In the Third Consumer Era, Every Brand Must Be Rebuilt

Author | Zhao Bo

Editor | Zhang Yuwei Layout | Ge Chang

This is the eighth article in the A Profile of China’s Consumer Goods Market series.

Since the reform and opening-up of 1979, China’s economy and society have gone through several profound transformations, and the evolution of the consumer market is perhaps the clearest lens for observing the trajectory of the times. If we use the Engel coefficient as a dividing line, we can clearly identify three eras in the development of Chinese consumption:

Changes in consumption structure

(Source: National Bureau of Statistics, CBNData, Mob Research Institute)

The First Consumer Era (1979–1998) was a classic “scarcity economy,” in which people pursued simply having what they had not had before, and the primary task of consumption was to satisfy the most basic material needs for survival.

At the time, the radio and TV ads for Wang Shouyi Thirteen-Spice seasoning and Xuri Sheng iced black tea that dominated the airwaves captured the consumer psychology of an era of material shortage.

The Second Consumer Era (1999–2018) arrived as the Engel coefficient fell to between 30% and 50%, and people entered an “abundance economy.”

The mainstream consumers of this stage — especially the urban middle class born in the 1980s and 1990s — began shifting from basic material satisfaction toward improving their quality of life. Brands needed to provide not just products, but also guarantees of quality and functionality. TV advertising and e-commerce took off during this period, and the popularity of brands like Yili Milk and Snow Beer reflected this generation’s collective demand for functional satisfaction and a better life.

From 2019 onward, China formally entered the Third Consumer Era. With the Engel coefficient now stable below 30%, consumption is no longer focused on meeting basic material needs or improving functionality — it has moved into an “experience economy” centered on emotion, experience, and identity.

Young people now care more about the emotional resonance and spiritual value that consumption brings. Mixue’s affordable “small happiness,” Pop Mart’s blind-box joy, and the cultural symbolism that Laopu Gold has attached to gold jewelry are all typical representations of this new generation’s consumption landscape.

As we enter the Third Consumer Era, we observe a deeper trend: the marginal utility of material consumption for consumers has been clearly declining, and the pursuit of spiritual and emotional satisfaction has become the dominant driver of the market.

“What to buy” is no longer the main question — “why must I buy it right now” is the new challenge brands must face. This shift is not simply a matter of product turnover or channel innovation; it is a profound leap from physical needs to psychological needs, a fundamental transformation from functionalism to emotionalism.

As a result, every brand today must seriously rethink and answer this question: against a backdrop of material abundance and increasingly prominent spiritual needs, how should a brand reconstruct itself around consumers’ new emotional and spiritual needs?

Clearly, this is not a simple adjustment of brand strategy — it is a comprehensive, thoroughgoing rebuild of the brand.

The Essential Character of the Third Consumer Era

And the Consumer’s “To-Do List”

As consumer society enters the Third Consumer Era, the core driving force behind consumption demand has shifted dramatically. On the surface, this shift appears as diversified, emotion-driven consumption behavior; but at a deeper level, its essence is that consumers are moving from simply pursuing material satisfaction to pursuing emotional satisfaction and spiritual-value recognition.

First, the underlying logic of consumption has undergone a qualitative change:

In the past, consumption decisions were mostly based on the rational logic of “price–function–brand.” But today’s consumers — especially the new generation led by Gen Z — make consumption decisions driven far more by emotional and psychological needs. Consumption behavior is no longer simply a functional choice; it has become an instant “emotional processing mechanism.”

This shift shows up concretely in what we might call the consumer’s “to-do list”:

(1) The task of processing emotion and psychology

In a social environment marked by fast pace, high anxiety, and fragmented socializing, consumers’ first order of business is to relieve their own anxiety, loneliness, or stress. They need to find emotional comfort and psychological balance through the act of consumption. What brands need to provide is not just the product itself, but an emotional response and psychological reassurance.

A sense of companionship and security: Against a backdrop of social loneliness, consumers gain psychological companionship and security through IP characters, brand imagery, and emotional bonds — as with Pop Mart’s blind-box toys or virtual-idol IP figures.

A sense of recognition and belonging: As traditional social relationships gradually fade, consumers find new identity and emotional belonging by identifying with a brand’s values and resonating with its story. Laopu Gold, for example, satisfies consumers’ cultural identity through narratives built around Chinese traditional aesthetics and spiritual symbolism.

(2) The task of expressing social identity

As traditional identity labels become increasingly blurred, consumption has become an important channel for individual socializing and identity expression. Gen Z consumers in particular use the purchase and display of specific goods to establish their position within their social circles.

A sense of presence and social currency: Special goods such as “limited editions” and “collaborations” have become an important way for young people to show themselves off and build a sense of identity within their circle. The way limited-edition Genshin Impact badges have been resold for tens of thousands of yuan is a typical example of young people’s craving for social recognition and a sense of belonging within their tribe.

Subculture and tribal expression: The rise of the “goods economy” (谷子经济 — a term young Chinese fans use for collecting anime, idol, and ACG merchandise), with practices like posting hauls online and arranging elaborate merchandise displays, also reflects how young people today use subcultural goods to precisely express their individuality and cultural taste. At its core, this kind of consumption is a form of tribal socializing — confirming one’s own identity and gaining a sense of group belonging through the goods one consumes.

(3) The task of pursuing spiritual value

Once basic material conditions are fully satisfied, consumption gradually shifts toward higher-order spiritual value. Consumers no longer simply want a “better product” — they want products that can help them pursue self-worth and satisfy a sense of spiritual meaning.

Self-actualization and meaning-building: Consumers are starting to care about whether a brand reflects their own ideals and values — buying an eco-friendly product to express social responsibility, for instance, or buying limited-edition IP merchandise to express personal taste and cultural sensibility.

Participation in meaning and culture-building: Consumption is no longer a passive act of acceptance — it has become an active act of participating in the production of meaning. Brands need to build cultural narratives and spiritual value so that consumers can actively express their personal meaning through the act of consuming.

In sum, the consumer’s to-do list in the Third Consumer Era has shifted from a functionalist logic centered on material satisfaction to an emotionalist logic centered on spirit and emotion.

If a brand hopes to achieve lasting success against this new backdrop, it must clearly identify and organize itself around these new consumer to-do items, and carry out a profound reconstruction of its own strategy and brand-value system. This is the core reason brands need to be rebuilt once in the Third Consumer Era.

Why Do Brands Need to Be “Rebuilt”?

In the Third Consumer Era, the logic behind consumer choice has changed profoundly, yet most brands remain stuck in the logic of the previous era, still fighting for user attention through “feature stacking + price wars,” trying to buy loyalty with higher value for money, stronger performance, or lower cost.

This approach worked in the Second Consumer Era, but today, faced with a new consumption logic that is spiritual, emotional, and symbolic, it is becoming increasingly ineffective — and increasingly marginalized.

(1) The failure of traditional brand logic

1. Feature overload, perception fatigue.

Now that society as a whole has entered a stage of “extreme material abundance,” the functions of goods in most industries have become highly homogenized, and users are growing numb to the sensation of “a little bit better.” Whatever feature you can build, someone else can too; whatever price you can cut, someone else can cut too. Product differentiation keeps getting harder, and brand loyalty keeps getting weaker.

2. Over-rationalized competition, missing emotional connection

Traditional brands pursue “clear selling points and efficient channels,” but neglect the connection with consumers at the emotional level. A product can be copied, but emotion cannot. This is precisely why brands that can genuinely trigger emotional resonance and build spiritual belonging are the ones capable of long-term growth premiums and resilience through economic cycles.

3. Treating people as “traffic,” ignoring their “role”

Many brands are still centered on “customer acquisition cost” and “conversion rate,” treating users as units of traffic rather than whole people with flesh and blood, beliefs, and emotions. Ignoring human nature is the root cause of why so much brand marketing fails today.

(2) The times have evolved, but brand narratives have not kept up

Over the past 20 years, brands have largely played the role of “solution provider,” offering consumers a more convenient, more efficient way of life. But in the Third Consumer Era, this role must undergo a qualitative leap:

Consumer demand has shifted from “should I buy this” to “can this represent me” — the brand must become the medium through which consumers express their emotion, values, and identity, not merely a product label. This structural shift means brands don’t just need to “update once” — they need to be rebuilt once.

(3) Without a rebuild, brands will be discarded by the times

1. Young people “aren’t buying it”

Gen Z consumers are no longer moved by standardized, one-size-fits-all brand messaging. They care more about the values, cultural character, and emotional expression behind a brand. If a brand cannot build “empathic power,” it will be quickly eliminated in the attention economy.

2. Brand lifecycles have shrunk dramatically

As social media, livestream e-commerce, and AI content generation develop, the speed of information diffusion has grown exponentially — new brands break out more easily, and old brands are forgotten more easily too. A brand that does not establish a strategic spiritual position will become a flash-in-the-pan “traffic label,” losing any deep user stickiness.

3. Platform logic is swallowing brand logic

Platforms like Douyin, Taobao, and Pinduoduo compress brands down to SKUs or promotional tools. If a brand does not build an independent personality and spiritual value, it can only become a parasite that “clings to whoever hands it traffic.”

(4) What “rebuilding” a brand really means

“Rebuilding” a brand is not as shallow as simply changing a logo, shooting a new TVC, or doing a co-branding collaboration — it is a full systemic reconstruction that runs from product philosophy → view of human nature → values. The core idea can be put in a single sentence:

A brand no longer sells function — it becomes part of the user’s inner, spiritual world.

Who are you? What do you stand for? What feelings do you evoke in your users? What role do you play in their lives? These are the questions every brand must answer anew in the Third Consumer Era.

So rather than saying “brands need a marketing upgrade,” it would be more accurate to say “brands must undergo a values reconstruction.” The Third Consumer Era is a spiritual elimination match for brands, not a channel speed race. Every brand must start from consumers’ new psychological motivations and, centered on the consumer’s “to-do list,” carry out a complete rebuild in the fullest sense. This is a challenge — and, even more, an opportunity of the era.

Around the Consumer’s “New To-Do List”

How Should Brands Reconstruct Their Own Value System?

If the Third Consumer Era has drawn a new starting line for brands, then the real race track has shifted from “product strength” to “psychological responsiveness.” A brand’s task is no longer to make consumers buy, but to make them “identify with” and “feel” it. In this sense, the essence of rebuilding a brand is to build an entirely new brand-value system around the consumer’s “psychological to-do list.”

(1) The logical starting point for building a brand: shifts in consumption motivation

In the Third Consumer Era, consumer behavior is no longer driven solely by “rational need” — it is woven together from more complex emotional, psychological, and social factors. These can be summarized as four major psychological drivers:

This four-quadrant psychological mechanism determines the underlying logic of why a consumer “must buy right now.” A brand’s core task is to build a “response system” for these psychological drivers, becoming the consumer’s emotional anchor, social vehicle, and spiritual vessel.

(2) Reconstruction path one: the product is no longer a “tool” — it is a “psychological event”

In the past, brand building centered on “use value” — durability, aesthetics, a fair price. But today, the reason for a product’s existence must extend into the user’s psychological system. It’s not “is this thing good,” but “does this thing understand me.”

To give three examples: Pop Mart’s blind-box mechanism is not a packaging innovation — it productizes the dopamine-release mechanism of “the moment you open it,” turning users’ curiosity, anticipation, disappointment, and delight into a full “emotional rhythm of consumption.”

Mixue’s 3-yuan ice-cream lemonade is more than a drink — it is a “symbol of cheap happiness” on an exhausting workday, a small act of self-encouragement in the daily life of the working class.

Laopu Gold’s prayer beads are not decoration — they are a ritualistic projection of the spirit, a “wearable wish.”

In these cases, what we see is not competition over product function, but the “encoding of psychological function” — through designed experiential scenes, behavioral rhythms, and symbolic meaning, brands turn products from tools into something “perceivable, emotionally chargeable, and story-able.”

(3) Reconstruction path two: brand value shifts from “conveying information” to “identity resonance”

In past brand communication, the emphasis was on “clearly stating who I am.” Today, the core is “making you feel who you are.”

The consumer’s new task: confirming the self through consumption

• Finding an “emotional companion” in a complicated world

• Seeking “cultural belonging” on social networks

• Confirming one’s “identity” through the act of consuming

A brand is no longer just expressing its own personality — more importantly, it must reflect and shape the user’s sense of personal identity. The meaning of a brand is no longer “I am cool,” but “because you like me, you become more complete.”

On the operational level, a brand must have three identity functions:

A brand is not telling its own story — it is telling the story of “the user borrowing me to tell their own story.”

(4) Reconstruction path three: brand strategy must shift from “USP” to “ESP”

USP (Unique Selling Proposition) was the thinking of the previous generation of brands, but today’s consumers are not always looking for the “best solution” — they want to “be felt.”

So “ESP” — Emotional Selling Proposition — has become the strategic fulcrum for brands in the Third Consumer Era:

For a brand to build ESP capability, it must:

• Have the ability to design emotional intensity (such as blind-box unboxing, contrast-driven copywriting, or suspenseful packaging)

• Have a cultural narrative system (such as an IP story universe or a brand worldview)

• Establish a user-participation mechanism (such as community co-creation, IP collaborations, or content co-creation platforms)

(5) Reconstruction path four: build a closed-loop value system around the “to-do list”

We can summarize users’ “psychological to-do tasks” in the Third Consumer Era into five categories:

A brand is no longer a one-dimensional product provider — it is a platform-like system in which users confirm themselves, participate, and narrate their own stories.

(6) In short: rebuilding a brand is not “marketing it again” — it is “understanding human nature again”

In the Third Consumer Era, a brand’s real moat is not channel monopoly, and it is not being ahead on features. It is:

• Has it truly entered the user’s inner world and responded to their anxieties, hopes, and ideals?

• Does it truly carry some sustainable emotional value and social role?

• Has it truly become part of the system of meaning in their life?

When a brand can build “psychological resonance” and an “emotional anchor point” around the consumer’s new to-do list, it has completed this round of rebuilding — not a surface-level iteration, but a reconstruction of the spiritual system.

Classic Case Studies:

How Successful Brands Have Reconstructed Themselves

In the Third Consumer Era, a group of new consumer brands has been the first to complete the value leap “from product competition to spiritual resonance.” They no longer rely solely on product strength and channel efficiency, but have planted “anchors of meaning” in the consumer’s mind. Their success confirms exactly the logic laid out above: a brand must reconstruct its value system around the user’s psychological drivers and to-do list.

Below, we take Pop Mart, Mixue, and Laopu Gold — the “three sisters” of the Hong Kong stock market — as examples, and, together with the rise of the “goods economy,” systematically analyze how they have precisely tapped into consumer psychology to complete their brand reconstruction.

(1) Pop Mart: from toy to “emotional trigger,” building a consumption loop of instant gratification and identity

Consumer to-do items addressed:

“I need a feeling of joy” → dopamine-driven pleasure

“I want to express myself” → the social value of collecting

“I want to join a cultural niche” → subcultural belonging

Brand-value reconstruction logic:

Pop Mart has pushed the model “product = emotional event + social currency” to its extreme, completing the leap from “trendy-toy brand” to a sample case of the “emotion economy.”

(2) Mixue: using a 3-yuan cup of “small happiness” to build a spiritual harbor for the grassroots community

Consumer to-do items addressed:

“I need comfort” → affordable solace during the working class’s emotional lows

“I want social participation” → store IP, memes, and catchy music create a light social atmosphere

“I want pleasure with no barrier to entry” → an emotional entry point for everyone

Brand-value reconstruction logic:

Mixue is not selling drinks — it is selling people “affordable happiness,” a model of what might be called “emotional equality.”

(3) Laopu Gold: from jewelry to “cultural keepsake” — gold is no longer just a store of value, but an emotional talisman

Consumer to-do items addressed:

“I want to be protected” → the psychological symbolism of products like fortune beads and amulets

“I want to express cultural identity” → guofeng (Chinese-style) narratives that strengthen the modern reinterpretation of traditional culture

“I want my spending to carry spiritual value” → a substitute mechanism for religion and belief

Brand-value reconstruction logic:

Laopu Gold is not selling gold — it is selling a wearable form of spiritual belief and cultural keepsake, an emotional depth that traditional luxury brands cannot reach.

(4) The “goods economy”: young people’s spiritual anchor, identity projection, and social weapon

Consumer to-do items addressed:

“I want a spiritual idol” → projection through virtual IP

“I want to be recognized socially” → posting hauls, arranging displays, check-in culture

“I want to express my niche taste” → the subcultural logic that being niche is itself a form of status

Structural characteristics:

In the goods economy, young people are no longer consuming “utility” — they are consuming “spiritual connection” and “self-definition.”

(5) In short: the successful paradigm of brand reconstruction is a kind of “identity management”

What these brands have in common is that they are no longer satisfied with “occupying the shelf” — they are committed to “occupying the user’s psychological structure”:

• What Pop Mart sells is the design of an emotional peak

• What Mixue sells is a spiritual defense mechanism built from micro-happiness

• What Laopu Gold sells is a wearable form of cultural belief

• What the goods economy sells is social standing and identity symbolism in a virtual world

These brands deeply understand a signal of our times: as the consumer’s inner world grows ever more diverse and complex, a brand must become a medium through which they understand themselves, express themselves, and connect with others. Otherwise, no matter how good the product is, it remains merely a “functional module” — unable to leave a mark on the user’s mind, and unable to survive economic cycles or build brand equity.

How Should Brands Act?

Practical Path Recommendations for the Third Consumer Era

The Third Consumer Era is not simply a shift in market style — it is a cognitive leap concerning “people.”

Consumers have gone from being “rational evaluators of function” to “builders of emotion and identity.” This means brands can no longer focus only on “product strength,” “value for money,” or “acquisition efficiency” — they must redefine their reason for existing by starting anew from “the structure of human nature,” “emotional drivers,” and “social context.”

This chapter aims to provide a systematic, executable, cross-departmental brand reconstruction action path, to help brands rebuild their influence after “feature failure” and build a moat in an era of “meaning inflation.”

Action logic: from “managing the product” to “managing emotion + identity + community”

Transformation logic diagram:

Brands must shift from being a “linear salesperson” to a “multidimensional empathizer,” giving themselves “a place, a meaning, and a warmth” within the user’s emotional structure.

Path one: build an “ESP brand anchor” (Emotional Selling Proposition)

Operating principle:

Stop emphasizing only the USP (functional selling point), and instead distill a clear emotional promise that becomes a “psychological tag” in the brand’s mindshare.

Operating steps:

1. Emotional insight: Identify the target user’s primary emotional tension (such as anxiety, loneliness, self-doubt, or class anxiety)

2. Psychological positioning: A brand does not solve every problem — it becomes a stable anchor for just one emotion (for example: “companionship,” “being understood,” or “an expression of belief”)

3. Perceivable design: Visualize, productize, and turn that emotional proposition into IP (through emoji-like symbols, packaging language, or character design)

Examples:

Pop Mart = “I need to be understood through surprise”

Mixue = “I deserve small but real happiness”

Laopu Gold = “I long for spiritual protection and a sense of ritual”

Note: Emotional value does not equal “selling sentimentality” — it is the long-term design of an empathy mechanism.

Path two: build the brand’s “emotional scene system”

Emotional value is scene-dependent. A brand must build a sustainably repeatable “emotional field,” so that users naturally trigger a psychological connection to the brand within specific times and spaces.

Four emotional-scene mechanisms:

Operational focus: make “feeling” something that can be designed, triggered, and reproduced.

Path three: build a “multi-role brand persona” to fit complex user emotions

Modern consumers’ emotions are “multi-personality”: the office worker by day, the corporate drone by night, the lo-fi bohemian on weekends, the emo philosopher late at night… A brand must establish a multi-role, cross-context emotional adaptation mechanism that meets the psychological switching needed for different scenarios.

How to build a multi-role brand persona:

Path four: build a “user co-creation brand system”

In the traditional model, the brand tells the story and the user listens. In the Third Consumer Era, the brand must invite the user to tell the story together, building a sense of participation and ownership, thereby sparking deep emotional bonding and organic word-of-mouth.

The four-layer path for a co-created brand:

Path five: build the brand’s “spiritual moat”

As information fragments and attention becomes ever more inflated, a brand’s long-term value is no longer determined by “new-product frequency,” but by whether it possesses a structure of spiritual belief that can accumulate over the long term.

Principles for building a brand’s spiritual moat:

Typical characteristics of the FMCG industry:

• High frequency, low price, fast turnover, and easily substituted

• High category concentration and severe homogenization

• The era of “channel is king” has passed; the battle for mindshare is now the focus

Current difficulties:

• A clear bottleneck in new-customer growth, with repurchase rates hard to raise

• Price wars and channel fees eroding brand profit

• Young consumers lacking an emotional connection to traditional brands

New trend opportunities:

• Consumers no longer pay only for “function” or “value for money” — they pay for “emotional experience” plus “psychological identification”

• If an FMCG brand can occupy the role of “everyday emotional companion,” it can become a high-frequency mindshare anchor

Five strategic paths for FMCG brand reconstruction:

An illustration of upgraded brand language:

Ultimate goal:

Make the brand into “a space with memory” and “companionship with warmth,” giving it the structural strength to withstand fluctuations in traffic and platform reshuffles.

In short: the future of a brand is the ability to operate a “system of human nature”

In the Third Consumer Era, what a brand needs to win is no longer the user’s wallet, but their attention, resonance, and trust.

1. Can you become a “culture people can participate in”?
2. Do you hold a recallable emotional place in the user’s mind?
3. Have you helped them confirm their identity, connect emotionally, and realize some form of meaning?

This is the fundamental standard for whether a brand can “survive the cycle.”

The Future of Brands

Not Cheaper — More Felt

Looking back from where we stand in the Third Consumer Era, it is not hard to see: the history of Chinese brand development is, in essence, a history of the awakening of “people.” From the survival anxiety of the First Consumer Era, to the functional rationality of the Second Consumer Era, to the emotional expression and spiritual pursuit of the Third Consumer Era — consumers have kept changing, while most brands have not kept up.

This is no longer an era in which “if you have stock, you can sell it,” nor an era in which “if you explain it clearly, people will believe it.” It is an era of “making the user feel who they are.” A brand’s core mission has shifted from solving life’s problems to participating in the construction of the user’s meaning.

Brands are undergoing a triple role shift:

From function provider to emotional resonator: users no longer need only a product solution — they want the brand to accompany them through high-pressure moments and respond to their genuine inner state.

From information broadcaster to culture shaper: a brand no longer covers the market with “one uniform script” — it must become a cultural symbol’s vehicle and landing point across diverse social scenes.

From a consumer business to human-nature engineering: a real brand is not selling things — it is operating human nature, finding users across different psychological rhythms, social states, and identities, understanding them, and rebuilding itself on that basis.

Every brand must be rebuilt once.

Rebuilding is not “making a new set of ads.” Rebuilding is understanding, anew, the people of this era.

Where does their pressure come from?

What kind of connection are they looking for?

In what settings do they feel happy, valued, and seen?

Can you become a point on their emotional map worth trusting, remembering, and sharing?

Competition in this era is no longer about who is stronger, but about who understands people better. It is no longer about who shouts louder, but about who can strike a chord in silence.

The golden rule for the brands of the future:

Function has a price; emotion is priceless. The product is the anchor; meaning is the asset. A brand is not information — it is a force that is felt.

Brands that can survive the cycle are not the cheaper ones, nor the smarter ones — they are the ones with more feeling. They let consumers find stability amid emotional swings, find confirmation amid identity confusion, and hear themselves amid social noise.

This is what a truly strong brand must do in the Third Consumer Era: not just make users remember you, but let them, through you, see clearly who they themselves are.