How can the apple industry achieve transformation through brand leadership?
Luochuan, Shaanxi: Innovating a Comprehensive Brand Marketing Model
In recent years, Luochuan County has successfully forged a development path for the Luochuan apple brand that combines fruit growing with livestock raising and focuses on one county, one industry, becoming a leader and model for brand marketing in the national apple industry, and has been called the “Luochuan phenomenon” and the “Luochuan model” by some scholars. Luochuan apples have cumulatively won more than 170 awards at the national and provincial/ministerial levels; obtained naming rights for 29 major brands, including service products for the Beijing Olympics, the Shanghai World Expo, the Guangzhou Asian Games and the Boao Forum for Asia Annual Conference 2013; the “Luochuan Apple” geographical indication certification trademark was recognized by the Trademark Office of the State Administration for Industry and Commerce as a “China Well-Known Trademark,” with a brand valuation of 5.241 billion yuan.
At present, Luochuan has built a large platform for coordinated offline and online marketing in the development of its apple marketing network. In central cities such as Guangzhou, Beijing, Shanghai, Shenzhen, Kunming and Fuzhou, 48 direct sales outlets of various types, including fresh fruit specialty stores and wholesale stores, have been established; relying on leading enterprises, border trade markets in the southwest, northwest and northeast have been effectively opened up, and export certification has been obtained from eight countries including Canada, the United Kingdom, Thailand and Australia, making the apples exempt from inspection for export to Canada and the United Kingdom, and the apples are exported to more than 20 countries and regions in Southeast Asia and Europe. At the same time, an e-commerce operating platform has been established, developing more than 230 e-commerce and WeChat business operators, and introducing online marketing models such as Taobao, Alibaba, JD.com and Youlego. Fruit farmers and college students are encouraged to actively develop new-type fruit distribution based mainly on online operations. The national-level Luochuan Apple Wholesale Market, with increasingly complete functions, has been basically completed, with an annual transaction volume of 1.3 billion yuan.
In the new era, Luochuan County is striving to build Luochuan apples into a “10-billion-yuan” industry. First, it adheres to the standard system of the “Luochuan Apple Technical Specifications,” giving Luochuan apples strict and clear specifications “from field to table” and achieving standardization throughout the entire process of apple production, storage, processing and sales. Second, it persists in producing organic green apples, so that Luochuan apples can be eaten “with the peel on”; implements traceability of apple quality and safety, giving Luochuan apples a “household registration”; and, by improving quality and efficiency, realizes selling Luochuan apples “by the piece.” It aims to achieve, by 2020, coordinated development integrating the primary, secondary and tertiary industries through paths such as standardized production, modernized technology, industrialized operations, premium fruit quality and branded marketing.
Yantai, Shandong: Brand Strategy Drives Apple Industry Upgrading
Yantai is one of the world's most suitable regions for apple production, comparable to world-famous apple-producing areas such as Washington in the United States and Aomori in Japan. At present, “Yantai Apple” has ranked first among fruit-industry regional public brands of Chinese agricultural products for six consecutive years, with a brand value of 10.105 billion yuan. Around apple flesh, peel, seeds and flowers, a series of deep-processed products such as apple crisps, pectin, apple powder, flavoring, seed oil and enzymes have been successively developed, with more than 100 varieties, exported to more than 30 countries and regions including Southeast Asia, Japan and South Korea, Australia, Europe and the United States.
In recent years, Yantai has strengthened scientific and technological research, and the Yanfu series apples it has bred remain the main cultivars currently planted in China. It has introduced experts under the “Thousand Foreign Experts Program” and jointly carried out scientific and technological research with top domestic research institutes and universities, selected and bred superior varieties, and built high-quality virus-free nursery stock breeding bases, providing sufficient variety and nursery stock reserves for the upgrading and renewal of Yantai apples. This year, Yantai issued the “Yantai Apple Brand Strategy Plan.” The plan accurately identified the core value chain of the Yantai apple brand and distilled the core value and brand slogan of Yantai apple: China's first apple, Yantai apple. To support the implementation of the plan, the “Yantai Apple Brand Management and Use Measures” were issued, and the brand building of Yantai apple has embarked on a new journey.
At the same time, new business models have continued to emerge. The Qixia Fruit Auction Center project invested in and built by Defeng Food has been launched and will be put into operation in October this year; the Yantai Apple Network invested in and built by the Municipal Fruit Company has been online since August this year, and efforts will be made to build the first vertical e-commerce platform in the domestic fruit industry. To further enhance the market competitiveness and brand influence of Yantai apples, work on compiling the Yantai apple price index has also been carried out, and it was officially launched in August this year and released to the public.
⟦NL> Aksu, Xinjiang: Traceability System Enhances Brand Trust
As of the end of 2014, the apple planting area in the entire Aksu region had reached about 310,000 mu, with an annual output of more than 700,000 tons of high-quality apples and annual revenue of nearly 350 million yuan; for orchards entering full fruit-bearing stage, the average benefit per mu can reach more than 15,000 yuan. “Aksu Apple” has obtained the “China Well-Known Trademark” recognition from the State Administration for Industry and Commerce, has been recognized by the General Administration of Quality Supervision, Inspection and Quarantine as a geographical indication protected product, and has also obtained the Xinjiang Famous Trademark.
In recent years, as brand benefits have become more prominent, counterfeiting of Aksu apples has become increasingly serious. The QR code traceability system, by drawing on advanced domestic and international experience in QR code traceability business applications and combining the actual application needs and business development plans of Xinjiang's forestry and fruit industry, innovatively adopts four technologies: system random barcodes, limited-code-label printing, intuitive querying via SMS and WeChat, and code-label printing control.
The association exercises unified management over packaging enterprises and packaging design layouts. On box-type packaging, the front upper-left designated position is uniformly printed with the brand trademarks of the region's three major associations and the geographical indication protection mark, the front upper-right designated position is uniformly printed with the production enterprise's brand trademark, and a QR code is affixed at the center seal of the front of the box; on bag-type packaging, the front upper-left designated position is uniformly printed with the brand trademarks of the region's three major associations and the geographical indication protection mark, the front upper-right designated position is uniformly printed with the production enterprise's brand trademark, and a paper QR code is affixed at the center seal of the front of the bag.
Zhaotong, Yunnan: Building a Southwest Plateau Apple Brand
Zhaotong apples were first planted in 1940, and Zhaotong is the birthplace of southwest plateau apples. After 75 years of development, it has become the largest and most concentrated apple-producing area in Yunnan and even the southwest plateau and the Wumeng Mountain area. It is expected that in 2015 the city's apple area will reach 340,000 mu (accounting for 54% of Yunnan Province's planting area), with an output of 430,000 tons and an output value of 2.2 billion yuan.
Zhaotong apples mature early, with the same variety maturing one month earlier than in northern producing areas, which helps seize the initiative and win the market. At the same time, Zhaotong is located at the center point of four large and medium-sized cities, Kunming, Chengdu, Guiyang and Chongqing, and is moreover a two-way corridor for the interior entering Yunnan to reach South Asia and Southeast Asia, as well as for Yunnan to connect with the interior and reach the Chengdu-Chongqing Economic Zone and the Yangtze River Economic Belt. Apples can be transported to ASEAN country markets on the day they are picked.
On this basis, the Zhaotong Municipal Party Committee and Municipal Government established a leading group for the apple industry, and since 2012 have arranged 10 million yuan in special industry funds each year to support development, focusing on key links such as standard industrial bases, scientific and technological development, brand creation, post-production processing and market development. At the same time, they formulated technical regulations such as the “Green Food——Comprehensive Technical Regulations for Zhaotong Apple Production,” the “Technical Standards for the Transformation of Low-Yield Orchards,” and the “Production Technical Standards for the Construction of Premium Orchards,” and vigorously promoted standard training and application. Newly planted orchards uniformly implement “unified seedling supply, unified regulations, unified guidance and unified planting,” and rely on enterprises to demonstrate and promote dwarf and close-planting cultivation techniques, with the area under dwarf and close-planting apple cultivation reaching 8,500 mu. At present, cooperation is underway with the Yunnan Academy of Agricultural Sciences to plan the development and utilization of the selenium resource advantages of Zhaotong's main apple-producing areas, carry out a general survey of soil selenium resources, research “selenium-enriched apple” technology and build the “Zhaotong selenium-enriched apple” brand.