How can the greatest value of an apple to consumers be tapped?
Editor's note: So-called unsalable produce, or the lack of sales channels for green agricultural products, is not a simple problem of information asymmetry, nor is it a lack of demand or supply, but a deeper problem of asymmetric service capability. Our country has the largest market and the most promising supply, but lacks the supporting supply chain service capability.
Selling reassurance and selling sentiment, Niucun Qingqing apples now have their own brand proposition and brand warmth, completely bidding farewell to the history of anxiously waiting for buyers to come to the door; fruit growers are no longer hands-off managers who only tend to growing and not selling, but have become brokers who can grow and also sell at a good price --
After Wu Zhuqin returned to Niucun from Beijing, the village's "one village, one product" apple industry underwent three changes: first, it began to gradually abandon the traditional practice of seeking yield without seeking quality, and moved toward quality; second, a cooperative was established, so that everyone could band together to build the Niucun apple brand instead of each working alone; third, it took the initiative to sell online and follow the path of private customization, no longer waiting for buyers to come to the door once the fruit ripened.
Wu Zhuqin, born in 1984, is a native of Niucun, Zhuangzi Township, Yuci District, Jinzhong City, Shanxi Province. After graduating from Beijing Institute of Fashion Technology in 2007, she worked in clothing design and sales in Beijing.
In 2013, because she missed the happy feeling of lying on her grandfather's back picking apples, with the juice drawn into her throat, Wu Zhuqin decided to return to her hometown to start a business growing apples. After taking some detours for a while, Feng Xiaogang's film "Personal Tailor" inspired her. From then on, her entrepreneurial life was infused with innovative vitality, and the path of branding Niucun apples began.
1. Give consumers a reason to choose with quality
Niucun is located in the loess hilly region, with a total cultivated area of 3200 mu, a fruit tree area of nearly 2780 mu, and 4 mu of fruit trees per capita. It is a provincial-level "one village, one product" fruit tree specialized village.
"The fruit growers are still diligent fruit growers, the fruit trees are still 40-year-old fruit trees, and the apples are still as sweet and delicious as in childhood. They still continue the production model of quietly working hard with heads down and the sales method of waiting for buyers to come collect the fruit. Several million jin of apples cannot be sold, and everyone is burning with anxiety." Recalling the early days of returning home to start her business, Wu Zhuqin said.
In 2014, a beneficial agricultural policy called new-type professional farmer training made Wu Zhuqin's sky especially clear. "Starting a business cannot rely only on enthusiasm and funds; you also need professional knowledge. After the training ended, I understood that we had to find consumers a reason to choose to eat our apples, and we also had to train a group of brokers who specialized in selling Niucun apples."
Wu Zhuqin and her cooperative boldly made attempts, managing inputs in the planting and production process in a unified way, and strictly following the international "CERES" (CERES organic certification) organic production standards, using only farmyard manure, biological agents and organic fertilizers; pests and diseases were mainly controlled by agricultural, physical and biological methods.
As a result, the cooperative built its unique safe production process of "bio-organic fertilizer application -- safe bagging technology -- scientific and technological management -- natural ripening," effectively ensuring the apples' ecological greenness, nutrition and health, and named it the Qingqing Apple Biological Agriculture Planting and Production Technology Service System.
The cooperative signed contracts with every farmer, clarified the responsible managers and duties for the fruit trees in each plot, and improved the "quality and safety recall system" and "responsibility traceability system," so that every apple from the field to the customer's hands can be traced to the plant on which it grew and the responsible manager.
Before the 2015 Spring Festival, "Niucun Qingqing Apple" was officially launched for sale. By the Mid-Autumn Festival, online apple sales reached 10,000 boxes; during the Double Eleven Warm Winter Campaign, sales of Fuji apples with a fruit diameter of 75 (mm) alone exceeded 11,111 boxes.
From selling quality to selling reassurance
Online sales did not solve all of Niucun's apple problems. The jungle of apple sales was full of organic labels everywhere, and how Niucun Qingqing Apple could stand out became the threshold Wu Zhuqin faced.
"At the time I had seen Feng Xiaogang's film, where family affection, love and so on could all be customized, so I wondered whether private customization of fruit trees might also work. After it was launched, the response was quite good."
Customers can customize one or more varieties, and the fee for customizing one tree for one year is 1180 yuan. The adopted fruit trees are covered by an adoption agreement signed between the adopter and a cooperative member, who receives a "private customization card." Customers can give the fruit tree a name, create a LOGO, or write a message, all of which are printed on the customization card and hung on the fruit tree at all times, becoming the tree's "ID card." All customized fruit trees are managed uniformly by the cooperative, with fruit growers responsible for safety management at each stage of planting. The customizer can obtain information about the tree's growth through the internet at any time, can come at any time to participate in fruit tree production and management activities, and in autumn can also receive 200 jin of high-quality fruit, ensuring that the customizer can see the tree and pick the fruit.
"This year, we already have more than 1000 fruit trees customized by customers from Shenzhen, Chongqing, Guangzhou and other places across the country."
For farmers, apples that originally cost 2 yuan per jin have doubled in value to 6 yuan after private customization, and presale also means farmers no longer need to advance funds for agricultural inputs; for consumers, high-quality apples that cost 10 yuan per jin require paying only 6 yuan, and they can truly feel reassured.
Later, when summarizing this innovative model, Wu Zhuqin said, "The core element of success is that we livestreamed 'reassurance' to consumers. We have risen from selling quality to selling reassurance."
"Fruit growers are no longer hands-off managers who only tend to growing and not selling; they have become brokers who can grow and also sell at a good price."
From selling reassurance to emotional transmission
On July 12, Wu Zhuqin received an order for Qingqing apples privately customized by Jinzhong Bank for its high-quality customers.
This was her first major order this year after elevating private customization to emotional transmission. The apples on every tree would carry Jinzhong Bank's corporate logo, which meant that her privately customized Qingqing apples had become an image ambassador for Jinzhong Bank, no longer conveying only quality and reassurance, but also conveying emotion and spreading image.
She was simultaneously marketing this concept to some elderly care institutions, trying to refine private customization into a filial piety brand.
The private customization activities innovatively carried out by the cooperative also included ecological fruit tree adoption activities and holiday apple gift box ordering, among others.
These were all important parts of Wu Zhuqin's effort to build a new "agriculture-tourism interaction" marketing model. She named Niucun's apple orchard Qingqing Farm.
On weekends, adopters can bring family and friends to Qingqing Farm for leisure, feel the pastoral atmosphere, personally cultivate, personally manage, personally pick, taste the fruits of their own labor, and fully enjoy the orchard scenery of "picking chrysanthemums by the eastern fence, leisurely gazing at the southern mountains."
"Neighboring the trees and befriending the fields, this is a way for urban people to get close to nature and return to simplicity. At the same time, as a value-added service we give to customizers, it has also become a means for us to increase consumer experience. In their feeling of getting value for money, the recognition and reputation of our Qingqing apples will naturally rise, promoting our sales." Wu Zhuqin said.
Thus, relying on continuous innovation in ideas, Niucun Qingqing Apple, as a "one village, one product" brand, not only has its own brand proposition, but also has brand warmth. It has moved from selling reassurance to selling sentiment, completely bidding farewell to the history of sitting at the doorstep anxiously waiting for people to come collect apples, and moving onto the path of branding that uses apples to convey value.
Consumer experience is the starting point of a brand
From "livestreaming" the growth process of reassurance-giving apples to consumers to using private customization to turn apple production from "his production" into "our production," the brand path of Niucun Qingqing Apple can give us at least two insights:
First, the power of a brand lies in winning competition. A brand represents a differentiated concept, and this differentiation is related to consumer needs. In buyers' minds, through the monitoring link in private customization, Niucun Qingqing Apple fully satisfies consumers' entire demand for reassurance, with every link from flowering to fruiting to ripening visible.
So compared with other apples that also sell reassurance, Qingqing Apple's reassurance is more persuasive and competitive. This means that when customers eat apples, the feeling that "this is Niucun apple" has beaten another feeling.
Second, innovation is the wings of a brand. As a pleasure on the tip of the tongue, the experience of agricultural products is an object feeling full of subjective perception. When Niucun Apple discovered this experiential demand of consumers and, through the form of hanging private customization plaques, turned fruit trees into something the consumer "exclusively enjoys," it had already completed this grafting of feeling, creating in consumers the emotional resonance that my apples are the most delicious, subtly influencing the brand's exclusive concept, giving its own brand warmth and also attitude. At this point, what apples convey is not only quality, but brand value, and this sense of value gain is no longer based on price, but also includes irrational factors such as emotion.
Based on this innovation, the brand positioning and value extension of Niucun Apple are more clearly visible. These two points also remind us that consumer experience is the starting point of a brand. The quality of agricultural products cannot be emphasized only from the physical and technical levels; the consumer's feeling of being at home is the origin of brand design and creation.