Night Economy City Beyond Lights | Zibo | Economy

Expert Learning Thinking

Authors: Li Xinjian and Song Changyao

In the long alleys of the market, fireworks gather and the world unfolds. With multiple cities across the country, such as Beijing, Shanghai, and Shenzhen, gradually introducing policies to support "external positioning" and the development of a "night market economy", as well as supporting a series of law enforcement and management requirements, people are generally celebrating the return of smoke and fire. The vibrant performance of night markets in various regions also signals a strong recovery in the consumer market.

Among them, Zibo Night Market is particularly prominent. From the initial "Zibo Barbecue" to Haidai Tower, and then to the Eight Bureau Cultural and Creative Street, Zibo has continuously launched new measures, with one landmark after another appearing on the hot search, and thick smoke and fire can be felt through the screen. Among them, there is both long-term promotion from the local government, enthusiastic promotion from tourists from all over the country, and warm promotion from the citizens of Zibo, which is the result of the joint efforts of multiple forces. Although Zibo is mainly portrayed as a hardcore industrial city, it is also a comprehensive park city and a historic and cultural city. It is precisely the refined and humanized urban management here, meticulous and warm customer service, profound cultural heritage, and a living environment of seeing greenery through windows and entering parks that enables Zibo to calmly cope with large passenger flows and withstand the test of peak passenger flows.

In the era of traffic economy, there are both successful and unsuccessful traffic. Compared to safely passing through peak traffic, a more important issue is actually how to maintain the popularity of traffic, allowing mobile consumption capacity to settle into local economic income, and truly driving the people to become rich. With the rise of night markets, various problems have become increasingly prominent, such as relatively poor hygiene conditions, traffic congestion caused by occupying roads, disorderly planning that affects the city's appearance, and difficulty in eliminating safety hazards, which has sparked discussions about whether to go to or stay in night markets.

What is the future of night markets? It may still depend on the product quality, service quality, environmental quality, and final experience quality of the night market. This is also a problem that cities actively promoting the development of night economy need to face.

In order to better promote the standardized and orderly development of night markets and make people feel a different atmosphere of fireworks, we can focus on two aspects.

Firstly, in addition to being down-to-earth, night markets also require creativity. To develop a good night market, we cannot just stay at the stage of traditional snacks or cheap goods, but should promote the night market from the traditional 1.0 version to the modern 2.0 version, using more innovative, creative, and design methods to promote the adjustment and optimization of the night market in terms of form, environment, order, and other aspects. In this way, night markets can be both lifestyle markets, creative markets, and trendy markets. From this perspective, supporting the development of night markets should not be seen solely as a temporary measure. Indeed, when the economy is under great downward pressure, small stalls can support the livelihoods of families. However, after economic activity, setting up stalls should not be a one size fits all approach, because night market economy can also be a leisure economy, creative economy, and happy economy.

Secondly, night markets are a gathering of flexible business formats, testing the city's level of standardized management. The liquidity of operations should not be an obstacle to quality control, and a night market economy without standardized management and quality control cannot last long.

To this end, attention should be paid to the coupling of the image of operating booths with the local environment, surrounding architectural styles, and business formats, making night markets a flowing bright color in a fixed spatial background; We should consider organizing volunteers to help vendors improve their booth image, optimize booth signage, and increase the recognition and affinity of the booth; To build night markets into a platform for supply and demand integration, providing more opportunities for the works of folk artists and grassroots creators to face the market and consumers; We should actively promote technological empowerment, promote digital management of booth information, effective supervision of food safety, and effective traceability of product quality. We should encourage the integration of online and offline business models, so that people can promote the development of night markets in a reassuring and happy consumption.

Cities are not just illuminated by lights. What we bring to consumers should be the scenery they expect to read, the life they expect to enjoy, the meaning they expect to find, the labels they expect to have, and the people they expect to meet. Only by putting your heart into it, operating it with care, and managing the night market with care can you light up a better life.

Guangming Daily