From September 4th to 5th, the 2020 National Postal Newspapers and Periodicals Distribution Conference was held in Shenyang, Liaoning Province. The conference called on all postal staff to reach a common understanding, adhere to the principle of “universal service as the root, customers as the foundation”, to strengthen the integration and innovation-driven development, so as to ensure the steady increase of newspapers and periodicals distribution service in 2020, to consolidate and enhance the status as the main distribution channel of state-owned newspapers and periodicals, and to achieve the transformation from being a newspapers and periodicals distributor into a multimedia distribution service provider. Kang Ning, Vice President of China Post Group, attended the meeting and made a work report.

Kang Ning has fully affirmed the achievements of the newspapers and periodicals distribution department in consolidating and raising its status as the main distribution channel, and realizing steady growth and innovation. He asked the newspapers and periodicals distribution professionals to remain true to the original aspiration, reinforce its commitment to "People's Post Serving the People", solidly improve the quality of universal service, and to faithfully perform special service duties. Meanwhile, he asked to find the weaknesses and solve the problems of inconvenience, low efficiency and insufficient abilities, improving comprehensive customer service capabilities, consolidating and enhancing the status as the main channel of newspapers and periodicals distribution. He also stressed the importance of implementation so as to keep pace with the changing needs of readers to “read, learn and grow”, achieving the transformation from being a newspapers and periodicals distributor into a multimedia distribution service provider, promoting the sustainable, healthy and rapid development of newspapers and periodicals distribution service.

The conference pointed out that in the past 70 years the combined post and distribution system has fully demonstrated the positioning of postal services as the national strategic infrastructure and its prominent role as the red messenger, continuously supporting the sustainable development of newspapers and periodicals distribution. There is still potential for growth in the traditional print media distribution market, so that there is still something to do in this business sector. The rapid development of digital media industry brings new development opportunities for postal service. Postal branches at all levels should raise their political stance, fully understand the core advantages and development opportunities of newspapers and periodicals distribution service, strengthen their confidence in development, and firmly promote the newspapers and periodicals distribution service to a higher level.

The conference dialectically analyzed the development environment of the industry, pointed out the principal contradictions and fundamental problems existing at present from four aspects of products, customers, channels and marketing organizations, and required that postal branches at all levels should carefully analyze their problems, conduct comprehensive and systematic researches, and clarify the development direction and plans. In regard of products, researches should be done to build rich product portfolio. With regard to customers, differentiated marketing strategy should be carried out through persona. Also, more channel researches should be conducted to enhance customer acquisition ability. In the aspect of marketing organization, researches should be taken to gather all strength: delivery teams which continuously plays the leading role, excellent postal outlets which would promote efficiency, branch post office leaders whose leadership would be further exerted to build network marketing system, social channels such as publishing stations and agencies that would be expanded, and comprehensive marketing forces that should be motivated to accelerate coordinated development.

In order to reach the target of newspapers and magazines subscription in 2020, Kang Ning has made arrangements on the following 3 aspects: first, to ensure stable growth in the traditional newspaper market by deep cultivation; second, to promote the transformation and upgrading of newspapers and periodicals services by accelerating project innovation; third, to improve customer service by continuously consolidating and improving service quality. Postal branches at all levels should raise their political stance and intensify the commitment to universal service and customer service, which are the root and foundation of the business by shortening the delivery time of the Party newspapers and periodicals, expanding the same-day delivery coverage, and ensuring that newspapers and periodicals are properly delivered without any shortage, thus continuously improving customer satisfaction. Postal branches at all levels should plan and strengthen coordination in advance, closely focus on the overall goal of turnover amount, and control the two indicators of “customer volume” and “business volume” to ensure the successful completion of the target of newspapers and magazines subscription in 2020 by conducting product analysis, industry analysis, persona, policy research and media publicity step by step.

During the meeting, the postal branches of Liaoning, Shandong, Hebei and Jiangsu provinces exchanged experience in the development of newspapers and periodicals distribution service.