HEYTEA Effects - Is Hunger Marketing Saving Or Killing The Brand?

Queuing 3 to 6 hours for a cup of milk tea, I am sure I will never do it. But some people will. This is something happening at HEYTEA in many major cities of China such as Beijing, Shanghai and Shenzhen. However, with the increasing attention on social media, HEYTEA was being criticized constantly on using hunger marketing strategy by the public. HEYTEA is not the first company and will not be the last who uses hunger marketing. But is it a good marketing tool or a slow-motion suicide for a brand? The question is thoughtful.

HEYTEA and ‘Wang Hong’ Food Effects

HEYTEA (or HEEKCAA) is a milk tea brand in China, which was founded in 2012. Started from a small alley in Guangdong Province, HEYTEA now has expanded to 73 stores in several developed cities around China. HEYTEA markets itself as the inventors of “Nai Gai Cha”, a tea drink topped with 2-3cm cheese flavour milk foam. Also, it is claimed that HEYTEA uses top quality materials and tea from all over the world, which is different from other cheap and traditional milk tea franchises.

In February 2017, HEYTEA opened its new store in Shanghai. The longest queuing time on the opening day reached 6 hours according to the media. Later in August, the store in Beijing was opened. Even though it was raining heavily, there were still people who have waited for 4 hours to buy a drink. Meanwhile, HEYTEA has set a limit of 2 drinks per person or even require an ID card of customers at some stores.

Medias and public call this kind of food as ‘Wang Hong’ food in China. The term ‘Wang Hong’(网红) translates as Internet Celebrity. This also extends to the food or brands that became viral through the Internet. The ridiculously long queue is something that Wang Hong food share in common and has almost become the signature of a Wang Hong brand.

At the same time, social media has definitely played a key role in creating Wang Hong foods. Consumers’ decision making becomes more emotional than rational in digital era. They share the photos of Wang Hong food to get admire and envy from friends, therefore, to gratify the vanity.

What is Hunger Marketing?

The definition of "Hunger marketing" is “a kind of marketing strategy where the commodity provider deliberately restricts the supply of product to achieve the phenomenon of excess demand” (Chen et al., 2014).

In China, many of Wang Hong food are not only believed to use hunger marketing because of controlling the production, but also they are questioned on hiring people to queue to create an illusion of extremely high demand. They limit the products that one consumer can buy, which is similar to the concept of reducing production. Meanwhile, compared to similar food and beverage providers, Wang Hong stores have a relatively slower speed in providing products. At many milk tea stores, customers generally wait for maximum 15 minutes to get their drink after ordering. While at HEYTEA, according to many customer’s reviews, they had waited for 30 minutes minimum to have their drinks ready.

Except for setting the limits, the public has been always questioning about whether Wang Hong food hire people to queue. As an example, HEYTEA claims that their customers are mainly young white-collar office workers aged from 20 to 30 years old. However, the rapid pace of these developed cities strongly requires high efficiency of labours. Will the young generation sacrifice 4 hours to buy a drink? I think the answer might be quite clear. Many bloggers announced some evidence of HEYTEA’s fake queuing. Of course, these were denied by HEYTEA. Regardless of the authenticity, there are actually many solutions that HEYTEA can use to avoid the long queue such as queue system, which is widely used in banks and restaurants in China. The founder of HEYTEA clarified they tried queue system before. He said some customers didn’t come back to pick up the drinks on time and the taste of drinks would change after a long period of time. So, they decided to stop using the queue system. However, this is not very convincing from my point of view. Many restaurants now in China can provide an online queue system through smart phone apps such as WeChat. Customers can queue on their smart phones and view the queue status in real time. It can also send notifications and alerts to inform the customers.

When choosing a product, especially the food, many consumers might have herd mentality, which means they prefer to choose the one chosen by the majority (Veeraraghavan and Debo, 2011). The longer queue a restaurant has, the easier they can attract more customers. HEYTEA and other Wang Hong food stores are exactly using this kind of consuming mentality.

Should brands use hunger marketing strategy?

I think brands should be very cautious to use hunger marketing strategy considering following reasons.

First, for a company who provides real products, hunger marketing might not be a sustainable strategy. The product they offer is relatively more important than the marketing stunt. Especially for the food and beverage providers, the quality and taste of their food are the basis and the core competencies. At the beginning, consumers might be attracted by the long queue in the stores or the marketing campaigns online. Their expectations are raised. Then they may try it once. But they might not come back again if the food quality doesn’t meet the expectation.

Second, hunger marketing may blind the company. Company would not be clear about its real situation and position in the market. This may lead to an ambitious expansion. The Uncle Tetsu, a previous Wang Hong brand selling Japanese Cheesecake would be a good example. After the huge success of its first store in China in 2013, Uncle Tetsu expanded to over 40 cities around China. There were over 30 stores in one city when it was extremely popular. And now, none of them exist.

Moreover, hunger marketing is not a right choice for company with limited products. Again, Uncle Tetsu has only one product, which is the Japanese Cheesecake. At the beginning, people were crazy about it and could only buy one at a time. And after a year, they still have only one product, which would definitely limit their development.

Hunger marketing might not be helpful if the product is easy to be replaced by other substitutes. Consumers have to spend extra money or time to buy the product with similar value. And this is generally longer or more expensive than similar products. Brands may lose some potential consumers because of the long queue or the high price. They could have been willing to try if they don’t have to wait such a long time. In the end, they may choose the similar substitute such as other milk tea stores for HEYTEA’s case.

Conclusion

Hunger marketing strategy is now used by many Wang Hong food brand in China to increase the brand awareness. Although it has brought a lot of attentions from the public in a short period of time, it would not be a sustainable marketing strategy for a brand. In my opinion, company and brand should always focus on their product quality and competencies before considering the hunger marketing strategies.

So, what do you think about Hunger Marketing? Share your opinions in the comments!

References

Chen, Y., Kuo, C., Jhan, Y. and Chiu, P. (2014) Hunger Marketing on Smartphone. 2014 Proceedings of PICMET '14: Infrastructure and Service Integration, 1950-1957.

Veeraraghavan, S. and Debo, L. (2011) Herding in queues with waiting costs: Rationality and regret. Manufacturing & Service Operations Management, 13 (3), 329-346.