At the "Xicha" located on the second floor of Juntai Department Store in Xidan, Beijing, people who buy and wait for tea are crowded with tea shops.
Our reporter Zhang Yiqi photo
In recent years, Jinan City, Shandong Province, based on the ancient historical and cultural resources of Quancheng, has actively preserved and restored many old buildings in the commercial port period, including Xiaoguanghan, created an "oriental painting" that perfectly combines China’s traditional culture with modern high technology, and innovated and upgraded the "online celebrity" punching place, Kuanli Qilu Food Club, forming a unique architectural style, time-honored brand and commercial culture of Quancheng Jinan.
The picture shows an old shop owner soliciting customers in front of Qilu Food Fair in Kuanli, Jinan.
Photo by Yu Fangping (People’s Vision)
On Tuesday, May 14th, at 3: 50pm, the "Happy Tea" on the 2nd floor of Juntai Department Store in Xidan, Beijing was crowded. This online celebrity tea shop, which often appears in WeChat circle of friends and Tik Tok, often has to wait in line for dozens of minutes or even hours. Even if the queue time is long, it still does not affect its super popularity. After 4 o’clock, there are more and more people queuing in this store in Xidan.
Online celebrity, refers to the network red man. Online celebrity stores refer to those shops with high popularity on the Internet, including restaurants, cafes, tea shops and homestays. Especially under the premise of continuous development of self-media and short videos, more and more stores have become online celebrity stores with the help of them, attracting many people to come to punch in.
However, becoming a online celebrity store is only a marketing tool, and attracting customers is only a primary goal. In the longer term, it is necessary to retain customers, which requires shops to work hard on products and services. Online celebrity store should have a good reputation, but more importantly, it should strictly control the quality to create a veritable online celebrity store that can stand the market test.
Is high face value the "last word"?
Observing the online celebrity stores that are popular on the Internet, we can find that they basically have one thing in common, that is, they pursue "high value". Either the store decoration style is unique, or the product packaging is unique, or the product itself is unique, but in the final analysis, it is able to attract people at the first time.
"Hi Tea" has made great efforts in stores and products. From shop design to tea cup packaging to milk tea itself, it has a "high value", and then through the recommendation of various road networks and the customers who have experienced it, its communication effect has doubled, attracting more and more people to try.
Xiaoliang works in a hospital in Langfang City, Hebei Province, and often comes to Beijing to play with family and friends. I often see the recommendation of "hi tea", so she and her friends stood in line for 50 minutes at the "hi tea" in Zhongguancun, Beijing, and finally tasted the legendary "hi tea". "I mainly want to taste how delicious it can be. Langfang doesn’t sell it. If you come to Beijing, you have to try it."
Xiaoliang’s evaluation of "hi tea" is average, and he thinks there is nothing unique about the taste. However, Guo Yiran, who often drinks "hi tea", thinks it tastes very good.
Guo Maoran works in an Internet company in Beijing, and often gets together with friends on weekends or in his spare time, so he has come into contact with many online celebrity stores, especially some online celebrity restaurants. Guo Maoran showed reporters several restaurants in online celebrity that she had been to with her mobile phone. From the pictures, these restaurants are novel in design, unique in style and superior in geographical location, all of which have high "face value".
Guo Maoran introduced a restaurant next to the Forbidden City. This restaurant is located in a small courtyard, with simple and elegant interior design, the Forbidden City wall outside the window and exquisite food. This restaurant is suitable for both parties and taking photos, but it is very expensive. In public comments, the per capita price of this restaurant exceeds that of 700 yuan. "But in fact, the food is not very delicious. Many customers go to take pictures. Even so, there are still many people. " Guo Yiran said.
But not all online celebrity stores only pursue "high value" on the facade, and some online celebrity stores will constantly improve the quality of products and services and attract customers with connotation. Others become online celebrity stores because of their connotations.
Kobayashi works in the headquarters of Shanghai UnionPay. He talked to reporters about an experience of queuing. Radio Lane Hot Pot, located near Shanghai Hongqiao Football Stadium, is very famous in Shanghai. It is also a online celebrity restaurant, and there are long queues at the restaurant door every day. Kobayashi once went to queue up at 2: 45 pm. Unexpectedly, he didn’t eat until 8 pm, and the queue was nearly 6 hours. In the end, Kobayashi and his friends only ate for 2 hours. "The hot pot tastes good. Although it has been waiting for a long time, I think it is still worth it." Xiaolin said.
Liao Huaixue, a lawyer of Taihetai Law Firm, said in an interview that online celebrity’s economy is an attention economy. Relying on the spread of the Internet, social short videos and other platforms to promote, online celebrity Store can get a lot of attention in a short period of time and has a huge flow. Attention and flow mean purchasing power, which can be transformed into economic benefits.
How much do you know about the routines of online celebrity store?
There is a buzzword on the internet: the longest road I have traveled is your routine. This sentence is very suitable for online celebrity stores, and it is the customers who fall into the "routine" that make online celebrity stores popular.
Queuing is one of the marketing routines of online celebrity store. When you see a long queue at the door of a certain store, many people’s first instinct is that the products of this store should be very good, which may lead to the idea that "I should try it, too." This is exactly what online celebrity stores want, and many online celebrity stores use this psychology to attract customers. In order to create the effect of queuing, some online celebrity stores will set the counter near the door to increase the illusion of long queues.
While waiting in line at a online celebrity store, the reporter interviewed a number of customers in line at random. Some customers come here because they like it, others come here for admiration, and some just pass by and see many people queuing up to buy. It has been repeatedly exposed on the Internet that some online celebrity stores hire people to queue up to create false prosperity, so as to attract people. What’s more, he even started a queuing business, selling his own number to customers, and became a "scalper" queuing in online celebrity stores.
More routines are using social networks, and taking photos and punching cards is one of them. Guo Maoran once experienced a photo studio, mainly taking id photos. At the time of checkout, the store told me that if you upload the ID photos that have been washed out in the WeChat circle of friends, you can enjoy the discount. Guo Yiran took a photo of his identity card and uploaded it. "Unexpectedly, many people came to ask me where this photo studio is?" Guo Yiran recalled this experience to reporters. "This invisibly brought more customers to this photo studio."
Nowadays, many online celebrity stores adopt the strategy of encouraging customers to take photos, and increase the exposure of the stores by sharing them with customers themselves. As the saying goes, "three people make a tiger", if people constantly bask in the same store on social networks, it will arouse more people’s curiosity, thus gathering more popularity for online celebrity stores.
"Under the influence of social networks, in addition to actual consumption, consumers go to online celebrity stores and meet the needs of social sharing, such as punching cards in online celebrity stores and sending friends." Liao Huai said. This shows that the strategy of online celebrity stores spreading through social networks is very effective.
People who often brush Tik Tok will brush short videos that recommend eating, drinking and having fun, or recommend short videos of some shops from time to time. Seeing the recommended food, I will itch to try it. But this is probably the "routine" of online celebrity store.
Since the rise of media, especially short videos, online celebrity stores have found new marketing methods. By shooting short videos, food and services can be displayed in all directions, and then some self-media marketing numbers, including Tik Tok, are employed to constantly recommend stores, so as to build the store into a online celebrity store. Or invite some online celebrity to come to the store to experience, and improve the popularity of online celebrity store through the heat of online celebrity.
Jin Ge, an assistant researcher in Peking University and a doctor of journalism, analyzed the reasons to the reporter: passenger flow is a potential benefit for shops, and the current conventional methods to attract passengers generally cost more. Attracting traffic through the internet and then converting it to offline has become a new channel for obtaining passenger flow. This way of obtaining passenger flow is obviously lower and more efficient than conventional advertising and sales promotion.
"For shopkeepers in online celebrity, they will do whatever attracts attention on the Internet." Jin Ge said that there is still a problem of marginal cost. The more shops that attract people’s attention, the lower the price of traffic.
Why is it difficult for online celebrity store to "grow red"?
If one word is used to describe online celebrity store, ups and downs are the most appropriate. Many online celebrity stores that have been screened are gradually fading out of people’s sight, and even have closed down. It lasts only a few months, and the longer time may only be one year. A netizen concluded: "They are all online celebrity stores living in a circle of friends. When they disappear from your circle of friends, it is not far from the real disappearance. "
But there are exceptions. Some online celebrity shops have survived, and "Hi Tea" is one of them. In addition, there are those shops that rely on providing high-quality products and services, which have gained higher popularity by building the marketing strategy of online celebrity stores.
It can be seen that quality is the lifeline of online celebrity store. No matter Xiaoliang, Guo Yuran or Kobayashi, they all said in an interview that if online celebrity stores want to be really popular, they should start with quality and do a good job in quality control so that products can stand in the market.
Behind the online celebrity store is the realization of traffic, that is, a large amount of traffic obtained on the Internet will be turned into actual passenger flow, which will bring real income. "No matter how well advertising marketing is done, if products and services can’t bring consumers the expected experience, it will be difficult to get repeat customers." Jin Ge said that this would cause online celebrity stores to gain traffic while losing traffic, which is obviously not a wise move.
"Even online celebrity stores are in the hearts of consumers ‘ Planting grass ’ The process is also a process of constantly improving the expectation of experience, which is also a challenge to the quality of products and services of online celebrity stores. " Jin Ge said.
Serious homogenization is a common problem in online celebrity stores, and conformity psychology exists not only in consumers, but also in online celebrity stores. When a online celebrity store is on fire, the same type of store will appear immediately, and the same marketing method will be used to build a online celebrity store, even with similar names, which will cause consumers’ aesthetic fatigue.
Jin Ge said that although the rise of the emerging Internet business model has provided a low-threshold platform for innovation, it is easy to innovate and difficult to attract attention. Therefore, following the trend and hitchhiking have become speculative choices.
In the marketing of online celebrity store, it may also involve the issue of false propaganda. Under the fame, it is really difficult to be deputy. In the media marketing soft articles or short videos, exaggerated methods are used to amplify the effect of products. "If the actual situation after arriving at the store is inconsistent with the propaganda content of the online celebrity store, its behavior has constituted false propaganda." Liao Huaixue said that Article 4 of the Advertising Law clearly stipulates that advertisements shall not contain false or misleading contents and shall not deceive or mislead consumers. Advertisers should be responsible for the authenticity of advertising content.
In addition, if the online celebrity store involves false propaganda and infringes consumers’ right to know, according to the relevant provisions of the Consumer Protection Law, the store should bear corresponding legal responsibilities. Consumers should take up legal weapons in time to safeguard their legitimate rights and interests if they encounter some shops that are not worthy of the name and involve deception. This is not only responsible for yourself, but also for society.
At the same time, public comment, WeChat, Tik Tok and other apps should assume corresponding responsibilities. "From the perspective of platform responsibility, the network platform should take comprehensive prevention and control measures to regulate the online celebrity stores in the platform, protect the legitimate rights and interests of consumers, and earnestly fulfill the platform obligations." Liao Huai said.
