SAGE SAGE Business Cases
© Raffaele Filieri and Yangjing Xu 2022
Source: HEYTEA (used with permission)
The design of this online selling program is in line with the HEYTEA brand image. Intelligent methods optimize
the user experience and improve store operation efficiency, which fits well with Gen Z’s busy lifestyle and high
expectations of technology. HEYTEA GO is a mini program, which is an applet built within an app (Figure 7),
that is used by HEYTEA to sell its products. In 2020, Chinese Internet companies switched their focus from
apps to the next phase of digital infrastructure building—that is, mini programs on apps such as WeChat,
Alipay, and Baidu. Mini programs are the easiest and cheapest way for companies to capture users on the
Internet. WeChat is leading the mini program market in China with more than 3.2 million mini programs in
2020, 22% of which are dedicated to e-commerce (Azoya, 2020). The daily active users of WeChat mini
programs reached 440 million in March 2020 (Liu, 2020). In 2019, the total gross merchandise volume of
WeChat small programs exceeded CNY 800 billion (199IT, 2020). By the end of May 2020, the number of
registered users of HEYTEA’s online mini program had exceeded 26 million, with a repurchase rate of over
300%. The results confirm the success of this initiative; in 2019, about 82% of HEYTEA customers chose to
place orders online and the number of users on HEYTEA GO increased by16 million, with a total number of
21.5 million users (Tencent CDC, 2020). The fact that more than 80% of online orders in stores come from
mini programs (Wang, 2020) highlights the importance of social media and digital technology in product sales.
Figure 7. HEYTEA Go Program
The New-Style Tea in China: The Marketing Strategy of HEYTEA
Page 10 of 17
SAGE SAGE Business Cases
© Raffaele Filieri and Yangjing Xu 2022
Source: HEYTEA (used with permission)
Promotion Strategy
HEYTEA uses various marketing communication tools to influence consumers’ awareness, perception, and
interest in the brand. For instance, HEYTEA has repeatedly posted on its microblog pictures of long queues of
customers waiting to be served outside its shops (Figure 8). The same marketing strategy is adopted by some
retailers in China to increase interest among passers-by. While long queues are generally associated with
inconvenience in the Western world (Dahm et al., 2018), in China queues generate curiosity and excitement
(Kidder, 2020). Some research has confirmed that consumers may make inferences about product quality
when there is a line of people waiting—the longer the queue, the higher the perceived product quality (Koo
The New-Style Tea in China: The Marketing Strategy of HEYTEA
Page 11 of 17
