Your MBA Marketing Class and Chinese Consumers
February 6th, 2008
A hat tip to Dan Harris and the China Law Blog for this lead ….
Here is a really, really interesting power point presentation by advertising giant Ogilvy on consumers in China’s Tier II and III cities. Some great stuff in here that will relate to what you are studying or will study in your MBA marketing class this winter quarter (e.g., branding, market segmentation, packaging, impulse buying, distribution channels, price sensitivity, who makes the family buying decisions, etc. anyone?). This material also highlights why so many foreign firms are trying to get into the market there — the consumer class and their spending power in these lower tier cities are on the upswing. This presentation is worth spending a few minutes to click through and study. Doing so, via this compare and contrast measure, also helped me better understand the marketing of products here in the US. Once in China, as you walk in and out of stores, and as you bus from A to B and look out the window, you need to think back to this material and connect some of the dots as related to your coursework ….
Entry Filed under: Pre-Departure, Beijing, Shanghai, Shenzhen, China, Guangzhou, Hangzhou, Hong Kong, Macau, Misc., Post Trip Wrap-Up re: China
2 Comments Add your own
1. Gary Chou | February 6th, 2008 at 11:35 pm
Language Translation:
Slide 36: The son when asked who that character on his t-shirt is, answered, “I don’t know.” (It was Mickey Mouse.)
Cultural Translation:
Slide 21: Consumer Attitude - Risk
Substantial number are willing to take risks. Examples:
-Nude Models on Billboard
-My daughter is learning dance.
American most likely won’t understand the “risk” implied here. Basically there are people who are willing to pose for underwear advertisement is a sign of people opening up their minds and become more willing to take risk. (Chinese are very conservative!)
As for the “learning dance” thing, basically success of a child is defined by medical school or engineering. Anything deviated from that, especially performing art and music is considered “low.” It’s considered selling one’s physical body instead of intelligence. On the other hand, art and music as part time are very popular, it displays (to other people) 1. our family has money to pay for such training and 2. our family has more culture than you.
In conclusion, parents invested large portion of wealth into their kids hoping to live through them. They want their kids to be well versed in art and music but God forbids them to become artist or musicians. They must be doctors and engineers.
2. Gary Chou | February 6th, 2008 at 11:42 pm
Sorry I am getting off-topic here (too emotionally attached to this part of my culture). (This was the reason I was afraid to commit too much to this blog last quarter, because I knew I would get very emotional.)
So speaking of learning dance for a girl, one would ask, “how about all those Olympic athletes China seems to pop uo by the dozens?” Most people probably don’t know how brutal, un-humane and and out-right gross the way China cultivate, or shall I say, breed, its athletes?
Why do you think Yao Ming’s parents are both so tall? Did they happen to meet and fall in love? No, they were, like all other specially talented people, sent to dorm and trained since age of 3, 24/7, for the sole purpose of becoming world class athletes or breed even more extraordinary people.
Most of them will fail, from disqualification or permanent injuries, and their stories will never be heard, as their lives would be ruined and possessed no other training or skill.
Only few of them would shine, and gain popularity, then they had to face politics, power struggle, and fear of being punished/sent away.
You can read about the story of Yao Ming’s parents from Time’s cover story here:
http://www.time.com/time/asia/covers/501051114/story.html
It’s truly heart wrenching.
Just a short excerpt:
“News of Yao Ming’s birth was quickly relayed across town to the top leaders of the Shanghai Sports Commission. They were not surprised. These men and women had been trying to cultivate a new generation of athletes who would embody the rising power of China. The boy in the maternity ward represented, in many ways, the culmination of their plan.
The experiment had no code name, but in Shanghai basketball circles it might as well have been called Operation Yao Ming. The wheels had been set in motion more than a quarter-century earlier, when Chairman Mao Zedong exhorted his followers to funnel the nation’s most genetically gifted youngsters into the emerging communist sports machine. Two generations of Yao Ming’s forebears had been singled out by authorities for their hulking physiques, and his mother and father had both been drafted into the sports system. “We had been looking forward to the arrival of Yao Ming for three generations,” says Wang Chongguang, a retired Shanghai coach who played with Yao’s father in the 1970s and would coach Yao himself in the ’90s. “That’s why I thought his name should be Yao Panpan.” Long-Awaited Yao. “
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