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MUJI Has A Precarious Position In China.

2019/8/12 15:42:00 0

MUJI

MUJI has a precarious position in China.

Eleven consecutive price cuts, still failed to restore the decline. This defeat is a bit bleak compared with the brand's scenery.

With the development of China's economy and the popularity of consumer culture, Muji has experienced rapid popularity and prosperity since its entry into the Chinese market.

The brand does not realize that this is the brutal growth of the early retail market, the scarcity of the brand, and the intoxication of the superiority of design and the fluke of pricing. Wait until the electricity supplier raids, competing products, consumers mature in the second half, the contradiction suddenly broke out.

After the tide of consumerism, the public gradually returned to reason. Nowadays, the simple "Wen Qing tide" and "market change" can not gloss over the failure of Muji in brand management.

Once an enterprise is not aware of danger, it is bound to accumulate. In the recent mass criticism of Muji's high price and lack of moat, we want to clarify a few problems:

1, which crisis signals have been ignored in the development of Muji?

2, Muji failure, just because the enterprise brand positioning deviation?

3, why can Muji be "Sinicization" and "localization"?

01, luck

MUJI was born in the early days of Japan's housing bubble in the 90s of last century.

The economy has stagnated in 80s, and people's desire for consumption is generally low. MUJI aims to attract customers through low price and promote "simple and cheap products". Through improved procedures and simple packaging, the price of the similar products has been reduced by 30%.

Cheap has become an obvious label.

This is obviously a good move, so that Muji can quickly open up in Japan. In the hottest days, there are shelves in Japan's streets, subway stations, and even convenience stores.

But Muji is popular in China, not because of cheap prices, but by the middle income class. Its popularity is closely related to the history of the youth of literature and art.

The group who was intoxicated in Qiong Yao's novels in 80s, began to love rock and roll in 90s. After the millennium, the youth pain literature prevailed, and the white shirts and jeans were filled with the summer of Gulangyu Islet.

But China only joined the World Trade Organization in 2001 and hosted the Olympic Games in 2008. At that time, the society did not understand the desire for material goods. The aesthetic and consumption needs of young people of literature and art were hurried and enthusiastic.

In 2005, Muji appeared to fill the gap.

With its original design of "empty" and "white" as its design concept, it uses "no brand logo" but "simple and good-looking" style to harvest large numbers of Wen Qing.

Price positioning, then became the new favorite of the middle-income class.

This has provided a way of thinking for the later refutation: the struggle of Muji is the misplacement of the "middle income class" when entering the Chinese market early, and the price is too high, resulting in the full fall of water in the sinking market competition.

This view of brand's current dilemma is only attributable to the original positioning of the brand, a little too absolute.

One objective fact that people easily overlook is that the Muji had no warehousing center in China, and the goods sold in China were actually made by Chinese manufacturers, shipped back to Japan after the factory was shipped, and shipped back to China in accordance with the supply plan.

In this case, the cost of transportation has doubled, which is far more than the price of local self-produced products, plus the cost of value-added tax, and the prices of goods in Chinese stores far exceed that of Japan.

Even now, there is a big gap between the price of luxury goods at home and abroad, and the reasons for tax. The high price is not a problem at the beginning.

The real question is, how can a civilian brand full of streets in Japan become a "Wen Qing exclusive" and a "middle-income class standard" on the high side? When the brand information is unknown and uncontrollable in the process of spreading, consumers will have such a big cognitive difference when they accept the brand information, will they cause a hidden danger to the brand?

The result is obvious.

When consumers know the price and brand positioning of Muji in Japan, there is a feeling of being cheated. This negative feeling has made it inconsistent and discarding the brand, and has lost the sense of brand trust.

This is the first signal warning that Muji ignores.

When the brand information produces a major deviation, the brand has not attracted enough attention, and there has been no adjustment in the communication strategy.

As a foreign brand, China has luckily harvested a group of Wen Qing audience and middle-income class, and luckily allowed the market and consumers to accept the high price. However, it has never been clearly realized that this is the brand being pushed into the altar of God in the specific period of China's special market and becoming the popular luck, rather than the strength of the brand itself.

02, wobble

Young brands do not know that the fate of the gift has long been secretly marked the price.

In the joy of luckily, Muji did not catch up with the hard power of design and quality, but instead focused on the brand image.

Its advertising increasingly favors the use of long shots of the blockbuster mode, the natural scenery of posters rendering, to high up the brand's own high-end and atmosphere. Although there are natural elements such as fields and sea, there is a lack of emphasis on simple and detailed elements in life and the lack of the "smoke and gas" of life groceries.

This "upward" approach is actually a bit of a show off.

First tier cities are full of luxury goods and customized brands. Muji has no capital to compete with others because of its technological standards, quality control capabilities and historical accumulation. Shopping centres in the top business circles prefer to lower the rent and seek the location of LV and Herm s to plug the audience in the mall, but Muji is still on the food chain that rents on the rent.

Recalling most of the foreign brands entering the market with high attitude, the later stages are going down. Kentucky made a $6 breakfast from a cheeky hamburger. UNIQLO made a $99 basic kit from Japan's design. But occasionally, there was a tide card, and it could play with young people.

But Muji has rarely been "down". All of it gives people an excessively strict sense of distance.

The store shelves are orderly and orderly, and the price is marked by type. The salesmen are polite and respectful, and the floor is as clean as new. All this seems impeccable, but it still lacks life. The life of pyrotechnics is supposed to be more colorful and more chaotic.

Now, in the face of the rise of the grocery brands, such as a sundry club, NOME and other lines, and the strong power of NetEase, such as Yan Xuan, the Muji has hurried to recover the lost land, and has opened stores in two or three cities, such as Handan, Inner Mongolia, Baotou, Jiangsu and Xuzhou in Hebei.

From the minority to the public, the process of expanding the consumer group is going up or down, and the Muji brand managers are really confused. From this point of view, the early stage of brand strategy is not clear enough. It can be attributed to the special misgiving information provided by the Chinese market, but in the later stage, it is still not clear enough.

   03, ebb tide

In the consumer society, Baudrillard mentioned that to a certain extent, material consumption will replace production behavior and become the dominant factor of social economy. In the consumer society, consumers are more interested in the symbolic and symbolic values of commodities.

Before and after 2015, the Chinese market ushered in the heyday of consumer culture. People's consumption has risen from the real commodity to the conceptual level, from the functional attributes to the symbol level.

On the one hand, the brand has been trying to give the product more spiritual connotation and cultural value for its own premium, neglecting the promotion of the functional value of the product, and on the other hand, consumers are grasping the symbolic meaning and symbol behind the merchandise and making conspicuous consumption and pursuit. This leads to a thorough balance between the cultural value and the value of goods.

This seems to be a microcosm of China's consumer society: the virtual meaning or concept of wealth, success, culture, and so on, has been astonishing to the acclimatization of consumers. Consumers acquire the symbolic meaning through conspicuous consumption and realize their social value.

Time will lay a foreshadowing here, and there will be devastation behind the blooming flowers.

When consumers are more rational, even do not care about other people's eyes, do not need others to define themselves, the role of symbols will disappear.

This digestion begins with the middle income class and the young people of literature and art. They do not want to visit the Muji, because everyone knows this brand overnight.

There are reasons behind this: plagiarism is common, and in large numbers of imitation designs, letters and canvas everywhere expose the public to the "marked" brand. Even LV and Gucci can't keep their old customers.

Although "obvious logo" plays an important role in brand image promotion, it will also make people feel "noisy". The craftsmen of Europe and America who inherit for centuries have their own insistence: luxury goods and high-end products are arrogant. This way of printing LOGO on the appearance of products is too simple and crude.

MUJI has no brand LOGO, but the recognition of wood color and white shell is too obvious.

Too many brand exposures have led to a rapid increase in the number of highly sought after audiences, and the high-end audience has lost interest in the brand. They prefer a "quiet brand" to enjoy the superiority of information asymmetry. "People don't know what brand I'm using, but they look great." Too conspicuous brand identity is the ugly appearance of the upstart.

In the early days of consumption, Muji middle and high end groups were gradually away from the process of becoming popular and forced to move towards the public. They no longer want this symbol to show their way of life and social class, or even rush to get rid of the label of Muji. But the real luxury consumer group can not recognize Muji, after all, the sophistication of design and material is far from the value of collection.

This ebb tide is a normal decline after the peak of consumer culture. It is an awakening of consumers' independent thinking and rational consumption consciousness.

Being pushed onto the altar is the consumer's choice, not the company's choice, which deviates from the original positioning of the brand. But the brand manager looks at the short-term interests and looks at the figures that the profit report has been loiter up.

In a cheering sound, Muji ignores the second important signals of the brand crisis.

In December 2015, Shanghai Huaihailu Road 755 ushered in MUJI flagship store. The restaurant introduces a restaurant model with an area of 3000 square meters and queues for more than 100 meters on the opening day.

This is the pinnacle of Muji, and since then, it has started a painful career.

  04, labor pains

This kind of pain is continuous and tragic.

First, the "poisonous biscuits" in Hongkong, and then the carcinogenic natural water, the frequent problems of food and clothing, so that consumers' "high price corresponding to high quality" psychological defense line will collapse. Without high quality, the price can not be supported, so we can only reduce the price.

Eleven consecutive price cuts did not allow consumers to change their minds. The biggest price cut of a single product even reached 40%, which severely weakened the symbol of Muji as a "fashionable" and "unique" way of life, and also lost the possibility of cutting the topic of social interaction in the same circle.

This is terrible for a social brand.

Product brand like beauty and GREE belongs to functional brand, and brand information is the main brand. Consumers usually talk about the cooling effect and energy consumption ratio of air-conditioners, but rarely judge their social class and aesthetic taste through the brand of air-conditioning used by individuals.

But Muji is different. Similar to Starbucks and hi tea, Muji is a social brand. The brand premium of these brands is supported by social behavior.

This support is reflected in the fact that on the one hand, the hobbyists with Muji will have similar consumption views and values. They will gather together, and collective thinking will enhance individual loyalty to the brand.

On the other hand, when a social brand is placed online, it is good at using the "third space" strategy to complete customer retention and transformation.

For example, Starbucks is a typical business type social space. The light inside the shop is generally soft and dark, and the seats are scattered and scattered to meet the privacy of business talks. At the same time equipped with charging interface, some stores also have paper and pen to provide business convenience.

The precise satisfaction of consumer demand extends the time of store stays. In business scenarios, consumers will buy desserts, juice and light food in addition to consuming coffee.

But Muji's demand for the third space is slow and misplaced.

First, there is no seat reading area in the bookstore space, which can not extend customer retention time to complete the purchase conversion. Secondly, the books provided in the bookstore are mostly Japanese original or Japanese translation books, which include housewares, broken homes, gardening and cooking techniques. Such books housewives are more vigorous, and Wen Qing is difficult for them to take shelter. Moreover, stores rarely rent or share space for other consumer brands or cultural and artistic organizations. Third, the function of space is hard to play.

Wen Qing is swimming naked here. He must go ashore. It's better to go to Chung bookstore and sincere bookstore, a more comprehensive bookstore, than to waste time in Muji.

  05, arrogant

The offline space is not as good as the genuine bookstore, but the online e-commerce provider is not strict with NetEase, but the sinking market is no longer a famous brand.

Wen Qing, who grew up in the consumer culture with Muji, is also old. Some of them go to middle age, turn to higher order consumption, and some struggle in life to turn to more rational choices.

Most importantly, Wen Qing are all grown up. Some of them like to listen to rock and roll, some people love to drink and rush, and there are few fans of drama. These individuals are moving towards a more mature and detailed path dividing, and they are well versed in their consumption demand in the field of subdivision.

But Muji still advocates the idea of "one-stop shopping", which is really too weak.

In fact, one-stop shopping is only suitable for e-commerce and large business super, not suitable for MUJI products, because MUJI products can provide very limited options.

Too many brands are competing at the same time, and there are too many consumers. After the brand has eaten the early dividend, it is very difficult to have that kind of powder again, and all the SKU in a brand will have a good impression.

The value of super users is to expand the category they buy and raise the unit price. Relying solely on this group of super users to maintain or increase sales is almost impossible.

Some extensions in the path of brand extension are very ingenious, maintaining the unity of the original brand tonality, such as Hermes from handbags to perfume, but the extension of some brands is puzzling, such as YAMAHA from piano to motorcycle.

MUJI products from home, daily to food, such snacks, low unit price, high rate of re purchase, profit margins are also high. At the same time, the introduction of restaurants and hotels still adhere to the pace of high-end positioning. The price of MUJI accommodation in Shenzhen is about 950 yuan a night, much higher than that of similar hotels. This is more like a self rescue of turnover than a reflection on the Chinese market.

On the whole, Muji's attitude towards the Chinese market is still somewhat arrogant. They drove the early bus to the land, cleaned up the first pot of gold and became rich, but they did not want to make intensive efforts in this land.

Many of the products they sell in Chinese stores are Chinese designers who sit at home and imagine the needs of Chinese people in Tokyo. Size and applicability do not match the needs of Chinese consumers.

A bed size suitable for Chinese beds took 14 years to adjust. Large and small storage shelves are full of shelves, but they do not know the culture of China, and they are not as great as Japan. It was not until last September that Muji set up a development office in China to study the popular culture and lifestyle in China.

So many brands enter China, they all know the importance of localization.

Behind the neglect, there is still no understanding.

As a matter of fact, the designers, who represented by the original research group, have been emphasizing the "empty" and "white" of Muji. This simplicity comes naturally from the Zen thought of Japan to a large extent. For example, the cover of a notebook should be made of wood color to reflect the paper's "material from wood", and the texture of the inner page should make the consumers feel the fiber of the tree, and the flavor of the paper should remind people of the forest and the earth.

The emptiness in Japanese Buddhism is relatively repressive and miniature, which is closely related to the long-time low desire of Japanese society and the prudence in the national character. But this idea does not have such a strong foundation in Chinese society.

The Zen thought of China is more open and broad, and it is the tranquility of "Mingyue song and Zhao Qing Shi". It is the beginning of "walking to the water poor place and sitting in the clouds." This is much more subjective than the Japanese concept of object association. Not only to see objects, to associate with scenery, but also to temper their mentality and persist in life.

This explains why, from the emotional level of design, Muji's popularity is only temporary, and it is difficult to last long.

Design should be Chinese design. It sounds boring but useful. If the cultural proximity and closeness are lost, it is hard for the brand to reach a permanent and stable emotional resonance with consumers.

Recently, Shimizu Chi, the new managing director of MUJI, said that by the end of 2023, the company would increase the proportion of China's market localization products to 50% of the gross domestic product, so as to cope with the slowdown in the growth of the mainland market.

This may be a compromise in Japanese culture, but it is also a change that must be made. China's market environment and consumers are maturing too fast. Muji is going to be faster this time.

Source: WeChat public number Wu Duidui Author: Li Xiaowai

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