Chapter 17 Part III Modern Honor Economy and Enterprise Management (Excerpt)

Classification of the honor industry (omitted, this content has been described in the second chapter of the second chapter of this book) The prosperity of the honor economy is rooted in the huge demand for honor consumption in the market. Enterprises want to make profits from it, so they have to deeply understand the behavior of honor consumption. Honor consumption is not exactly the same as "conspicuous consumption". The latter refers to the economic behavior of consumers purely squandering their wealth and revealing their wealth to achieve the purpose of being envied by others. Its essence is to gain honor through showing off money itself.

The connotation of honor consumption is broader. It includes all consumption behaviors for the purpose of satisfying the demand for honor. In addition to conspicuous consumption, honor consumption also includes a variety of ways, such as the beauty consumption mentioned above. People do not buy cosmetics for the purpose of cosmetics. The price is to show off, but to win the praise of others with the considerable beauty effect brought by cosmetics. Generally speaking, conspicuous consumption is the main body of honor consumption, and it is also the most regular behavior among all human honor economic activities. Conspicuous consumption is the fundamental honor consumption mode that enterprises can grasp and benefit their own operations.Therefore, here we focus on the analysis of this consumption behavior.

Conspicuous consumption is developing rapidly in China with huge potential.The continuous prosperity of China's economy has created a large number of rich people and an expanding middle class. Most of these new rich people are intoxicated in conspicuous consumption. There are about 50,000 billionaires in the new rich class. Spend a lot of money on a trip abroad. The more middle-class people are often frequent visitors to auto shows and housing shows, and they are fans of international famous brand stores. They are usually young but not particularly rich, and often buy some small accessories of top brands, such as ties and purses, when famous brands are discounted. , They have a strong desire to live the life of a billionaire.

A trend of modern conspicuous consumption is “taste-oriented”—since direct luxury showing off will inevitably be despised by society, in order to eliminate this negative effect, rich people began to look for “fig leaf”: art, taste, practicality, etc. In Western society, the "BOBOS" (BOBOS), a new generation of social elites who do not gain social status due to birth, property, or political contributions, are the mainstay leading this consumption trend. The behavior of the "Bubo people" is primarily reflected in their consumption methods. They advocate high-grade luxury consumption and condemn low-style consumption methods.Their spending behavior often seems "ridiculous": they can spend five million dollars a year and at the same time show how little they care about material things.

A general manager named Roll Burnett in California, USA, said about the stove he bought, "I may use it seven times a year, but I still bought a $7,000 stove. You can think of it as a A painting to make the kitchen look nicer." They think it's perfectly fine to spend $25,000 on a bathroom or kitchen, while spending $15,000 on a big-screen TV is contemptible; The living utensils also have high "taste": coarse fiber carpets, solid pottery cups and saucers, rough country furniture, wooden beams with chisel marks and irregular solid wood floors. beauty”, but all of these commodities have one thing in common: they are expensive.In essence, the consumption purpose of the "Bubo people" is the same as the traditional way in history, the difference is the form - they use taste to cover up the fact of squandering, and use the combination of "artistic taste" and expensive goods to obtain extreme Not only did they take the satisfaction of being superior, they also distinguished the intellectual elite by disdaining traditional profligacy.

Human nature is common. On the one hand, China’s rapid economic development will inevitably produce a brand-new “Bubo tribe”, and tasteful honor consumption will also become a trend. Chinese companies should follow this trend, that is, satisfy the greatest possible their needs and profit from them.On the other hand, China's special national conditions lie in the fact that a large part of the new rich come from the bottom of society, which may lead to the conspicuous consumption of the rich in China will remain at primitive and direct profligacy for a period of time in the future In terms of waste, enterprises should have a clear understanding of this, and try their best to meet the immediate consumer demand while grasping new trends.

It is foreseeable that with the improvement of the cultural level of the next generation of wealthy people and the frequent "international exchanges", they will gradually turn to quality consumption. How big is the honor economy as a percentage of the overall economy? This is a difficult question to measure precisely.On the one hand, it is impossible to list the output value of the honor industry in the official national economic data, and it is difficult for us to calculate its proportion; on the other hand, due to the characteristics of the honor economy, it is impossible to accurately define a person's consumption in actual operation The proportion of the honor motive in the behavior, for example, when a person buys a piece of clothing worth 1,000 yuan, we cannot determine how much of the 1,000 yuan is used to buy the clothes itself, and how much is used to satisfy the need to show off .

However, these factors do not prevent us from drawing some conclusions that are close to objective facts. First of all, some important industries in the honor economy have definite data that can be investigated. The development speed of the luxury industry, which accounts for a large proportion of the honor economy, can be a sign of the development of the entire honor economy.China has now become the fastest growing luxury consumer market in the world. According to estimates by the China Brand Strategy Association, luxury consumers in mainland China account for 13% of the total population, about 160 million people, mainly young people under the age of 40. among people.Among them, 10 million to 13 million people are active buyers of luxury goods, and the products they buy mainly include personal accessories such as watches, leather bags, cosmetics, fashion and jewelry.Among these people, 300,000 are wealthy individuals with private assets exceeding 10 million yuan.

Second, relevant conclusions can be drawn through logical reasoning.Honor need is a high-level spiritual need. According to Maslow's hierarchy of needs theory, people will strive to satisfy high-level needs on the premise of satisfying low-level needs (such as the need for food and drink).This is reflected in the economic reality, that is, with the improvement of people's income level, people will continue to increase the proportion of honor consumption, and the growth rate of honor consumption will be much higher than the growth rate of income. The policy research conducted by the China Brand Strategy Association also proves this fact. Yang Qingshan, secretary-general of the association, pointed out that "the growth of consumption of luxury goods in a country should be about twice the growth of its GDP. When Asians face their sudden increase in wealth At the same time, they do not hesitate to choose luxury goods to show their new economic and social status, which is a very natural psychological need.”

China's average annual growth rate in the past 30 years of reform and opening up has been more than 8%. From this, it can be inferred that the growth rate of China's luxury consumption should be more than 16% per year. With such a growth rate of more than 20 years, today's honor economy is in the It is conceivable how much it accounts for in the national economy-the luxury economy is only a part of the honor economy. Through the above analysis, we can think that the modern economy is already a kind of honorary economy to a large extent, and we are in an era of prosperity of the honorary economy, in which people's consumption demand for honor is at an all-time high .Compared with the pre-industrial era, the main body of human economic activities is to meet the needs of survival. The fruits of labor in most people's lives are only enough to maintain the survival of themselves and their families. When buying food, it is almost all of their consumption.

The development of modern science and technology and production technology has solved the problem of food and clothing on a large scale for human beings. In addition to meeting the needs of survival, people generally have a lot of idle wealth to meet spiritual needs. This is what distinguishes our era from any previous historical era. fundamental features.This basic feature should become the fundamental foothold of modern enterprise production and management. To operate the honor industry, the first problem that enterprises face is how to produce honor goods, and the production of honor is essentially different from the production of material products. Let's first analyze how to produce honor with an example: the business of the Baijia Mansion Gate Restaurant in Beijing Lejia Garden is very prosperous. On the passage from the gate to the main hall, there are two rows of red gauze lanterns. They are dressed in servant-style gowns and Qing-style red The waiters with tasseled hats came forward to pay their respects, and the customers felt the grace of the old palace.These dozens of well-trained "servants" are actually producing an abstract intangible commodity - honor. The above cases reflect honor production in the service industry. In fact, honor production pervades various industries in the modern economy. Honor production can be defined in this way: it refers to the behavior of investing money to make products have the effect of honor in various ways. The result of honor production is that the product has the function of satisfying the needs of human honor (or vanity). Refers to the manufacture of honor utility. Honorary production can be divided into two categories: tangible honorary production in the field of products and intangible honorary production, the former runs through many industries, and the latter is mainly in the service industry. In reality, there are various ways of honor production, and some typical honor ways are introduced below. In the field of material products, the honor utility of honor-produced goods is mainly determined by the following factors: product quality, rarity, noble lineage, popularity, and appearance packaging. In reality, there are various ways to produce honor. Corporate behavior that comes to a positive effect can produce honor. In the early days of industrialization, product quality once made a great contribution to the utility of honor. Many world-class luxury goods relied on extraordinary high quality to gain market and fame, such as Rolex watches. However, with the development of industrialization and market economy today, the contribution of commodity material entities to honor has been extremely weakened. In most honor industries, commodity quality is only a foundation, and honor is mainly "produced" outside the factory workshop. Branding is a necessary process and an important way to produce honor.Brand is closely related to factors such as scarcity and popularity, and brand itself means scarcity: There are countless kinds of cigarettes in China, but only one kind of Chinese cigarette can bring dignity to people. A brand is a magic weapon to make a product stand out from the crowd.Brand also means popularity, without high popularity, it cannot be a brand.These two factors are enough to bring high honor utility to the product. Advertising is the main means of brand building, and in the honor industry, advertising is a way of producing honor. For example, in the clothing industry, clothing brands are established through the endorsement of film and television stars. When people use this type of clothing, they can proudly declare: I am the clothing endorsed by a certain star.The owner of the costume can be honored universally and enduringly. High-end honor products need more advanced honor production methods on the basis of brands. World-class luxury goods generally have "royal blood". The royal family is the limit of nobility in the world. Once a product is associated with the royal family, it Immediately a huge honor utility is available. In 1998, Rolls-Royce and Bentley, two cars of Rolls-Royce, were acquired by BMW and Volkswagen respectively. Comparable, but after all, the brand is not strong, and the market value is not too high. People in the industry believe that Volkswagen has suffered a big loss (Volkswagen spent ten times the price of BMW, and finally only got the dilapidated factory building of Rolls-Royce and Bentley, which is relatively cheap. Poor brand), however, Volkswagen Group’s ingenious management in the next few years made Bentley completely overshadow Rolls-Royce. One of the most important measures was that through many efforts, Volkswagen finally persuaded the British royal family to abandon Rolls-Royce in 2002 Since then, Bentley has won the highest legal honor. That is, from this year, Bentley began its glorious course. The manufacturer persuaded the royal family to use its own car, and the public relations link was indispensable. These public relations activities that cost money were undoubtedly aimed at achieving the high-quality honor of the product, and these activities belonged to the activities of producing honor. Now there are many domestic products marked with signs such as "The Great Hall of the People and State Banquet", "Special for State Banquet", etc. The honor contained in it is self-evident, and it will take a lot of trouble for the manufacturer to obtain such a name ( It may mean huge public relations costs), these hard work is also an act of honor production, and the contribution of this production behavior to the market value of the product is no less than that of the physical form of the product. One of the methods generally adopted by luxury groups in the world is to sell them in limited quantities, which effectively prevents the expansion of the density of luxury goods in the world and ensures a high degree of honor.Limited release requires opportunity cost. For example, 100 Rolls-Royce cars could have been sold, but only 80 were sold. The cost of this behavior is the profit of 20 cars.This strategy of limited release can also be seen as an act of producing honor: the opportunity cost of 20 cars guarantees the brand's honor. Another relatively common way for modern enterprises to produce honor is to "stick gold" to the product itself, such as actively participating in various brand and quality award activities, especially participating in such activities abroad, and winning awards can quickly make the product entangled The halo and glory are incomparable, and all kinds of expenses and expenses spent in participating in the awards are the production costs of honor. Shandong Kongfujia Group Co., Ltd., established in 1998, has always adopted a very correct way of operation. On the one hand, it pays attention to the quality of the product itself, and on the other hand, it also actively expands the honor attribute of the product. In the past ten years, Kongfujia Wine has not only won the Many domestic medals, and also won several foreign quality gold and silver medals (one gold medal in Panama, one gold medal and three silver medals in Brussels). Compared with the honor production in the product industry, the honor production in the service industry is relatively simple and direct. This kind of production is mainly in the service industry, such as catering industry, hotel industry, KTV, and so on.The luxury and prestige of consumption places is the material basis of honor production in the service industry. For example, in the hotel industry, the star rating is mainly based on the hardware facilities of the hotel. Different star ratings have different honors, and the customer groups also have different High and low.People who stay in star-rated hotels (especially high-star hotels) are mainly looking for an honorable place that "matches" their own status.On the basis of luxurious hardware facilities, honorary products in the service industry are mainly produced by servant services. The higher the "star rating" of a hotel, the more "servant-like" its waiters (waiters) are. These well-trained waiters use their words and deeds to make customers honorable, such as directly praising customers at a "high level" and welcoming them along the way. , Nodding and bowing, and "slaves" do all kinds of "manual work" (opening, closing, etc.) for customers, so that customers can fully enjoy the dignity of the leisure class. In order to achieve these effects, hotel owners must spend huge sums of money to hire and train a large number of waiters, which are unnecessary in the pure board and lodging service industry. These additional costs are the investment in producing honor.Just like the waiters who welcome customers in the restaurant of the Bai Family Mansion Gate mentioned above, they are not a kind of dispensable decoration, but a necessary production position, and they are producing honorary products without exception. — This intangible commodity is not sold directly, but is attached to the material products of the restaurant and sold together with the food and drink. (It does not rule out the possibility of direct sales of service honors in some cases. For example, hotel waiters often get tips, and the tips come from consumers’ repayment of service by waiters and servants.) Based on the reality, no matter whether they are engaged in the production of material products or in the service industry, they should clearly recognize the characteristics and trends of the modern economy, actively promote honor management, actively produce honor, and innovate the way of producing honor, so as to stand in the modern market competition. invincible position.