1988: Back to the human world for a few years

Chapter 84 The Line Behind
There is nothing new under the sun, and business is nothing more than pasting and copying one thing after another.

If you have studied the "History of Industrial Economics" and have read the contents and cases in the history of the two industrial revolutions in Europe, the history of economic construction in the United States, the history of the post-war economic development in Japan, and the history of the economic rise of the four Asian tigers, and restored how these developed countries have come step by step over the past 200 years, and recalled the history of China's reform and opening up over the past years, you will be surprised to find that...

Although people from different countries in this world have great differences in culture, IQ, values, and national cohesion, if we only consider economic behavior, the differences between them are not that great.

To put it in the simplest terms, in this regard, the essential difference is only between "rich" and "poor"... To put it bluntly, people in this world are all the same whether they have money or not.

Therefore, how much money different people have in different time periods, and how much circulating currency they have in their hands will reach the critical line of consumption iteration, has become a very interesting research topic.

After analyzing countless cases and empirical statistical summaries, people were surprised to find that all of this could be measured with one indicator:

That is... GDP per capita.

Although per capita GDP cannot be directly understood as wealth, it does to a large extent reflect the speed of creation and circulation of wealth in people's hands, which is the so-called economic activity.

After all, humans are social animals. When the economic activity around them changes, a stress-induced group effect will naturally appear. Remember the locust group mutation mentioned in the previous article? GDP per capita can be regarded as the number of locust groups. When locusts of different magnitudes gather together, the pheromone intensity is different, and the mutation effect is also different!
通过不同国家、不同地区的海量的案例总结和分析，当一个地区的人均GDP值分别达到1000美元、2000美元、3000美元、4000美元，5000美元、8000美元、1万美元、1.5万美元、2万美元、3.2万美元的时候，就会在消费心态和习惯这些方面产生一个明显的转变，进而倒逼商业逻辑重构，产业业态开始颠覆。

Simply put, the same country and the same group of people at different GDP stages are essentially two completely different countries and two different groups of people. From an economic perspective, China with a per capita GDP of $3,000 and China with a per capita GDP of $5,000 are definitely not the same business ecosystem, and the corresponding demands and industrial formats have also changed dramatically.

Let’s talk about a few industries that the public is more familiar with (using the average purchasing power of US dollars in the period from 2008 to 2020 as the standard).

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1. Automobile industry

Looking at the history of world industrial development, when the per capita GDP reached US$2000, no matter in which region, there would be no soil for the TOC market to survive in the domestic automobile market. It was all dominated by TOB or TOG (administrative unit procurement) markets. For example, in 1992, the per capita GDP of major cities in my country exceeded the 2000 mark for the first time, reaching US$2311 per year. Therefore, before 92, the cars running on the streets were basically all owned by various units.

When the per capita GDP exceeded US$5000, private car purchases began to explode without exception, regardless of the region. Therefore, 2004~2015 was the eleven years with the fastest sales growth in my country's automobile industry. There was even a phenomenon of BBA being out of stock and people having to pay extra to buy them. This was because the per capita GDP of my country's first-tier cities had been approaching the US$2004 mark since 5000, and by 2010, the per capita GDP of residents in major cities across the country had also reached this level (it should be noted that at this time, ordinary brand cars in Beijing, Shanghai, Guangzhou and Shenzhen had begun to become difficult to sell, because since 2008, the per capita GDP of these first-tier cities had exceeded ).

When the per capita GDP began to reach US$8000 to US$1, the region's automobile market capacity began to reach the saturation quadrant, with more than 90% of households with houses owning cars. As a result, the demand for private car purchases began to gradually change and upgrade. So starting from this year, traditional automobile 4S stores in Beijing, Shanghai and Guangzhou began to engage in price wars one after another, and began a market sinking strategy focusing on second- and third-tier cities. In 2012, new energy vehicles represented by Tesla gradually entered the vision of the middle- and high-income groups in China's first-tier cities, and in 2017, they successfully became one of the mainstream models in China's first- and second-tier cities.

It is obvious that the next window for demand iteration and upgrading is when the per capita GDP approaches or exceeds 1.5 US dollars... The reason why so many companies are betting on smart cars and sparing no effort to promote the concept of the "third space" is that they are betting that China's 2035 goals can be successfully achieved, and that the per capita GDP of China's major cities can exceed 2035 or even 1.8 US dollars before 3.

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2. Fruit/juice beverage industry
Before 1993, fruit was not a commodity that could be found everywhere, and there were few fruit stalls in the market. This was not because fruit was scarce, but because in that era when even survival was a little difficult, fruit was undoubtedly a food with low cost performance. The reason why Chinese people began to widely accept fruit as a supplementary food after 1993 was because in that year, the country's per capita GDP officially exceeded US$1000, which had basically solved the problem of food (at this time, the per capita GDP of major cities exceeded the US$2000 mark).

With the development of the economy, in 2001, when the per capita GDP exceeded US$3000, concentrated fruit juices, represented by Huiyuan Juice, which had seemed extremely expensive before, began to be gradually popular among the Chinese people and flourished until 2007. This was because when the per capita GDP was in the range of US$ to US$, people's consumption concepts on food and drink had undergone earth-shaking changes compared with when the per capita GDP was between US$ and US$.

But in 2008, when the per capita GDP exceeded US dollars, people's concepts began to change again. People no longer just wanted to drink a cup of concentrated juice full of astringency, so they gradually turned to freshly squeezed juice and fruit milk tea that tasted better and looked more fashionable. Then brands such as Haxianzu, Heytea, and Nayuki appeared one after another... Now, people no longer care about the price of or yuan for a cup of freshly squeezed juice, because the per capita GDP of major cities has basically exceeded US dollars, which was unimaginable ten years ago.

(Sincerely speaking, although I like Huiyuan as a company, it is undeniable that, just as the high-speed rail dealt a heavy blow to the instant noodle industry, Huiyuan’s real enemy is the trend and the change in consumption habits after the increase in per capita GDP, rather than those so-called competitors. If China’s per capita GDP had been maintained at 4,000 to 5,000 US dollars, Huiyuan would have been difficult to fall, but now... Even if it is supported by everyone’s sentiment, it is unlikely to regain its glory by relying on concentrated fruit juice.)
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3. Wine and beverage industry

This is probably the industry that all men feel most intuitively.

Looking at the history of global industrial development, no matter which country or region, as long as the per capita GDP is less than US$4000, people mainly drink strong liquor. Europeans and Americans drink whiskey, Russians drink vodka, Chinese drink baijiu, and Northeast Asia drinks sake... This has nothing to do with taste preferences, it's purely because they are poor.

Therefore, for a long time, every place in the country had its own liquor brand, and every county and township had its own distillery. Even before 09, the liquor industry had experienced more than one Hundred Regiments Campaign. This was because at that time the income of the people across the country increased significantly, but the per capita GDP in most regions did not break through the 4000 US dollar mark.

But since 2009, the total consumption of liquor in the country has been declining, and the decline has become more and more obvious; but the consumption of another type of alcohol has been rising rapidly - beer.

By 2016, when the GDP per capita of major cities in China exceeded 711 US dollars and began to advance towards the 1 US dollar mark, like all countries in the world, red wine, noble rot wine, ice wine and other wines with soft taste but higher value ecological niche began to be sought after by the public - if you observe carefully, you will find that whether it is a supermarket or the 3 downstairs, or even an online platform, the proportion of these wines on the counter display has suddenly increased to nearly /, and the import volume of these wines has also begun to increase at a rate of at least double every year. This has created a phenomenon that the domestic liquor industry has changed from being dominated by liquor years ago to being divided into three parts, and liquor is becoming increasingly weak under an irreversible trend... This can be seen from the data on the total production of Chinese liquor base liquor in the past decade.

Don’t tell me that Moutai’s market value exceeds 2 trillion yuan, and don’t tell me that major manufacturers have been continuously launching high-end and ultra-high-end new products in recent years, and they are being sought after by consumers... Even a broken ship still has three pounds of iron. These big wineries still have at least a basic base, but you only need to look at how many other liquor brands can be named in the country besides the eight major series, and you will have an idea.

Besides, we must be clear about one thing: when an industry unanimously adopts the method of launching high-end products to maintain overall profits and promote consumption upgrades, it is equivalent to telling others that this market is already shrinking rapidly (just pretend I didn’t mention the mobile phone industry).

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In addition, the reason why the cultural and creative industry suddenly began to recover after a decade of depression is that
The reason why the organic fruit and vegetable industry, which is booming abroad, has not yet become popular in the country is that
The reason why the big health industry is always in an early stage is that
And so on, all of them are closely, or even directly, related to the level of per capita GDP.

You must understand that these things have already been experienced in developed countries. Given the highly overlapping change curves of both sides in the first seven stages, you only need to compare the per capita GDP levels of China and foreign countries at the same stage to understand the root cause of the problem.

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"In short, you just need to remember that, assuming there is no black swan event, all business activities are controlled by the line of per capita GDP! ... If you have enough samples to do inductive analysis, you will find that each of these ten step values ​​is strongly associated with one or more different industry trends and consumption characteristics."

"If you want to be lazy, you might as well remember this... Under $1,000 for survival, $3,000 for face, $5,000 for enjoyment, $8,000 for personality, and over $10,000 for pursuit."

After selectively explaining more than a dozen cases to Tugou, Yang Mo concluded.

"Of course, this is just a general basic concept. Even in the same period, the per capita GDP of different regions, different industries, and different groups of people is different. Therefore, you must clearly distinguish the macro per capita GDP figures from the per capita GDP of specific groups of people!"

"As I just said, different groups of people have different standards for per capita GDP, so their consumption concepts, consumption habits, and sensitive words are different."

As he spoke, Yang Mo stamped out his third cigarette butt: "Then let me test you now... If I were your subordinate, and I submitted a promotional plan to you, planning to apply for 10,000 yuan to hold a very creative event in the city center of Linyi County, how would you approve it?"

Lu Yingying thought for a while: "Call him back and ask him to redo it... In your words, this is a general promotional activity, not targeted at the right people... Linyi County is not Dezhou or Jinan. The current per capita GDP is probably not even 700 US dollars. It is still in the early and middle stages of survival. How can most people be willing to spend a dollar to buy our fried skewers?... Even if there are one or two hundred people who can afford our fried skewers, the input-output ratio is not proportional at all... If you can't generate revenue in the short term, what's the point of making a fantastic plan?"

After thinking for a while, Lu Yingying added: "If you are doing this activity in a drilling company or a Linpan oil production plant, you can give it a try... As long as the activity method seems relatively reliable, let alone 10,000 yuan, I will approve it even if it is 20,000 yuan!"

Yang Mo smiled and nodded: "Not bad, not bad... What if I apply for brand promotion, and the budget is only 1000 yuan, and I plan to invite a small star to promote it?"

Lu Yingying thought for a while and said, "I still won't approve it... Although the budget is small and people are quite interested in celebrities nowadays, the per capita GDP of Linyi County is so low that there are probably not even a thousand TV sets for 200,000 people. What's the point of inviting a little celebrity... If it's really for brand promotion, it would be more effective to ask someone to paint slogans on the wall outside the community... If that doesn't work, painting the village entrance will work!"

Yang Mo laughed out loud: "Not bad, not bad... That's about it... No matter whether it's a design or a copy, or a new product development plan, you just need to figure out who these things are ultimately going to be presented to, and then evaluate the per capita GDP level of those people, then you can analyze layer by layer whether the things in front of you should be given to them!"

At this point, Yang Mo shrugged his shoulders and said, "Now you know, as a manager, a so-called layman, you don't need to really understand those so-called professional knowledge, nor do you need to pay attention to those people's talk about [composition], [aesthetics of the picture], [style], [language hints] and so on... You just need to evaluate whether the things handed over are what you want... Of course, you can't just deny it blindly. It is also your responsibility to give certain direction guidance!"

Lu Yingying nodded as if she suddenly understood something, and then asked unconfidently, "Is it really that simple?"

Yang Mo spread his hands: "It's actually that simple...you'll know when you try it."

Yang Mo must be fooling Tugou. Being a middle-level manager who connects the upper and lower levels is certainly not that easy, but everything is difficult at the beginning. Based on his understanding of this girl, the most difficult thing is actually taking the first step. If he instilled too much content today and scared this girl so much that she didn't dare to take up the post, he would have no place to cry.

Seeing that this girl was hesitant and wanted to say something, Yang Mo rolled his eyes, and then hit her head in annoyance: "Stop talking, don't you see what time it is... Hurry up and make some pancakes, I'm starving!"

After being slapped by this guy, Tugou classmate immediately forgot what he wanted to ask just now. He rubbed his head very unhappily, snorted, and then obediently kneaded the dough...

(End of this chapter)