Chinese consumer behavior and marketing strategy insights

Marketing

As a quickly rising economic power in the world, China is becoming more and more of a hot topic in the Western business world (Fan, 2006). When looking at the article Inside the mind of the Chinese consumer (McEwen, Xiaoguang, Chuanping & Burkholder, 2006) it can be seen how much influence the Chinese people really have. Given the relativism of how difficult and foreign the wealth of statistical insight given in the article is the articles' synthesis of the decade of work by the Gallup organization seems like a bit much. The article jumps in quickly in order to dispel misconceptions, at least in regards to some of the commonly held notions by Western business. Among such dispelled beliefs it can be seen that aspirations, self-actualization's and other expressions of the rising "me" generation are ripe to market to, and increasingly becoming more so in the distant time horizon.

Chinese Consumer Expectations

Another misconception that exists is that the Chinese consumer has a lot of cash to spend. This may or may not be true. By Western standards, there are still a lot of people who are still at the poverty level in regards to annual incomes. These are not the people who generally buy something that they can't afford. Knowing this becomes a matter of planning. The remaining misconception has to do with what the Chinese consumer buys. Although a car costs on average three years wages most Chinese want a car nonetheless. Over time more and more Chinese are realizing this dream as most of the significant manufacturers are competing against each other and driving prices down.

Marketing Research Components

The Gallup information referred to in this article wisely took into account matters of geography, population densities, income classes, product categories and work attitudes. Among the discoveries was the finding of the third China which is a second-tier metropolitan area where many opportunities still exist like first to market. Another discovery was that of differentiated buying patterns based on differing consumer locales. This is very important when marketing as it is important to market the goods where they are needed and wanted.

Conclusion

This is the kind of information that is needed in order to have successful multinational corporations thrive in China. In order to be better marketers, managers, strategic planners and so forth we must become Chinese. Assuming for a moment one has enough information and one is sensitive enough to how a multinational corporation would maintain any edge in the Chinese market they could clearly see that it would all hinge on customer service. Internal customer service will distinguish the foreign corporation from the old and tired domestic model. It will do so because it can. It has the resources to give more and has well-developed research in order to back up exactly how to do it best. The key is to have the best internal and external customer service possible. The bottom line of any business depends on how happy their customers are. If the customers aren't happy they will do elsewhere in order to be made happy which is not what multinational corporations want when they are trying to compete with the tried and true domestic entities.