Marketing to Middle Class China — The Trend Is Your Friend (even if it is not theirs)
One of the prevailing myths about China’s economic development is that China’s middle class would steadily integrate and come to share values with its peers around the world. Newcomers to China often convince themselves that they can move ahead of the curve by offering a product or service that is accepted by global middle class customers and simply wait for Chinese consumers to catch up.
It’s an easy mistake to make since a superficial analysis of China’s commercial centers make them seem westernized enough. Popular brands are thriving and familiar consumer goods and fashions are mainstream.
But just because a few of the names are familiar doesn’t mean that China’s consumers are globalizing. Far from it. There is a clear and growing divide between the new generation of Chinese middle class and that of the West. And if international marketers in China don’t mind the gap, they are going to find themselves taking a very nasty fall.
Digital Divide
The NYTimes has just confirmed a trend I’ve been noticing for a while when it wrote that western media companies were abandoning the China market in favor for India after years of failing to gain a foothold in the PRC. The future of China and the West may be linked, but as the Ministry of Information Industry and the Great Fire_wall of China demonstrate — linked and integrated are two very different things. There exists, between China and the world, a digital divide that is growing and crystallizing. This is a good-news/bad-news scenario for international managers in China.
The bad news is that if you were banking on importing media into China, you can expect to be frozen out of the market — well, forever. The good news? It is very easy to figure out exactly what the Party line is in China. Just go to the People’s Daily online http://english.peopledaily.com.cn/ — the good folks at Xinhua have already done your market research for you. Their op-ed section publishes Chinese popular opinion in advance. If you are not taking advantage of it, then you are squandering a potentially invaluable resource.
Lies, Damned Lies, and Harmony
Do Chinese people believe the CPP party line propaganda? Sure. Just like advertising and press conferences in the West – selling a message is no different from selling any other product or service. Propaganda and advertising are effective – even when you know they’re there. Are Chinese middle class consumers unsophisticated for believing that they should “Cherish the Chinese Dream”?
“Even if challenge is looming ahead for the grads to reach high-flying jobs in their dreams at the time of global crunch, they will still be able to achieve a better living standard than their parents by adjusting their expectations accordingly. As for youngsters, there is always a splendid future ahead of them.”
Maybe it is unsophisticated – but probably no more than believing that Crest toothpaste makes you more attractive or that Fidel Castro wants to undermine your community.
The point is that when developing products and services for the Chinese middle class, the trend is your friend. And if the Chinese Communist Party has put together an effective machine for manufacturing that trend, then you would be crazy not to take advantage of it. Stop waiting for China to change to meet your ideals and acknowledge that middle class buyers in the top 50 – 97 percentile are almost certain to think, feel and react the way they are supposed to.
International marketers in China often fall victim to two grave errors. The first is trying to reinvent the wheel by spending a fortune on market research and hiring expensive personnel to divine the thoughts and aspirations of “real China”. The second is to try to buck those very same trends just because we consider them unsuitable or distasteful. The only trends you really need to get out in front of in China are the ones that officialdom engineer – and they publish those every day. Use them.