香氛品牌 为什么最像“讲故事公司”

This article unpacks the underlying logic of the fragrance industry, helping general consumers understand what they are really purchasing when buying fragrance, and clarifying the broader new consumer trend reshaping China's market.

1. The fragrance industry does not sell scent itself—it sells the stories, identity and emotion attached to scent. Consumers are essentially purchasing the version of themselves they want to become, and the price premium pays for narrative value rather than raw material costs. There is no need to over-obsess over differences in raw material expenses.

2. China's consumer market has evolved beyond the eras of functional and quality-focused consumption, and has now entered the "meaning consumption" era. Purchasing has shifted from meeting material needs to seeking identity recognition and spiritual self-expression. This same logic drives the boom of other popular categories in recent years, including outdoor recreation, camping and craft beer.

3. As consumer products become increasingly homogeneous, the core criteria for consumer choice will be the meaning and identity a brand provides. General consumers can simply select fragrance based on the identity they want to express, and choose what aligns best with their personal needs.

This article reveals the overarching trend reshaping China's consumer sector, outlining clear directions for brand building for fragrance and all consumer product categories.

1. Shifting consumer trends: China's consumer market has completed its transition from the functional era to the quality era, and has now officially entered the era of meaning consumption. Consumers now prioritize identity, self-expression and meaning over product functionality, which is the most fundamental shift all brands must adapt to today.

2. Logic of brand building: The core competitive advantage of future brands will no longer lie in supply chains or R&D investment, but in the ability to craft compelling stories and build strong narratives. Brands must transform into "meaning makers", turning user emotions into tangible concepts and providing consumers with identity recognition and a clear spiritual positioning.

3. How to build high price premiums: For categories without clear functional metrics, consumers understand products through their stories. Brands can command high premiums by aligning their products with culture, lifestyle and identity labels. Iconic successful examples include Chanel No. 5's association with Marilyn Monroe, and Le Labo's positioning around the identity of independent artists.

This article sorts out the fundamental shifts in today's consumer market, points out new growth opportunities for all types of sellers, and provides key risk warnings.

1. Market growth opportunities: With the arrival of the meaning consumption era, consumers are increasingly willing to pay a premium for products that express their personal identity and provide spiritual recognition. Sectors focused on identity expression and emotional value will continue to grow. Sellers should prioritize布局 these categories to capture new incremental growth.

2. Direction for operational adjustment: Sellers do not need to compete only on cost and price. By learning to endow products with stories and narratives that resonate with their target audience, and aligning with the lifestyles and cultural tags their target customers aspire to, sellers can build differentiated competitiveness and command higher price premiums.

3. Risk warning: If sellers only compete on function and price, and lack a core meaning-driven expression, they are very likely to be eliminated in homogeneous competition. All categories will face the test of meaning-based competition in the future. Sellers need to adjust their operational logic early to avoid falling into the vicious cycle of price wars.

This article outlines new market shifts for consumer OEMs and brands that own in-house manufacturing, and provides clear insights for transformation and growth.

1. Shifting product design and production demand: Today's consumer demand has shifted from functionality and quality to meaning and identity expression. When developing and producing products, factories should not focus solely on raw material costs and production processes. They should proactively collaborate with brand partners to uncover the emotional and cultural attributes embedded in products, to adapt to new market demand.

2. New business opportunities: Amid the rise of meaning consumption, demand for emerging niche categories such as niche fragrance, which cater to diverse identity labels, is growing steadily. Factories can proactively partner with more emerging niche meaning-driven brands to expand new, stable order sources, and avoid the cutthroat competition of low-margin bulk orders from traditional large brands.

3. Insights for transformation: In the past, factories gained competitive advantage through scale and low cost. In the coming era of meaning-based competition, brands' core competitiveness lies in narrative rather than manufacturing. Factories need to clarify their positioning: either build flexible supply chains to meet the demand of small-batch, multi-category production for niche brands, or build out narrative and brand storytelling capabilities if they develop their own branded business.

This article clearly outlines the overall development trend of China's consumer industry, sorts out core client pain points and new business directions for all types of service providers serving consumer brands.

1. Industry development trend: Consumption has evolved from the functional and quality eras into the meaning consumption era. More and more brands have recognized the importance of narrative capability and meaning building, and demand for related services is growing rapidly, creating a new high-growth business segment for service providers.

2. Core client pain points: Many traditional brands still operate under the old logic of competing on function and cost, and lack a clear path to break through product homogenization, low price premiums and low user recognition. Meanwhile, a large number of new brands do not know how to build differentiation, and lack mature capabilities for narrative building.

3. Direction for solutions: Service providers can develop targeted service offerings around brand narrative building, identity label alignment and cultural IP development. These services help brands turn user emotions into tangible concepts, craft brand stories that resonate with target consumers, meet brands' core demand for meaning building, and open up new revenue streams for service providers.

This article reveals new shifts in the consumer industry, outlines new directions for merchant recruitment and operations for all types of consumer platforms, and helps platforms navigate emerging industry risks.

1. New merchant demand on platforms: In the era of meaning consumption, a large number of emerging brands focused on narrative and niche identity recognition are growing rapidly. Unlike traditional mass-market brands, these brands need platforms to provide more content exposure and scenario matching support to help them deliver their brand stories and gain user recognition.

2. Direction for platform recruitment and operations: Platforms can increase recruitment efforts for categories aligned with the meaning consumption trend, including niche fragrance, outdoor camping, vintage goods and craft beer. This will enrich platform category structure, capture new growth traffic, and optimize platform user demographics.

3. Risk mitigation: Platforms should not allocate all resources to traditional brands that compete on price and scale. They need to prioritize supporting the growth of emerging meaning-driven brands to avoid missing out on the dividends of the new consumer trend. Platforms should also guide merchants to invest in brand narrative building, reduce homogeneous price competition, and improve the overall profit margin of the platform ecosystem.

This article uses the fragrance industry as a typical case to sort out the development stages of China's consumer industry, proposes new directions for industrial development, and puts forward new research topics for industry researchers.

1. New industry trends: Over the past two decades, China's consumer industry has gone through three clear stages of development: the functional era, which met basic material demand; the quality era, which focused on product performance; and the current era of meaning, where consumers seek to answer "Who am I" and pursue identity recognition. This is the latest structural shift in China's consumer industry.

2. New changes in business models: In the past, the core of consumer brand competition was supply chain capability and cost advantages from scale. In the future, the core of competition will be narrative control over consumer mindshare. Brand positioning will shift from product manufacturer to meaning manufacturer. The fragrance industry serves as an early test case for this new trend, and carries high research value.

3. Research insights: Future research can further explore methods of meaning crafting and narrative building across different categories, the impact of meaning consumption on the competitive landscape of the entire consumer industry, and changes to brand valuation logic and growth paths in the meaning consumption era. All of these are new topics worthy of in-depth exploration in industrial research.