Chapter 47 4. A "Gentleman's Game" of a Mature Enterprise

With the addition of Very Coke, the Coke war in the Chinese market has evolved from a two-player game between Coca-Cola and Pepsi to a more variable three-player game.Although Coca-Cola and the two international giants were far from being in the same weight class from the very beginning, Coca-Cola still gave a certain degree of vigilance to Wahaha's powerful "local defense war". In the relevant reports of some media at that time, we can easily find some facts like this—— Very Coke was just put on the market, and the bottle-making ability could not keep up for a while, so I contacted the peripheral bottle-making suppliers of Coca-Cola Company to buy, and the answer I got was: I can't help;

Many Coca-Cola distributors around the world have received a notice, and they are clearly told not to empathize with others and sell Very Coke, otherwise they will stop supplying and cancel the year-end rebate; In Hefei, Anhui, Wahaha launched a free tasting promotion for consumers.The company advertised that with this advertisement, you can go to the designated place to get a free bottle of Coke.The next day, a group of mysterious figures acted immediately, and the newspapers that published the advertisement were quickly sold out... In the past few years, there have been rumors of the "fire and fire" of very cola and foreign cola, but somewhat beyond people's expectations. There was the expected hand-to-hand combat and blood spattering.

The following is the comparative data of Coca-Cola and Coca-Cola in the same period of advertising: Guangdong Kangsai Market Service Co., Ltd.’s monitoring of TV advertisements on more than 320 TV channels across the country shows that from June to August 1998, when Super Coke debuted, it spent 33.9 million yuan on advertisements on various TV stations across the country.Among them, CCTV, as the top priority, placed a total of 696 advertisements, with a total length of 159 minutes and a total cost of 12.44 million yuan. In 1999, the advertising campaign of Very Coke became more intense, and the total cost continued to soar.From January to August of that year, the advertising on CCTV alone increased to 23.7 million yuan.Facing the deafening advertising bombardment of Very Coke, Coca-Cola still goes its own way. From January to August 1999, Coca-Cola’s national advertising investment totaled 98.6 million yuan, which was only a slight increase over the same period of the previous year. Among them, the advertising on CCTV accounted for less than 13% of its total TV advertising expenses. advertising competition.

In connection with this, although Coca-Cola has shown signs of price reduction in some markets, there has never been a large-scale and large-scale price dive. This is like a "Tai Chi" competition between martial arts knights. Both sides started the decisive battle, but they only secretly channeled the energy of the dantian and punched carefully.The mystery is intriguing.Dalian scholars Wang Xinwen and Zhang Qianceng made an interesting interpretation of this.They believe that Coca-Cola has no answer to the challenge in this Chinese-foreign cola business war, because Coca-Cola has built an ingenious barrier of retaliation:

——Integrating ethnicity in marketing strategy.Very Coke’s famous advertising slogan “Very Coke, the Chinese’s own Coke” first of all gave consumers a very unique psychological identity, and this psychological suggestion also successfully extended Wahaha’s original brand advantages to Coke consumer market.Today, when Coca-Cola is committed to the localization of production and management, this is undoubtedly a hot potato: neither can it restrict consumers from loving "their own Coke", nor can they be willing to be spectators in the Chinese market. It can be seen that Wahaha's ingenuity in its thinking when it launched Super Coke.

- Appropriate market strategy orientation.When Wahaha launched Very Coke, it did not limit itself to the competition for the original market share of Coca-Cola or even Pepsi, but aimed at expanding the breadth of the entire Coke market. In the process, it filled the market gap dominated by small towns and rural markets. Obtain an acceptable market share.These actions show that Wahaha is very rational. In China's drinking water and fruit milk market, Wahaha occupies an extremely important position. However, in the carbonated beverage market, it does not have enough strength to fight for the right to express personal opinions, so it has not touched Coca-Cola's basic sales network.On the contrary, Wahaha hopes to give Coca-Cola an impression that the appearance of Very Coke will benefit the entire industry and will not have an excessive negative impact on Coca-Cola's sales.

- Create mixed motives.It has been shown that if a market challenger's strategy creates mixed incentives for a market leader to retaliate, it can inhibit the leader's ability to retaliate.When a leader has to fight back against or compete with a challenger at the expense of its existing strategy, it encounters the challenger's mixed motivations.For example, when Wahaha tried to advocate that Coke is a necessity of life in a larger market space, Coca-Cola would never appear as an opponent, otherwise it would inevitably reduce its sales.At this time, Coca-Cola gave up some market share-these market shares are actually the gaps in the market that Coca-Cola has not yet occupied-although it is difficult, it is a wise choice.

There are many unspeakable secrets in Coca-Cola's refusal to fight.We might as well appreciate the following conversation between Zhong Zong Qinghou and host Yang Ping on April 9, 1999 in CCTV's "Business Masters" column: Moderator: Coca-Cola is 5-6 cents cheaper per bottle than Coca-Cola. Is it possible that in order to occupy the market, Coca-Cola would rather lower the price to be as low as yours or even lower than yours? Zong Qinghou: It is also possible.But Coca-Cola has a big plate. I estimate that if the price of each bottle of Coca-Cola is reduced by 10 cents in the Chinese market, the profit loss will be about 500 million yuan, and 50 cents will be 2.5 billion yuan.If it does this, we are willing to do it too.

It doesn't matter if I lose money. My main products now are milk, water and eight treasures. Where the big head is, there is profit.I think it is worthwhile to subsidize the point and let the people of the whole country drink cheap Coke (laughs). I'm afraid things are far from being as simple as "let the common people across the country drink cheap Coke".While talking and laughing, Zong Qinghou, who was far-sighted and far-sighted, set up retaliation obstacles with high retaliation costs for Coca-Cola, the market leader.Coca-Cola has the largest share in the Chinese cola market. If it takes costly retaliation actions such as comprehensive price cuts or distribution in order to deal with the challenge of Very Coke, it will definitely have an extremely harmful impact on the profit level of Coca-Cola, thus making itself a Coke The biggest victim of the price war.It is especially worth considering that Coca-Cola's counterattacker is Wahaha, the number one giant in China's beverage industry. This extremely powerful opponent will never retreat easily.Of course, Coca-Cola does not like hand-to-hand combat that consumes energy and expenses. For this industry leader who has always pursued a low-cost strategy, any action that does not help improve costs cannot be tolerated.

The "Market Aggression Theory" of modern marketing explains that market aggression is a competitive behavior that takes the initiative to attack and usurp market interests.For market invaders, market leaders must give a firm counterattack.When market leaders identify market intruders that must be attacked, they must first determine the principle of "three nears and four same": market intruders and market leaders are similar in production scale, product form, and price, and sales interfaces (intermediaries, dealers, retailer), the same level of positioning, the same target customers, and the same degree of market expansion efforts.On the other hand, in this Sino-foreign cola business war, Coca-Cola has clearly positioned itself as a constructive competitor in the Chinese cola market because it has been looking for differences with Coca-Cola in the fields of target customers and sales interface from the very beginning, rather than taking market interests as its goal. Characteristic of the role of the destructive intruder.

In addition, as Zong Qinghou speculated, under the multiple retaliatory obstacles set up by Coca-Cola, any retaliatory action that Coca-Cola, the market leader, may take will be a "double-edged sword", which in turn will cause Coca-Cola to have to Think twice before taking the risk of retaliation seriously.Of course, this kind of speculation is based on the fact that the other party is a modern enterprise with a mature business philosophy and willing to play its cards according to normal competition rules.Otherwise, market leaders may still carry out the most vigorous retaliatory strategies recklessly, even at the expense of the entire industry.Obviously, in the eyes of Zong Qinghou, Coca-Cola is just such a mature modern enterprise. Professor Michael Porter once said that a "good" industry leader should pay more attention to "the health of the industry" and allow challengers who abide by the rules of the game to obtain appropriate profits.This excellent quality has been fully reflected in the respectable leader of Coca-Cola Company.After examining Wahaha’s development trajectory for a long time, Coca-Cola seems to have come to the conclusion that Wahaha and its very cola are sensible competitors that are beneficial to the growth of the industry and should be tolerated instead of being enemies. Between two modern enterprises that are also mature, rational, and deeply aware of the true meaning of the market economy, it is not inconceivable that a Coca-Cola war that was supposed to be life-and-death eventually evolved into a "gentleman's game" with each style up. In the aspartame earthquake shortly thereafter, the basic principles of this laudable "gentleman's game" were once again collectively respected. On February 27, 2000, the British "Sunday Times" published an explosive news titled "Secret Report Attacks the Most Popular Sweetener", which "exposed" the National Beverage Association of the United States as early as the early 1980s. It was found that the commonly used sweetener "Aspartame" in soda drinks such as cola can decompose toxic substances such as methanol and phenylalanine, which affect the normal work of the human brain.The report quoted a newly declassified "secret report" that pointed out that aspartame has the effect of changing consumer behavior, inducing consumers to drink more beverages containing the substance.The report also said that many world-renowned beverage manufacturers, including Coca-Cola and Pepsi, still use aspartame today. On February 27, a domestic newspaper first reprinted the news from The Sunday Times, and it was widely disseminated on the Internet through its electronic version.In the next few days, shocking reports such as "Coke contains ingredients that are not good for the brain" and "two major colas are poisonous in sweetness" spread rapidly.Overnight, Coca-Cola and Pepsi were caught in a storm of crisis. Very Coke's once-in-a-lifetime God-sent opportunity has come.Many people are naturally waiting for Wahaha to launch a beautiful sniper campaign.However, to their great disappointment, a person in charge of the Wahaha Scientific Research Center only issued a short announcement on behalf of the company: "Very Cola has been using domestically produced high-quality white sugar since it was put into production. Therefore, there is no aspartame in the company. question." In this regard, Zong Qinghou explained afterwards that if Coca-Cola took advantage of the opportunity of aspartame to hype and fuel the flames, the result would be a fire at the gate of the city and bring disaster to the fish in the pond.It is not only Coca-Cola and Pepsi that are hurt, but may even be the entire carbonated beverage industry.Moreover, taking advantage of others' dangers and adding insult to injury will also greatly reduce the brand reputation that Wahaha has built for a long time. It is said that Zong Qinghou himself has never met any first-level CEO of Coca-Cola, a powerful rival.However, the common understanding of the rules of the market competition game has enabled the two parties to reach a "strategic consensus" of "seeking common ground while reserving differences, and being interdependent in competition". So far, no one has been able to make an accurate judgment on the final outcome of this Sino-foreign cola war that will surely be recorded in the history of Chinese enterprise development. I am afraid it is too early to draw any conclusions. But one thing is certain: the relatively weak Coca-Cola has undoubtedly become the biggest beneficiary of this "strategic consensus", and has won future development opportunities and competitive capital.