers.” Tea Yanyue became popular in Changsha and Wuhan, and a scalper who was transferred from a concert scalper to buy milk tea on his behalf Wrote in the circle of friends. He told us that at the beginning, the purchase fee was 50 cups, and the price increased to 80 yuan in the middle. Now 60 yuan is a relatively ordinary price. A cup of tens of yuan or even a peak of hundreds of yuan, milk tea scalpers like him make a lot of money by helping consumers line up and buy on their behalf. After experiencing the popularity of brands such as Hey Tea, Naixue’s tea, and Cha Yan Yue Se, the milk tea scalpers have formed their own commercial system. It’s also a scalper. What Fang Jun is queuing up to buy is not milk tea, but JK uniforms. In recent years, JK uniforms have gradually broken through the shackles of the niche circles and moved towards the public eye. However, the unfriendly sales model of this circle still discourages many fans who like JK uniforms. Generally speaking, big brand stores spread out in various social channels and private domain groups half a year in advance, and then officially launched them after building a trend. Genuine skirts are almost sold out within a few minutes after the opening of the group. Goods are not easy to buy, and the prevailing contempt chain in the circle makes them disdain to wear fake JK skirts, and proxy shooting and scalpers are naturally born in this circle. On Xianyu, buyers search for a skirt of the same style, and the price is usually much higher than the opening price, but Fang Jun is not worried about not being able to sell it. She has a new product in “second”, and most of it can be transferred at a high price. The rise of new consumer brands and the new consumer demand brought about by the breaking of the subculture has caused a large number of scalpers to move from the original ticketing market to the new track. In addition, some traditional consumer industries have upgraded their consumption and have fun with the fan economy. The scalpers are still indispensable. Active. For example, milk, milk companies sponsor talent shows and use milk tickets as a gimmick to drive product sales. The scalpers stock up on products in the early stages of the show. When the show becomes popular, they will sell milk tickets to fans at high prices while reselling products with no voting value. At the same time, they also sell agent investment business to the trainee’s company or support club, which can be described as one fish and three foods. Dairy companies have benefited the most from this marketing model. Taking Mengniu as an example, the milk beverage business of Mengniu Zhenguoli has bottomed out after its sales declined in 2016. It has maintained a low double-digit growth rate for five years, which has become a major driving force for Mengniu’s revenue growth. From a more macro perspective, the steady recovery of my country’s consumer market is also indispensable for the promotion of new consumer demand and new consumer brands. According to data released by the National Bureau of Statistics on the 16th, in May this year, the total retail sales of consumer goods was 3,594.5 billion yuan, an increase of 12.4% year-on-year, an average increase of 4.5% in two years, and a month-on-month increase of 0.81%. Among them, the consumption of upgraded commodities and cultural tourism services has grown rapidly. Our lives have already perceived this kind of splendid consumption. Hey tea, tea beauty, vitality forest, bubble Mart, Zhong Xuegao… tens of thousands of people lined up outside the store for 7 or 8 hours to drink a cup of milk tea. , I stayed at the official flagship store to buy a few ice creams, but found that they were sold out before they could grab them. Hanfu, JK uniforms, Lolita skirts, the minority frequently broke the circle, but for original, high-end, favorite skirts, spend more time Sometimes too much money can’t be bought. Consumption is booming, and it seems that nothing can stop Chinese people from spending money. Many people attribute this to the explosive consumption of young people, and it is also a common choice under the trend of consumption upgrading. However, this choice may not be an active behavior after the change of consumption concept. When the question of harvesting the IQ tax is getting louder and louder, these new consumer brands are more like a “collusion” between entrepreneurs and capital, driving consumers to follow the trend of consumption. , It is the scalpers who are constantly “upgrading”. Buying a 66 yuan Zhong Xuegao does not mean consumption upgrade Part of the reason why Internet celebrity products dare to sell more and more expensive is indeed due to changes in consumer demand. For example, ice cream, according to the CBND consumer big data report, from 2018 to 2019, consumers’ demand for ice cream has gradually diversified, and more niche flavors have become the object of consumers’ pursuit. In addition, eating healthier It has also become the focus of consumer concern. This is in line with the core of consumption upgrading, and the pursuit of higher quality and value drives consumers to pay for better products. However, with these new consumer brands in front of us, are the characteristics of the products themselves the most attractive to consumers? Probably not, it is more about the scarcity created by the brand deliberately, and the social value brought by the marketing campaign. Lin Sheng revealed Zhong Xuegao’s marketing skills as early as in an interview: if there are about 30 products on the market, there are 20 of them that are topical products with limited sales and limited sales, and they will be sold for one day or seasonal. The products are only sold for one season, they are short-term products, and will not be produced for a long time in the future. The beauty of tea attracts tens of thousands of people in line, largely because it is hard to find a cup, and consumers are becoming more and more curious. In the “2019 White Paper on New Tea Drinks Consumption”, in the survey of consumers’ thoughts about queuing when buying milk tea, 44% of people think that there are many people in the queue, which proves that it is worth the wait, and the most people hold this kind of thought. However, they may not know that the scalpers may be the most mixed in these teams. When the scalpers have not yet established a brand’s reputation, they help businesses create a fiery illusion and attract consumers. If the brand becomes popular, they will instead arrange or purchase for consumers who don’t want to line up. Online, the role of scalpers is still critical. The brand is engaged in hunger marketing, it is okay to get a joint name, sell in limited quantities, or they are delayed in replenishing goods, increasing supply exceeds supply. At this time, the influx of scalpers will make products more scarce. Spending more money to pay for the premium price of the brand behind the product to meet your own social needs can be characterized as a consumption upgrade, and you can spend several times the price to buy products that are raised by various false marketing costs and satisfy one-time curiosity attempts. This is not a consumption upgrade. In fact, this can also be judged from the results. First, are consumers satisfied? For many people, the answer is no. On social platforms, various online celebrity products or online celebrity stores are praised as “there is in the sky, but there is nothing in the underground”, which seems to be worthy of being planted or punched in. But after our friends around us tried to buy, most of them reflected that they were not worth it. this price. For example, Zhong Xuegao, online complaints that XX is not as good as it is not as good as a few dollars are the mainstream. The same is true for Internet celebrity restaurants. According to the survey data of Consumer Reports, only 43.7% of the respondents believe that “basically satisfactory, and the actual production is in line with expectations”, while most of the rest feel that it is not as expected. The second is whether high prices constitute a consumer burden? The basis of consumption upgrade is built on the basis of the increase of income level and the decrease of Engel’s coefficient, and products with higher prices and better quality can be purchased within the scope of one’s ability. But a cup of milk tea for more than 100 yuan, a box of 220 yuan ice cream set, a pair of dirty bags for 260 yuan… Young consumers can make a single purchase in order to make a circle of friends, but can they consume it as normal fast-moving products? ? According to data from the National Bureau of Statistics, the actual growth rate of per capita disposable income of Chinese residents has fallen from 7.4% in 2015 to 5.8% in 2019, and the average actual growth rate in the past two years is 4.5%. On the contrary, the overall household debt level has risen rapidly, especially young people, who are collectively destitute. This seems to be able to find a clue from increasingly expensive consumer goods. The scalper that never disappears? For a long time, scalpers acted as a middleman, raising product prices and disrupting the normal sales of products. Now, with the new consumption boom, more and more consumption bubbles have been created, and consumers have suffered the most. A buyer of JK uniforms said that although the items in this circle are rare and expensive, many skirts that are not out of print have been snatched by a group of scalpers and maliciously speculated at high prices. As a result, girls who really like JK uniforms can’t buy them directly from the store. skirt. What disgusted her the most was that many shops knew this, but instead engaged in hunger marketing, drawing cakes every day, and couldn’t buy a dress that she liked for half a year. Consumers don’t like scalpers, but why do scalpers grow bigger and bigger? In the early days, the scalpers were mostly in the ticket market. For many concerts, meet-and-greets and other organizers, they were actually an effective sales channel. An industry insider said that if the organizer encounters a concert with a good box office, it can increase the price to the scalper to obtain higher revenue. If the box office fails, it will give the scalper a lower price to transfer the risk. Such interest links and entanglements have long been tacitly understood. Perhaps it is precisely because this kind of “cooperation” under the table has a long history, which leads to the fact that no matter what line of scalpers, it seems that they are not opposed to the stakeholders. For example, Hi Tea has repeatedly been exposed to employ the Yellow Steak Team to create a fiery illusion. The scalpers contributed to the fame of Hey Tea and became the “black history” of Hey Tea’s eagerness to clarify the relationship. Another example is milk tickets. The scalpers derive their proxy investment business from reselling milk tickets, and proxy investment is to help fan clubs or brokerage companies to vote. It is reported that the second stage of “Blue You 3” is at the end. According to the milk fare and the price of female workers at that time, the daily expenditure exceeds 100,000 yuan, of which the scalpers make most of it. In 2019, on the eve of the Rocket Girl Flying Concert Guangzhou Station, it was also revealed that the organizer was suspected of making private negotiations with the scalpers and speculating on the fare. Although on the surface many businesses remind consumers not to buy products from scalpers, once businesses or brands can get more benefits from scalpers’ price hikes, in fact they have more choices than inaction. Just like Zhong Xuegao, every time he shouted that he was working hard to expand production capacity to make up production, but each time the specific replenishment time could not be determined. In Bubble Mart, many baby friends reported that the scalpers in the physical store opened the box and looked at the cards, buying hidden or hot money, and the clerk turned a blind eye to them. New consumer brands have never been poor. Consumers’ wallets are emptied, but the “appetites” of scalpers are fattening. A milk tea scalper in Wuhan, who only opened a shop through the tea Yanyue color, earns about a few thousand yuan a day, and can also reach 10,000 yuan on holidays. He said that his income has once exceeded that of when he was a concert scalper. When the Starbucks Cat Claw Cup went viral, the products that were snapped up at the original price of 199 yuan changed hands, some sold for 1,000 yuan, and some sold for 1,500 yuan, and a net profit of more than 10,000 could be obtained by selling more than ten. The prosperity of the world is all for profit; the hustle and bustle of the world is all for profit. Outside the Changsha Chayanyuese store, the scalpers still arrive every day, unimpeded. They don’t care whether consumption will rise or not, let alone whether this is an illusion of consumption prosperity, but it is time for us to reflect.
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