Chapter 382: Entering the Market
Jiahe’s wine and beverage segment has always been incubated by Hexi Dairy.

But now Ji Xiaobai has become independent.

In addition, in the field of beverage research and development, several companies including Hexi Dairy, Quanwang Bio, and the Nutrition and Health Research Institute have all made contributions.

Ji Xiaobai can be said to be the result of joint research and development and is given high hopes.

In his spare time, Guo Yang also paid attention to Ji Xiaobai's development.

The Happy Farm game activity is already warming up: the Thorny White Planting Competition.

Many people have paid attention to this activity, but they are not sure what Ji Xiaobai is.

But free things are always attractive, especially the ability to obtain natural energy faster, which is very attractive to some netizens.

Guo Yang also played the trial version for a while.

At the same time, Ji Xiaobai was also preparing for offline distribution and a press conference.

In the domestic juice market, competition among well-known brands such as Huiyuan, Bright, Uni-President, Master Kong, and Wahaha has become increasingly fierce.

In particular, at the beginning of this year, Coca-Cola's acquisition of Huiyuan Juice was rejected by the Ministry of Commerce.

Since the acquisition failed, Coca-Cola decided to start making fruit juice itself.

Minute Maid is its representative brand, with as many as five or six flavors.

In addition to Coca-Cola, another giant, China National Grain and Oils Corporation, has also extended its tentacles into the juice industry, which it has never been involved in before.

In the office, Qi Ziwen introduced the domestic fruit juice beverage market structure to Guo Yang.

Huiyuan has an advantageous position in the market for medium- and high-concentration juices, but Coca-Cola has a firm control over the market for low-concentration juices.

"Qiu Ming from Happy Farm has reported that Guoliang's 'Yuehuo' juice has also been eyeing Happy Farm's traffic and wants to use it for marketing.

Guoliang has been preparing for the Yuehuo Juice project for two years. In October last year, Guoliang began trial sales within a small internal range.

In January this year, a large-scale trial marketing was carried out in almost all supermarket systems in the Beijing market.

After six or seven months of trial sales, Guoliang must be quite satisfied with the results, so it decided to distribute the product nationwide as soon as possible. "

After listening, Guo Yang asked: "The juice brand launched by Guoliang is called Yuehuo?"

"Yes."

Qi Ziwen said a little worriedly: "From the current perspective, the time when Yuehuo and Ji Xiaobai were launched is not far apart, and their product positioning also conflicts, as they are both urban white-collar workers.

Guoliang also attaches great importance to Yuehuo.

After determining the strategy for developing the entire industry chain, Guoliang has been looking for opportunities to expand exports to the terminal market. Yuehuo juice drink is Guoliang’s first terminal brand.

We have invested heavily in the entire industry chain.

Currently, Yuehuo has 6 product series including tomato, fresh orange, black currant grape mixed juice, red vegetable and fruit mixed juice, etc., and Guoliang attaches great importance to it.

And the white thorns are mainly based on sea buckthorn..."

Guo Yang understood what Qi Ziwen meant.

"Does the company have no confidence in the Ji Xiaobai project now?"

"Yes." Qi Ziwen said, "Many people want to delay the launch of Ji Xiaobai."

"You have so little confidence!"

"There's no need to deliberately avoid Guoliang's Yuehuo, just go on the market as planned." Guo Yang thought for a moment and said, "I have confidence in Ji Xiaobai."

The fruit juice beverage department was frightened by the national grain, but Guo Yang was not.

In his memory, the brand of Yuehuo is not well-known, and the only thing he remembers is Yuehuo Emeishan mineral water.

Now, the Guoliang Yuehuo brand has various products including juice, honey, cheese, cereals, etc.

What does this mean?
This means that other products were either unsuccessful or never gained traction and were abandoned by the state grain industry long ago.

Others obviously don't know this.

In early June, the 'Ji Xiaobai' planting competition was officially launched on Happy Farm.

Once launched, it was immediately sought after by a large number of fans. On the first day of its launch, the event attracted more than 30 visitors.

As players become more familiar with it, the amount of 'Ji Xiaobai' fruit consumed and the amount of juice extracted are increasing rapidly, and the popularity of Ji Xiaobai is expanding rapidly.

Offline, Ji Xiaobai was also launched at Jiahe Supermarket, as well as supermarkets in major cities such as Beijing, Shanghai, Guangzhou and Shenzhen.

Natural whitening, simple and plain advertisements quickly attracted the first batch of customers.

Some netizens even cried with joy.

"Wow, it's been so long, and the sand industry finally has a new product. Buy it, buy it!"

"While you were still shouting slogans, I had already tasted it. Seabuckthorn puree is a bit sour, but seabuckthorn juice tastes much better."

“I highly recommend the thorny white juice drink, it tastes great.”

Beijing, Xuanwu District, Walmart supermarket.

A 280ml bottle of sea buckthorn juice is priced at 6 yuan, which is comparable to the price of pure fruit juice from foreign brands such as Dole and Wei Chuan Daily C.

A 1.25-liter box of Huiyuan orange juice costs 13.5 yuan.

"Ji Xiaobai's price is really not cheap."

Xu Xiaoxue, a reporter from Seed Industry Weekly, complained while picking up a few bottles of Radix Psoraleae from the shelf.

This made Xu's mother, who was shopping in the supermarket with them, roll her eyes.

"If I buy so much and it doesn't taste good, it will all be wasted."

"No." Xu Xiaoxue said: "Some netizens said that the taste of sea buckthorn juice is still good, and it is advertised to have a good whitening effect!"

"You already know it's propaganda." Xu's mother said, "Propaganda materials are somewhat credible, just like the agricultural news you write, which often needs artistic processing."

"Jiahe is different."

After interviewing so many seed companies, only Tianhe left a deep impression on Xu Xiaoxue.

Other seed companies exaggerate their claims, claiming extremely high yields and qualities, but often the products do not match the claims.

Tianhe’s publicity data is also exaggerated, the only difference is that it can achieve the publicity effect every time.

Although 'Ji Xiaobai' is a small brand, Jiahe is not small.

Therefore, there are many Happy Farm users like Xu Xiaoxue who bought Ji Xiaobai.

The price is indeed high, but you can afford it if you grit your teeth.

First, there was fierce competition among brands such as Huiyuan, Bright, Uni-President, Master Kong, and Coca-Cola, then Guoliang joined the battle, and now Golden Harvest has also joined in.

This prompted China Economic Weekly to directly publish a report on "Juice Wars".

Foreign brands, old powerhouses, new juice players...the three forces have come under the spotlight one after another.

Relevant analytical reports are emerging in an endless stream.

Compared with other brands, the sea buckthorn juice market that Ji Xiaobai is targeting has the smallest size.

According to media surveys, more than 95% of people in the south have never come into contact with sea buckthorn puree and juice.

In the north where sea buckthorn is widely distributed, the data is not optimistic either.

Because the taste and flavor of sea buckthorn juice are not acceptable to people.

This also leads to the fact that Ji Xiaobai is generally not favored by the media.

“Happy Farm’s product placement is another groundbreaking innovation in the advertising industry.

Ji Xiaobai is positioned for urban white-collar workers who seldom watch TV and the media they spend the most time on is the Internet.

Some analysts believe that 40.31% of Happy Farm users will notice the embedded ads on the website and appreciate the creative ideas of the ads.

It is so popular precisely because it does not have a strong commercial flavor.

But Jixiaobai also has its shortcomings. It has too few varieties, with only sea buckthorn as the juice raw material, and the product line is not rich enough. The key is that it is too expensive.

The high price of Ji Xiaobai will discourage most of the tens of millions of Happy Farm users.

Even after trying it for the first time, the taste of seabuckthorn will make consumers feel that seabuckthorn is not that good, and they will quickly reduce their consumption.”

Ji Xiaobai not only made the media pessimistic, but also made competitors feel relieved.

Happy Farm’s product placement marketing really gave juice companies a cold sweat.

Its brand awareness exploded in a short period of time.

However, in terms of price, the pricing of Ji Xiaobai is too outrageous.

For the same volume, the price of traditional sea buckthorn puree and beverages is mostly between 1 and 3 yuan.

And Ji Xiaobai directly doubled his bet.

This is clearly a positioning failure.

In comparison, Guoliang Yuehuo, which is also positioned for urban white-collar workers, is more expensive than Ji Xiaobai.

However, its products are fruit and vegetable juice products that are more acceptable to the public.

The outlook seems brighter.

But some people are not optimistic about either.

Ding Li, an analyst at iResearch Consulting, said: "Compared with Jiahe, brand building has always been a difficult hurdle that Guoliang must overcome.
It hopes to steadily build a high-end food brand, that is, "Yuehuo".

Therefore, Guoliang has identified the field of pure fruit juice and fruit and vegetable juice as a breakthrough point.

Compared with the strong competitors in the low and medium concentration juice market, such as Coca-Cola's Minute Maid, PepsiCo's Fruity, and Yangshengtang's Nongfu Orchard,

The competition in the pure fruit and vegetable juice sector is much less intense, but there is no shortage of competitors. Huiyuan, Dole, Qianshou, Kagome, Dahu, Rumeng, Hubin, and Becky have been working on the market for a long time.

Jiahe and Guoliang have chosen the same positioning strategy, but they don’t seem to have figured out how to capture the consumers who dig these brands.”

The essence of positioning is "conquering the heart first", and the consumer's heart is the ultimate battlefield of marketing.

Consumers like simplicity and directness and hate complexity.

"Bawang" - "Chinese medicine to prevent hair loss"!
"Wang Laoji" - "Prevent getting angry"!
"Nongfu Spring"——"Natural Water"!
So what is Joyful Living?
Consumers can't answer this question.

What is Acanthopanax? Natural whitening? You are selling a beverage, not a cosmetic.

The situation in the fruit juice beverage field has attracted more and more attention.

In particular, some media reported that after Huiyuan Juice failed to sell itself to Coca-Cola, its chairman Zhu Xinli approached Guoliang, hoping that Guoliang could take over.

The news was very detailed.

Although it was ultimately vetoed by Chairman Ning, it brought the juice industry to a new level of attention.

"National Grain's recent publicity is very strong!"

"News media, TV reports, planting bases, product research and development, none of them were left out."

"The source of nature, reshaping you and me, the positioning connotation of this product is not as bad as iResearch said!"

"Well, Guoliang certainly didn't pay iResearch."

"How is Ji Xiaobai? The boss is asking about the situation again."

"It's still the same."

Speaking of Ji Xiaobai, everyone sighed, saying that the timing of the listing was not well chosen.

Guoliang’s publicity resources are no worse than Jiahe’s, and because it is in urgent need of a prominent terminal brand, Yuehuo Juice has invested huge amounts of capital in order to expand the market.

Chairman Guo Liangning has also elaborated on the connotation of happy living many times.

“Use the power of nature to reshape a company, a person, or even a society.”

"Joyful living means healthy and sustainable living, which is called "Lohas" in China."

In addition, national grain also has various official media bonuses.

Although Ji Xiaobai has also received the attention of the boss, compared with Guoliang, Jiahe has no shortage of high-end brands.

Faced with media questions about the "natural whitening" of Ji Xiaobai, the boss showed no intention of coming out to explain.

As the days go by, Yuehuo and Ji Xiaobai are habitually compared by the media.

Yuehuo relied on its thorough trial preparation and powerful publicity, while Ji Xiaobai relied on the number of users of Happy Farm.

When the two new juice companies first entered the market, they gave the established powerhouses a warning.

In less than half a month, the amount of fruit and juice produced by Ji Xiaobai in Happy Farm exceeded 500 million.

And the national grain industry has also produced a good report card.

He Bingqing, director of the Guoliang Yuehuo business unit, even said in front of the media:
"Yuehuo is a very important step for Guoliang to become a full-industry chain company. Yuehuo's goal in five years is to achieve sales of 5 billion yuan for pure fruit and vegetable juices!"

This demonstrates the confidence of the national grain.

But as the popularity gradually faded, both Yuehuo and Ji Xiaobai began to go downhill.

Sales volume is visibly declining.

Just as the media had predicted.

"Consumers are deterred by the high prices."

"The more natural the drink, the more natural it is. If I don't drink it, does that mean my life is not natural enough? That's really terrible."

“For Guoliang and Jiahe, which have advantages in food channels, it is not difficult to find high-quality raw materials.

But the juice market is not something that can be achieved overnight. Whether Yuehuo and Jixiaobai can continue to thrive remains to be verified by the market.”

...

"Editor Zhou, I'm almost done with the manuscript and will be able to send it to you this afternoon."

"Okay, thank you for your hard work, Mr. Guo." Zhou Xiaomin, the editor-in-chief of Agricultural Economics, was very polite. "I also have an interview with an agricultural company, so I'll have to trouble Mr. Guo to come to Beijing."

Guo Yang agreed immediately.

"That's no problem, but you have to let Director Liu and Director Ning take care of the younger generation."

"Mr. Guo, you're joking." Zhou Xiaomin said, "I asked several CEOs about this, and they're actually most interested in you. They all want to talk to you."

"my pleasure."

Guo Yang had not expected that Agricultural Economics would be so ambitious that it could bring together the leaders of Sinochem, Guoliang, Wuliangye, and Agricultural Development Bank of China.

This is a gathering of the top people in the domestic agricultural circle.

He couldn't think of a reason to refuse.

Zhou Xiaomin asked again: "Mr. Guo, let me ask you another question, can the whitening effect of the thorny white bean ...

Guo Yang smiled and said, "Editor-in-Chief Zhou should have drunk Ji Xiaobai!"

"Yeah." Zhou Xiaomin said truthfully: "The original juice is a bit sour, but I prefer sour, so I think it's okay."

"I'm sure Editor-in-Chief Zhou has his own opinion on how good it is for the skin, so I don't need to brag about it any more."

"Haha, that's not bragging at all."

Zhou Xiaomin has not yet experienced other health benefits, but after drinking the puree of Spinach Root in the past few days, the yellowness and oiliness of her skin have indeed improved significantly.

She once thought it was an illusion that her skin was whitening and removing yellow skin.

But Guo Yang's attitude made her realize: Aconitum carmichaelii - natural whitening.

This is not an empty slogan, but a real function.

(End of this chapter)