A famous tea expert in China, graduated from the Tea Department of Anhui Agricultural University, and served as the Secretary-General of China Tea Circulation Association. Not long ago, I took part in an activity. All the participants are famous cardiovascular experts in China. They are all interested in tea. In the process of chatting, what they ask most is how to distinguish the quality of tea, because every year there are experts to collect all kinds of tea, and the tea delivery person will tell them every time: "This is the best tea. Keep it for yourself and never give it away. " In fact, experts can't drink much by themselves, and they can't tell which teas are worth keeping, so after a long time, there is a backlog of tea, and many of them have expired. In reality, there are not a few tea drinkers who encounter this problem, because there are many kinds of tea in China, and the tea products are even more dazzling. Among many products, it is difficult for consumers to make a choice without a well-known tea brand. This is the embarrassing reality that China tea faces at present.

First, the embarrassing situation of China tea brands

In recent ten years, with the support of governments at all levels and the promotion of good economic benefits, the tea industry in China has developed rapidly. By 20 1 1 year, the total output of tea in China will be 654.38+620 million tons, an increase of 654.38+475 million tons or 9.9% over the previous year. According to the calculation of agricultural departments, the agricultural output value of tea in China reached 72.89 billion yuan in 20 1 1 year, up by 37.5% over the previous year, and the average unit price was 45 yuan/kg, up by 25.3% over the previous year. According to this calculation, China's domestic tea sales have exceeded 654.38+050 billion yuan.

With the development of China's tea industry, the brand awareness of tea enterprises has been continuously enhanced, and the brand building of tea industry has also achieved certain results. At present, there are nearly 100 tea brands recognized as well-known trademarks in China by the State Administration for Industry and Commerce, including Tianfu Tea, Huaxiangyuan, Zhuyeqing, Dayi, Wuyixing, Wuyutai, Zhang Yiyuan, Pinxiang and other well-known brands in the market. But in general, the brands of most tea enterprises are still very weak, mainly reflected in the low concentration of tea industry, most of which are regional brands, and their brand influence is weak. At present, the sales of the largest tea enterprise in China is only about 65.438+0.5 billion yuan, and its market share is less than 5%. Therefore, the brand building of tea is still in its infancy.

In the case that tea enterprises are generally weak, the construction of "public brands" promoted by the government is mostly named after local main tea products. Tea promotion still stays at the level of "famous tea" promotion and cultivation, and corporate brands are still difficult to achieve. Due to the deviation of the positioning of famous tea and excessive dependence on the manual production and processing of famous tea, enterprises overemphasize "authenticity" and "culture" in propaganda, which leads to the hype of famous tea.

Second, the main problems in tea brand building

In addition to the above-mentioned scattered management and weak strength, I personally think there are several reasons that lead to the lag of tea brand building in China:

1. Lack of standards, it is difficult to judge the quality.

Tea in China is divided into six categories, with thousands of varieties, each with different grades. As a result, in such a huge and complicated product system, professionals feel that they are "too old to remember the name of tea", let alone ordinary consumers. At the same time, most of our tea standards are sensory standards except hygiene and heavy metals can be detected by instruments. The terms in sensory standards are difficult to accurately describe the quality of tea, and these standards are also difficult to play a role in actual trading and pricing, resulting in no standards to judge the quality of products in the market. Due to the lack of standards, consumers can't know the quality of tea when they buy tea, which provides an opportunity for some unscrupulous merchants, making the market have the behavior of shoddy and inflated pricing, causing consumers to have doubts when buying tea, fearing being fooled, inhibiting the consumption demand of tea, which is not conducive to the establishment of brands.

2. Lack of honesty and quick success.

In the absence of an effective self-discipline mechanism in the industry, market management relies more on government functional departments. At present, although there are many departments involved in tea market management, including quality inspection, industry and commerce, food hygiene and other departments, due to unclear responsibilities, it is impossible to effectively supervise the market, resulting in the absence of market management. In this case, many enterprises with different morals participate in the tea business, and it is inevitable that there will be problems of integrity. In this way, there will be a phenomenon in the market that "the flat one is called Longjing, and the curly one is called Biluochun". That is to say, whatever is popular in the market will be produced by everyone, regardless of the place of origin and quality. The existence of these phenomena directly affects the establishment of trust relationship between merchants and consumers, and then hinders the establishment of tea brands.

3. The concept of evil speculation and over-packaging

At the beginning of the listing of spring tea this year, individual enterprises artificially pushed up the price of tea through auction or manufacturing concepts. Among them: the price of 500 grams of Longjing in West Lake, Hangzhou, Zhejiang Province is 654.38+0.8 million yuan, and the price of 500 grams of Xinyang Maojian in Xinyang, Henan Province is 654.38+0.3 million yuan; Sichuan 500 grams of "panda tea" sold for 220,000 yuan, the price is comparable to gold, and it was dubbed "sky-high tea". The frequent appearance of high-priced tea has caused widespread controversy in society. Judging from the current situation, the impact is basically negative, which not only can not be recognized by the society, but also seriously damages the reputation of the industry and affects the increase of tea consumption. The concepts of "evil speculation" and "striving for popularity" are the misunderstandings of enterprises in brand building. In fact, in addition to popularity, brands need to build their own long-term reputation and consumer loyalty.

As tea is a traditional gift, all enterprises attach great importance to the development of its product packaging. In fact, moderate packaging can really promote enterprises to establish brands and increase the added value of products. However, at present, under the joint action of profit-seeking impulse of producers and operators and face consumption of consumers, the situation of over-packaging in the tea market is more serious, which is mainly manifested in excessive packaging consumables, excessive weight, too large volume, too high cost, too gorgeous decoration and too beautiful words. Deceiving consumers with packaging not only harms the interests of consumers, but also damages the long-term image and reputation of corporate brands, and ultimately endangers the healthy development of the tea industry.

Third, my thoughts on the future tea brand construction.

It can be said that the brand of China tea industry is still very weak, and China tea industry is still in the primary stage of brand development. However, if we look at it from another angle, China tea industry also has great opportunities. In the absence of market supervision mechanism and integrity, consumers' brand awareness is getting higher and higher. Therefore, any enterprise that can truly understand the meaning of brand and make great efforts to build a brand may win a favorable position in the future tea industry in China. In view of this, I would like to put forward some immature ideas on the construction of tea brands in the future.

1. From "price orientation" to "value orientation"

Not long ago, I attended the "Return to Origin: China Tea Brand Tour-2065438+02 China Tea Brand Theme Forum" jointly organized by Anhui Agricultural University and Xiangyuan Tea Co., Ltd. in Hefei, focusing on consumer value. In the past few years, China tea has effectively expanded the domestic tea consumption market through the construction of famous tea, but there has also been a deviation in the positioning of famous tea, which has led enterprises to pay too much attention to the development of the gift market. The so-called "buy without drinking, drink without buying", tea relies on relationship sales, while ignoring the fundamental issues that consumers care about in the process of tea consumption, such as "safety, convenience and value for money". As tea is a healthy drink, consumers' demand for tea quality will only be higher and higher in the future. Therefore, quality and safety are the basic requirements of brand products.