Long-term development of building materials industry needs to abandon the hype concept

Nowadays, the building materials field is already a fully competitive market. Especially for building materials such as paint, flooring, ceramic tile, etc., almost no brand can occupy a monopoly position. Even the brands with higher reputation in the market are few, and the others are all production. Small and medium-sized brands, in order to compete with big brands, often exaggerate promotional products and give products some magical functions. This not only causes trouble for consumers, but also disturbs the development order of the entire industry.

Taking the antibacterial floor as an example, the concept that was proposed more than 10 years ago was a very powerful company. However, because the company did not make a breakthrough in antibacterial technology at the time, it only applied an antibacterial agent to the floor surface. The so-called anti-bacterial floor soon became popular in the market, and the concept of “antibacterial” has also rapidly become popular, and has been turned into a “weapon” that can effectively kill bacteria such as E. coli and staphylococcus. For these various propaganda, consumers even do not know how to choose, coupled with recent media reports that antibacterial flooring may cause children's skin allergies, making consumers fall into the dilemma of neither buying nor buying.

The reporter believes that the root cause of this chaos is the concept of disorderly hype. Businesses generally follow the following ideas for hype: first put forward a consumer most concerned about the function, such as antibacterial, in addition to formaldehyde, and then give this feature a high-tech coat, such as nano, silver ions, photocatalyst, etc. On various national patent certificates, industry association certifications, etc., the contents are mostly "bactericidal rate of more than 99%" and "can reduce formaldehyde content in the air more than 90%", etc., to prove its strong features, after the business through the marketing channels And on the Internet, media hype, this functional product was officially born.

The difficulty of oversight by the relevant departments over the concept of building materials vendors' hype for functional products is that they are not without antibacterial and anti-formaldehyde functions, but they are not so effective and powerful. At the same time, because it is a newly proposed functional concept, there is no legal regulation, there is no national standard, industry standard constraints, so there is no supervision. It is very difficult to formulate industry standards. It requires joint medical care, building materials, environmental protection and other departments. Cross-sector cooperation is required to issue relevant regulations. This is a fairly long period, at least two years or so. When such new standards were introduced, the concept was out of date. At this time, some manufacturers launched new concept products. Therefore, this is also the reason why new concepts are introduced in many fields every time. Businesses do not find a breakthrough in technology, but rather need to sell goods.

For enterprises, the new function of hype products has a very significant effect on the sales growth in the short term, and it can also increase the visibility of the company because putting on the “high-tech outerwear” is more conducive to building prestige in the minds of consumers. Therefore, many companies and even some industry leaders are happy to adopt this approach. However, this is only a short-term effect, and its pull on product sales is limited, but the damage to the entire industry is long-term, and the impact on the credibility of its own brand is also fundamental.

The author believes that in order to seek long-term healthy development, the industry associations must guide enterprises to strengthen self-discipline, require them to abandon the marketing ideas of the concept of speculation, and not to chant marketing but to return to the right path of technological breakthroughs. Win consumer recognition.