Where is the fundamental way out for building China's fruit branding?

In recent years, reports of unsalable fruit have emerged one after another in various places, and the domestic fruit market is facing challenges from foreign fruit and a new environment brought by the rise of fresh food e-commerce. In order to open up a new situation, fruit brand operators have turned their attention to brand stories and cultural creativity, hoping to move consumers with sentiment and stories. In fact, however, using sentiment and stories to resonate with consumers and promote purchases is only a marketing method for fruit brands, not the fundamental solution. So, where is the fundamental way out for building fruit branding in our country?

After Chu Orange became popular on the internet, internet fruits such as "Liu Tao Peach" and "Pan Shiyi Apple" appeared one after another, but apart from Chu Orange, which maintained relatively stable sales, agricultural products relying on celebrity effect, such as Liu Tao Peach and Pan Shiyi Apple, successively failed on the internet. This shows that without excellent products, relying only on sentiment and stories can only become a marketing hot topic, not a successful business.

Quality is the lifeline, and quality is always the most important foundation. In fact, we always repeatedly emphasize one concept: for food, deliciousness is always the first priority. Whether it is telling stories or creating sentiment around a brand, without quality as the foundation, it will always be "the moon in water and the flower in the mirror." For consumers, quality is what attracts them most, while stories and sentiment are only means to promote their purchases.

Standardization is the guarantee for brand development. In contacts with many new farmers entering e-commerce, a common pain point often mentioned is the "non-standard" problem of agricultural products. Standardization of agricultural products includes two aspects, external and internal. Good taste, and color, shape, size and other appearance reaching a certain standard and being unified, are external. Quality mainly reflects the internal standard of the product. One indication of whether there is a standard is whether quantification has been achieved.

In developed countries such as Europe, the United States and Japan, agriculture has already been highly standardized at the production end. From regional trials and characteristic trials for breeding new varieties, to sowing, harvesting, processing and organizing, packaging and marketing, there is a strict set of standards. When farmers grow watermelons, there are strict rules on which variety to use, when to sow, when to fertilize, how much fertilizer to apply, and when to harvest. For cucumbers sold on the market, their length, thickness and degree of curvature must all meet standards.

Also for growing scallions, Japanese farmers have a strict and standardized process from variety selection to different growth stages, making the length and thickness of each scallion almost like a "cloned" product; also for growing grapes, in Japan only 4 bunches of grapes are allowed per square meter, each bunch 400 grams, and each grape weighs 12 grams; also for producing cucumbers, they require the cucumbers to be straight, of the same length and basically the same color. All agricultural products in Japan must undergo strict screening and grading according to certain standards. Fish and shrimp are measured by "piece"; pears and apples are measured by "each," and vegetables and fruits priced and sold by weight are not seen on the market. Those agricultural products that do not meet the standards are not allowed to enter the market for sale, but are used as processing raw materials.

There are still many problems in the standardization of our country's fruit industry development. First, standards are lacking. Due to differences in agricultural products in various links such as region, natural conditions and production methods, as well as the diversity of the products themselves, there is no complete standard system for agricultural products in the production link, and there are also few standard provisions that truly have standard significance and play the role of industry standards for agricultural production inputs, pesticides and auxiliary materials in the processing of agricultural products. Second, standardization awareness at the social level is weak. In the production link of agricultural products, many farmers are not active in standardized production of products. Although some large-scale agricultural production entities have a certain capacity for standardized production, they have not been able to fully and effectively integrate industry standards into the production link; in the consumption link of agricultural products, people mostly rely on life experience to pay attention to factors such as the shelf life of products provided by supermarkets or distributors, information reflected on packaging, and price, and cannot distinguish the relevant standards of the products themselves, nor do they pay much attention to them. Third, the intensity of promoting standardization construction is still insufficient. The construction of agricultural product standardization is a systematic project and requires strong promotion. However, the promotion intensity in the competent links is still insufficient. In the monitoring and supervision links of some products, there is still a lack of necessary awareness of promoting standardization. In the testing and inspection process of some products, products are rarely tested and inspected, and there are also few monitoring results that exceed standards or fail to meet standards, and even fewer cases of punishment for failing to meet standards in testing. This situation further weakens the requirements for product standardization construction.

The quality problem and standardization problem of our country's fruit industry are both urgent problems that need to be solved. If we want to make our fruit brands more competitive, solving these two problems well is the key.