Digital Marketing in China and the Coronavirus Pandemic

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Table of Contents

Introduction
Tendencies in Chinese Digital Marketing during the Pandemic
Description of a Company
Strategies to Adaption to New Conditions
Conclusion
References

Introduction

The COVID-19 pandemic revealed the power of digital technologies and ecosystems in the context of adapting to new living conditions. In China, the digital market has incurred significant changes under the need to respond to the lockdown circumstances. It should be highlighted that China managed to introduce offerings on adaptation rapidly. Forest Cabin Cosmetics may be an illustrative example of a successful implementation of necessary improvements, which prevented the company from bankruptcy. Therefore, the purpose of this paper is to outline the current tendencies in the Chinese digital market and provide an analysis of a real case, namely the adaptation of Forest Cabin Cosmetics.

Tendencies in Chinese Digital Marketing during the Pandemic

In the new environment, numerous companies have to adjust and use all the possibilities available. An efficient strategy implied establishing webinars and webcasts for different brands. Kathayat (2020) claims: “Stats show that more than 80% of users prefer watching brand videos rather than reading their blogs or scanning through their social network text updates” (para. 9). It was extremely successful in the conditions of lockdown, as people have to stay at home on a constant basis and tend to spend more time online. Therefore, companies used this promising tool in order to attract new customers (Kathayat, 2020). Digital marketing provided essential platforms for the realization of this idea.

Lockdowns lead to the closure of all the offline stores for an uncertain period of time, which affected the revenue to a large extent. In this regard, businesses attempted to transit their products in online shops (Chan et al. 2020). Digital ecosystems were extremely helpful in organizing these intentions and made a considerable contribution to mitigating the negative consequences of the pandemic in China (Chan et al. 2020). They provided the businesses with the necessary tools, which made this process rapid and easy. Thus, in the case of applying the aforementioned adaptation strategies, companies managed to recover from the negative impact of the pandemic. An illustrative example of the successful implementation of these ideas could be the brand Forest Cabin Cosmetics.

Description of a Company

Forest Cabin Cosmetics or Lin Qing Xuan is a brand in the beauty sphere that focuses on skincare. The specifics of the brand imply the concentration on applying traditional Chinese medicine practice (How Alibaba helps retailer Lin Qingxuan, 2020). In addition, all the ingredients are natural, as traditional Chinese herbs are used to create products. Being established in 2003, the company is successful in the Chinese market, and its growth is rapid. Before the pandemic, it owned 337 offline stores, and the staff included more than 2,000 specialists (How Alibaba helps retailer Lin Qingxuan, 2020; Sandler, 2020). Like a great number of other offline stores, it incurred a negative impact to a large extent.

Strategies to Adaption to New Conditions

The negative consequences of the COVID-19 outbreak for Forest Cabin Cosmetics cannot be underestimated. In May 2020, its founder, Sun Laichun, highlighted that “sales fell 90 percent during the Spring Festival holiday” (Achim, 2020, para. 9). At that moment, he estimated the losses at 4,26 million dollars and expected bankruptcy in two months (Achim, 2020). In order to prevent these circumstances, the company adhered to a new strategy in the context of marketing. Forest Cabin Cosmetics established live stream sessions, which attracted numerous customers. According to Jing Daily, the brand “was soon adding some 3,000 new loyalty members a day, up from the typical average of 800 to 1,000 people” (Achim, 2020, para. 10). Therefore, this measure significantly contributed to the resiliency of this business during a difficult period.

The second important implementation implies the transition to online stores. Before the pandemic, only a quarter of the product line of the company was available to purchase online, while currently, all the positions are represented on the Internet (Sandler, 2020). As a result, in case the indicators of last year are compared to the current ones, the revenue of the brand increased by 120% in March (Sandler, 2020). Therefore, new strategies and a range of improvements were extremely successful and prevented Forest Cabin Cosmetics from total closure.

Conclusion

The outbreak of COVID-19 has changed reality significantly, and it regards all the spheres of life. The field of business has encountered considerable problems, and digital marketing supplied possible solutions for preventing bankruptcy. Digital ecosystems contributed to establishing webinars and live stream sessions, which were resultative for promoting companies in social networks. They also provided enterprises with rapid solutions on the transition to online stores. These implementations were vital in the context of company development, and the case of Forest Cabin Cosmetics proves this thesis. Therefore, the interest in digital marketing increased, and their services are characterized by high demand. It has become a vital part of the activity of every business, as, in the context of present-day development, the majority of customers are attracted via Internet mechanisms. In addition, during the pandemic, most parts of the products are sold online. Thus, the importance of digital marketing significantly increased during the coronavirus pandemic.