上海8个商场联手“勾引”年轻人：宝可梦只是借口

This article breaks down the core logic behind Pokémon's recent resurgence in popularity, as well as the innovative new traffic-driving strategy of eight top-tier Shanghai malls that leveraged the Pokémon hype. It also unpacks emerging changes in today's offline consumer market, delivering actionable, easy-to-understand insights.

1. Pokémon's comeback is the result of five converging factors: its 30th anniversary triggered collective nostalgia among millennials born between 1985 and 1995, it perfectly caught the boom of China's "guzi" (goods for otaku) economy, Pokémon Trading Card Game Mobile lowered the barrier to entry and brought the entire category into the mainstream, frequent brand collaborations combined with social media influencer marketing helped it break out of niche circles, and its cross-generational appeal allows it to accurately meet young consumers' growing demand for emotional consumption.

2. Today's offline malls no longer rely on discount pricing to draw foot traffic. Instead, they focus on building immersive experiences and selling atmosphere through popular IP events. Going forward, consumers can look out for these cross-mall IP collaboration events to gain unique emotional value and social experiences.

This article outlines the commercial logic behind IP resurgence and a new model for offline channel collaboration, offering multi-dimensional insights to inform brand marketers' product and marketing strategy.

1. On consumer trends: China's guzi economy is booming, with a 2024 market size of 168.9 billion RMB, representing a 40.63% year-on-year increase. The number of pan-anime users in China is projected to reach 520 million by 2026. At the same time, emotional consumption is on the rise: young consumers are willing to pay for emotional value such as nostalgia and companionship, giving mature IPs with cross-generational appeal far greater market potential.

2. On brand operations: Brands can draw inspiration from Pokémon's "IP + collaboration + social media" marketing model. Brands can launch interactive check-in campaigns by partnering with offline channels of different positioning, trigger collective nostalgia around key milestones to encourage organic user sharing and break into mainstream audiences, and tap into non-core users unreachable online through offline mall alliance collaborations to expand brand reach and achieve win-win results.

This article analyzes the structural shifts in China's current consumer market, delivering clear opportunity alerts and actionable operational takeaways for both online and offline sellers.

1. On market shifts: Consumption has clearly diverged into two tracks: online platforms compete on cost efficiency, while offline markets compete on experience and emotional value. Offline sellers do not need to compete with online platforms on price; they can carve out sustainable market share by focusing on differentiated experience and emotional value.

2. On opportunities and strategies: The guzi economy and emotional consumption sectors are growing rapidly, with strong demand for merchandise based on well-established legacy IPs and investment-grade trading cards. Sellers can adapt the strategy used by Shanghai malls by partnering with other local businesses across different positioning to host cross-store check-in campaigns, collaborate to generate city-wide buzz, amplify traffic reach, and gain organic free exposure through social media.

3. Risk alert: Single-store, single-location marketing can barely withstand the impact of online traffic. Going it alone easily leads to marginalization in the current market, so sellers need to adjust their approach proactively.

This article analyzes shifting demand in the IP merchandise consumer market, outlining clear commercial opportunities and transformation insights for manufacturing factories.

1. On product design and manufacturing requirements: Amid the guzi economy boom, demand for IP merchandise is strong, and consumers prioritize IP recognition and emotional connection over low prices. Categories including badges, blind boxes, plush toys, and trading cards are seeing rapid demand growth. Factories should prioritize aligning product design with the IP's emotional attributes, rather than only pursuing the lowest possible cost and price point.

2. On commercial opportunities: The resurgence of mature legacy IPs has driven growing order demand for related merchandise. Cross-generational IPs like Pokémon in particular see high demand for collaborations and offer large market potential. Factories can proactively partner with IP holders and mall alliances to secure stable order streams.

3. On transformation insights: Factories can adjust their product portfolio to align with the new "online drives offline" trend, focus on high value-added IP merchandise to avoid cutthroat low-price online competition, and capture growth by riding the wave of emotional consumption.

This article outlines emerging trends in offline physical retail and IP-driven consumption, summarizes core pain points for industry clients, and lays out actionable solutions, serving as a reference for all types of commercial service providers.

1. On industry trends: Competition among offline physical malls has shifted from traditional competition based on location and single-store performance to competition based on content and IP. Alliances and IP-centric operations have become the core development direction for offline retail. Meanwhile, the sustained growth of the guzi economy and emotional consumption has driven rapidly increasing market demand for professional offline IP operations.

2. On core client pain points: Traditional offline malls普遍 face declining foot traffic and rising vacancy rates. Single-store marketing efforts rarely generate city-wide buzz, making it impossible to counter the traffic drain from online e-commerce, so new traffic-driving solutions are in urgent demand.

3. On actionable solutions: Service providers can expand into new lines of business including mall alliance event planning, popular IP connection and operations, and social media influencer seeding campaigns. They can help malls coordinate venues across different positioning, bring in mature IPs to host interactive experience events, and build curated emotional atmospheres to solve the core problem of declining foot traffic.

This article analyzes new shifts in offline physical retail and the broader consumer market, offering clear directional guidance for the operational transformation of offline marketplace operators.

1. On shifting market demand: Traditional offline mall marketplaces普遍 face declining foot traffic. Today's consumers no longer visit offline venues primarily to purchase goods; instead, they go to explore curated spaces, connect with like-minded people, and gain social and emotional value. They are more willing to pay for one-of-a-kind experiences.

2. On replicable cutting-edge operational practices: Operators can integrate top malls of different positioning across a city to form a shopping district alliance, jointly bring in popular, mature IPs, and host cross-mall interactive activities such as stamp-collecting check-ins to generate city-wide buzz. Malls of different positioning can attract distinct consumer segments to amplify overall traffic effects.

3. On operational adjustment and risk mitigation: Operators need to adjust their performance assessment frameworks proactively. Core metrics should not be limited to floor space productivity and rental return; new metrics such as average visitor dwell time, social media engagement volume, and IP collaboration frequency should be added. Operators must abandon single-store thinking early and shift to the new "alliance + IP" operational mindset to avoid being marginalized in the market.

This article presents observations of the latest developments in offline physical retail and IP-driven consumption, and summarizes new business models and industry rules for reference by industry researchers.

1. New industry developments: First, the resurgence of legacy mature IPs follows a "five-factor resonance" rule: IP reactivation is achieved through a combination of milestone marketing, the guzi economy boom, mobile platforms lowering entry barriers, social media seeding, and cross-generational appeal, allowing the IP to meet current demand for emotional consumption. Second, in response to online competition, offline shopping districts have developed a new traffic-driving model of IP collaborations through shopping district alliances, shifting industry competition from competition over location to competition over content.

2. Emerging challenges: The market share of traditional single-store offline malls continues to be squeezed. Independent operations cannot generate sufficient traffic effects to counter competition from online e-commerce and social media platforms.

3. New business model: This article summarizes a new transformation model for offline physical retail: "shopping district alliance + popular IP + experience marketing". It argues that the core of future offline retail is selling atmosphere, rather than selling goods, offering a new direction for research on physical retail transformation.