"In 2024, with platforms entering the market, new additions slowing down, the cost of customer acquisition getting higher and higher, and the status quo of spelling price and product and service of involutional competition, how will the consolidation companies break through?"
This is a topic mentioned by the moderator to the guests at the round table of EZTransportation. Sorting out everyone's point of view, combined with their own observations of the industry, issued for your reference.
I. Looking at the bottom line: the drivers of the consolidation industry
1. The two collector genes::
Container transportation has both logistics genes and C-end operation service genes.
The goal of logistics is goods, the circulation of goods, efficient flow and safe delivery, and the ultimate operation of cost and efficiency;
The goal of C-end operation is people, the user's reach conversion retention repurchase fission, the user's sense of experience and satisfaction.
So this is an industry where cross-border logistics companies will enter, and teams with traffic and user operation capabilities, or localization capabilities, will also cut in.
2. Two vitality bases::
Chinese students and businessmen are widely distributed in various countries around the world, as well as the global competitiveness of Chinese supply chains and products. It gives the collector transportation both the emotional attributes of vernacular consumption and the cost-effective principle of rational consumption, and also comes with the money-making attributes of commercial distribution.
3. Industry development and maturity::
Amplified by the maturation of China's production and manufacturing industries and its expanding influence on the globe.
From the early days of Hong Kong, Macau, Taiwan and Southeast Asia, to the mainstream European and American markets, and now the emerging Central Asia, Middle East and Africa and other markets.
Collective transportation is gradually starting to take off with the improvement of the cross-border logistics system of infrastructure, the gradual liberalization of customs policies, as well as the expansion of local consumption power and domestic demand.
Every gradual liberalization of market players is accompanied by the importation of collector shipments or Chinese goods to the sea to meet the consumer demand generated by the development of the local economy.
The price war service war product war under the full involution of the market is a sign of the industry's maturity. From Hong Kong, Macao and Taiwan to Europe and the United States to Africa, the maturity of each market has to go through time and full competition among various market players.
4. Future and challenges::
In the foreseeable future, from the point of view of the maturity of the industrial chain, China's products will still be highly competitive globally. In terms of the scale of Chinese people going to live and do business globally, the vitality of the containerization industry will still continue to grow and develop.
The reverse of globalization is regional economic protection, where each subject faces the need to protect its own economic development. In the face of domestic commodity imports, how to develop in their own industry chain, how to protect their own interests and development claims.
The manifestations of these extensions are the cooperation and friction in bilateral relations, the stability and openness of customs policies, the growth of cross-border logistics infrastructures, and, as reflected in the containerized transport industry, green compliance and healthy sustainability.
Second, Ming status quo: volume price volume service volume products
From rapid growth to new slowdown, gradually from the new user competition into the competition in the stock market, competition from their own good to grab from others inside the bowl.
The most direct response of the industry is that the customer acquisition cost of each platform increases. Whether it is content or advertising, the cost of user leads will become higher and higher, and the cost of customer acquisition will become higher and the conversion rate will decrease.
The next step is the price war, through price cuts to attract the attention of users and increase the conversion rate, to maintain the company's cash flow. The price war will reduce the profit margin of the whole industry, gradually eliminating small and medium-sized players with no service and product power and high operating costs.
High-speed growth in the market will allow a large number of new players to enter, when the growth rate slows down the cake is not enough to share, it began to involution, involution first wave of homogenization of the industry, the form of performance is bound to be the price war. First roll price, then roll service, and then roll product mail route.
The 2024 mainstream mature consolidation market is in this state of dynamic competition.
Various players in the involution competition, and gradually find their own market product user positioning and survival space. The market will also be divided into head players, small and medium-sized players, husband and wife.
Quality users are intercepted by the head, chicken ribs product line maintains the small players live, differentiated product players maintain niche share, the market gradually formed a relatively stable pattern.
Until the next core factor that influences the market to produce change comes along.
III. Going to think: the user's right to choose
An immature C-end market will have non-sufficient market competition due to resource monopoly and relationship closure, resulting in insufficient supply-side competition, not much choice for users, and difficulty in allowing the market to gradually win and lose, such as the logistics market in some African regions.
In a mature C-end market, the user's right to choose determines the survival of a company. The essence of competition in the mainstream consolidation market is, through which ways and means, to let the users who have the full right to choose choose us.
1. Choice and escape:Requirements-Products-Experience-Payoff-Reward
User needs: Containerized freight users wanting to transport products from domestic to overseas locations
Our products: Products for user consultation, consolidation warehouse services, logistics and transportation
User Experience: The experience that users have when using our transportation services.
Users pay: what costs do users pay to meet overseas with domestic products?
We give back: what do we get in return for meeting our users' needs?
When we are talking about the price service product war, it should be clear that these ways to affect which link of the user's right to choose the problem, whether it affects the new user's first order of seed grass decision, or whether it affects the old user in the logistics and transportation links in the timeliness of the time-price-stability-transportability-experience in which node of the perception, as well as this node in the user's perception of the decision-making chain of the weight of the impact.
What core strategy did the competitor use and which pain point in the user's scenario did it hit that caused the user's choice to be skewed towards the competitor.
2. Think fast and slow:Sense and Sensibility
Inside the industry, we see some brands with high product pricing, high user loyalty, and good reputation, but they don't even have a front-end user system, and all the service system relies on the 1v1 follow-up of customer service.
We have also seen a lot of husband and wife stores that follow the time difference of overseas users to synchronize their services, relying on pure personalization and a few small B users to survive.
Of course, there are also brands that rely on price wars and large-scale publicity grass-roots and other operational strategies to quickly start the volume of occupation of the market.
The user's right to choose is an amalgam of rationality and sensibility; it can be a purely rational price-paying measure or a values-identification-centered sensibility pie, with varying degrees of purity and different formulas.
On which core positioning strategy does it actually do what it takes to move the user's rational and emotional choices so that they end up choosing you?
IV. Doing the Response: Decision-making Directions for Entrepreneurs
Each entrepreneur stands from a different perspective and has his or her own different understanding of and response to the competitive landscape of a highly homogenized market.
1. New markets and new beginnings:Fight the hard fight. Pinch the soft one.
From China to the world, there are enough countries with diversity and differentiation, and the market maturity of each country region is not the same, resulting in the industry is also difficult to have a brand or platform can be unified.
But equally, it represents an opportunity for both headline consolidation brands and emerging consolidation teams to cut their teeth in new consolidation markets and countries, choosing emerging tracks and avoiding mainstream competitors.
Play hardball in the core mainstream market of consolidation. In emerging pool markets, play softball.
2. Focus and specialization:Practice your basic skills.
Mr. Kong shared with us about focusing on Canada, continuously improving the cost and efficiency of each link, increasing the investment in IP technology, and building a local logistics infrastructure system in Canada.
Practice the basics, cultivate your stamina, and make steady progress one step at a time. Enable yourself to make a hard fortress and fight a dull battle to face the crisis from the platform's lower field.
At the same time, step by step, reduce costs, improve efficiency, and build competitive barriers and moats in the logistics field.
3. Openness and innovation:It's better to be different than better.
Mr. Zou, General Manager of Superbuy, shared with us how to open up our own capabilities, empower more partners with complementary capabilities, and develop more markets around the world together.
In the user's right to choose, the user perception from an innovative experience will be able to influence the user's choice weighting more than a little bit better alternative. Extremely fast, such as brand positioning for more segmented scenarios like moving, etc.
4. Cultivate yourself and train your team: The heart and soul of a wish
Things are made by people, and to make bigger ventures and better breakthroughs requires founders to grovel into the game, as well as more exploration in organizational structure and dynamics.
Mr. Tang shared with us his thoughts on 24 years of organizational change and his strategy to personally travel to more countries to deepen localization and explore more emerging markets.
The initiation of vows stems from the founder's self-inquiry.
From survival-business-career-life, how to allocate one's time and energy, how to locate the height of one's career, whether to keep moving forward to explore or to seek safe harbor?
Finding a way to be self-referential in life is a founder's way of looking inward, and it's in the DNA of how far a company ultimately goes.
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