Chapter 28 3. "Planned economy" clenched into fists

In Wahaha's investment expansion strategy, an interesting phenomenon has attracted our special attention: the branches of production bases in various places are not independent marketing entities, but form a highly unified " planned economy as a whole. The general outline of its specific operation is as follows: The sales head office, corporate management office and supply department of the parent company in Hangzhou are the three operation centers linked with each other.According to the market trend and the regional market trends fed back by the sales branches in various provinces and cities, the sales head office makes monthly forecast plans and finalizes the formal plans every ten days.The Enterprise Management Office is responsible for breaking down the plan provided by the sales head office to all production branches in a timely manner, and submitting the purchase list of various raw and auxiliary materials to the supply department according to production needs.

At the same time, each production branch quickly delivered each batch of products to the designated place in accordance with the clear instructions of the sales head office. From the whole process of procurement, production to sales, each node of Wahaha Company together forms two huge fans: the tail end is the market-oriented screening and procurement for countless raw and auxiliary material suppliers outside the company and cooperative supporting production enterprises; the front end is for the There are also a larger number of market-oriented wholesale and retail links and consumers outside the company.

The production of products at the junction of two market-oriented sectors is precisely a highly unified planned economy.The three major operation centers belong to the company's internal settlement-style buying and selling relationship, and the production and flow of products are typical planned allocations. In such an operation mode, each production base branch company actually plays a role of "like workshop". Obviously, Wahaha's production and sales layout and operation mode are inseparable from Zong Qinghou's "unified" marketing concept.In contrast to this, through the operation mode of Coca-Cola's Chinese market, we see a different scene.

Li Peng inspected Wahaha Company As the world's largest soft drink giant, the Coca-Cola Company established a bottling plant in Shanghai as early as 1927. By 1948, the plant even became the first Coca-Cola company outside the United States with an annual output of more than 1 million cases. In 1978, Coca-Cola was the first to be transported to the Chinese market via Hong Kong by train, becoming the first foreign product to land after the reform and opening up. In 1981, the Coca-Cola Company established the first bottling plant after the founding of the People's Republic of China in Beijing.Up to now, Coca-Cola’s total investment in China has exceeded 1 billion US dollars. It has jointly established a joint venture with China Light Industry Federation, China National Cereals, Oils and Foodstuffs Import and Export Corporation, China International Trust and Investment Corporation, and two overseas companies Kerry Group and Swire Group. There are 28 assembly factories.These bottling companies have also formed certain linkages, such as unified branding and collaboration in certain marketing actions.In addition, the most important beverage elements such as concentrated liquid are concentrated in one or a few factories with better quality control for production, and other filling factories are authorized to add water, gas and sugar.However, due to the different joint venture partners and the increasingly strong localization of Coca-Cola, each bottling plant (or branch company) is not only an independent production unit, but also an independent marketing entity. strategy, each other is actually a loose strategic alliance.

To use a figurative metaphor, Coca-Cola's model is to "manage the three-point land in front of the door well, and cultivate its own responsibility field". The Wahaha model is "highly centralized and unified, effective scale operation".In today's Chinese business world, the Coca-Cola model of divide and conquer is used more. Strong flexibility and mobilizing the subjective enthusiasm of each company are the biggest strengths of the Coca-Cola model.However, the problems that are prone to occur are wrangling, constant internal friction, difficulty in coordination, and failure to achieve due economies of scale.Coca-Cola and Pepsi currently have dozens of bottling plants in China, which are controlled by different joint ventures, and the balance of their interests has become the most critical and sensitive proposition.

In order to coordinate the regional markets, around 1995, "Two Les" successively established their own "China Bottlers Association" and set up a special "incentive fund".Its specific operation method is as follows: "Two Le" extracts 100 yuan per unit from the income of selling concentrated liquid every year as a market adjustment incentive fund. This part of the fund is managed by the "Bottlers Association". If the market order is maintained, this part of the additional "incentive fund" can be obtained. If there are violations such as counterfeiting, the corresponding incentive money will be deducted from the amount of cross-regional sales, and all of them will be transferred to the offended manufacturers.

Every year, the association holds a general meeting of members, and which bottling factories will be publicly listed on the blackboard one by one, and then, according to the amount of their cross-regional sales, the fines will be calculated, publicly announced and implemented. Such an almost helpless institutional arrangement and the "public display" punishment method undoubtedly have strong Chinese characteristics.It is reported that in the first one or two years, the reward and punishment effect was very obvious, but gradually lost its binding force over time. In July 2002, PepsiCo's "China Bottlers Association" was suddenly declared "not a social organization" by the civil affairs department and ordered to stop its activities.What's the inside story?According to the follow-up report of "China Business Daily", "the person in charge of a bottling plant that has deducted the most 'incentive funds' due to cross-regional sales threatened at last year's meeting that the Pepsi Bottlers Association The Ministry of Civil Affairs will report."

Compared with the helplessness of "Two Joys", the Wahaha model of gathering five fingers, clenching into a fist, and forming a joint force has obvious advantages in some aspects: ——National marketing is a game of chess.Although the coordinated and orderly "planned economy" within the enterprise cannot completely eliminate the problem of "contrary goods" among regions, "contrast goods" may still occur in the dealer link, but the hidden dangers have been greatly reduced, and the product sales price system is controllable also significantly enhanced. ——Purchasing costs are significantly reduced.This is an inevitable result brought about by the large-scale procurement of raw and auxiliary materials upstream of the enterprise.

—The dialectics of big and small.In terms of overall strength, Coca-Cola, also a beverage company, is stronger than Wahaha. However, Wahaha's highly "planned economy" has formed a strong agglomeration effect for itself. Compared with the single branch of Coca-Cola, which is divided into operations, Wahaha has formed a trend of overwhelming forces. Since Wahaha opened the Fuling branch of the first non-local production base enterprise in 1994, Zong Qinghou determined the idea of ​​centralized management and unified marketing, and has been unswerving and gradually mature in the operation of all branches since then.This mode of operation undoubtedly places extremely high demands on the high-end decision-making center of the company. The key prerequisites are firstly the decision-maker's ability to control the overall situation, and secondly, the decision-maker's sensitivity to market information feedback and accurate research and judgment.

A reporter from the Hangzhou "Qianjiang Evening News" once carefully calculated Zong Qinghou's time allocation for a year: Go abroad for inspection and negotiation for about 3 months every year; Do market research around the country for about 5 months every year; Take more than 80 flights per year, equivalent to more than 240 hours of flight time; If you do not accompany the customer, the cumulative time for breakfast, lunch and dinner should not exceed 1 hour. From this, he concluded that what Zong Qinghou was most "stingy" with was time, but in terms of market research, Zong Qinghou was the least "stingy" at time.

Many media are full of admiration and admiration for Zong Qinghou's accurate sense of the market. This is not only due to Zong Qinghou's natural agility, but also due to Zong Qinghou's willingness to spend a lot of time "measuring" the market step by step. This is not enough.The market research and judgment of decision makers is inseparable from a scientific and complete information system.As early as a few years ago, Wahaha's production branches and sales branches in various provinces and cities have established a smooth computer network with the Hangzhou head office. In 2002, it began to build an instant information computer network with all first-level wholesalers. In 2003, it will gradually penetrate to second-level wholesalers, thereby enabling Wahaha Legion to achieve a high degree of unification from logistics, capital flow to information flow. Wal-Mart, the world's largest retail group, was founded in July 1951 in Bentonville, USA by American World War II veteran Sam Wal-Mart. In 2002, Wal-mart's turnover reached 219.8 billion U.S. dollars, and it was listed as the first among the world's top 500 enterprises by the "Fortune" magazine.Wal-Mart's operating formats include discount stores, large supermarkets, Sam's Club stores and home stores, with a total of 4,150 stores all over the world, all of which are controlled by the company. Dr. Milton Kotler believes in the article "Wal-Mart's Business Marketing Laws" that Wal-Mart's continued growth in profitability first depends on "using leading information technology and logistics systems to continuously reduce its operating costs substantially. A highly unified distribution center It is very important to control costs, and it is even more decisive for the success of chain retail enterprises." We can understand that Wal-Mart, as far as its internal system is concerned, is a strict "planned economy" based on a large scale. It is this that brings Wal-Mart's charming market competitiveness. In the same way, Wahaha's investment system and sales system rely on the scientific integration of company resources formed by a high degree of planning, making Wahaha not only an excellent manufacturer, but also a distributor with a large and orderly marketing network.Wahaha thus has two trump cards to face future challenges.