Dong Lu, Junior research in market research firm, shares her experience

Interview of Dong Lu, Junior research in market research firm

 I’m DongLu. Now I’m a junior student in Shanghai University of Finance and Economics. I like traveling as well as trying new things for different experiences are able to shape my personality. Meanwhile, I am good at learning lessons from others’ experiences. As a whole, I’m friendly and warm-hearted. I come from Jilin Province, which is located in the northeast part of China and in the geometric center of Japan, Russia, North Korea, South Korea, and Mongolia. Many ethnic groups of people live together in harmony such as Korean people and Manchu people. Changbai Mountain is located in Jilin Province. It is a famous attraction.

To determine the whereabouts after graduation, I intend to start looking for internships. Fortunately,  I found your recruitment in school’s WeChat group the next day. So I sent you my CV as soon as possible. 

General mood of society has changed most. Now people are really cold for social morality. People only consider their own interests. For others, they spend less time on caring.      

China in the next decade will be more modern. Social problems will still continue to appear. Ten years later, perhaps people will find a good solution to deal with these conflicts. 

At that time, I’m bound to work somewhere. This decade perhaps is the most important period in my life. I have so much to learn and so much to improve myself. Anyway, I will try my best to make myself better and better. Meanwhile, I will travel around to see more people and scenery.

I always read books and play computer in my spare time. Sometimes I do exercises with my classmates. Reading books help me know more about this world. And playing computer is just for fun and relax.

Actually, I found nothing special about myself. I am just a common girl. I have no advantages. There are always people doing better than me. 

https://global-exam.com/en/toeic-reading

Crossover car market overview in China

  It has been a long time that possessing a car symbolized social status and wealth of the owner in views of Chinese customers. Therefore for a fairly wide span of time, the sedan almost dominated the passenger car market.

  The Crossover (跨界车) car, a free mixture between sedan, SUV, MPV and pick-up truck, is becoming the new favorite of Chinese customers. As the development of urbanization and advancement of people’s living quality, the viewpoint of owning a car transformed; the functionality of the vehicle, instead of the show-off purpose, is more and more concerned. Many middle class families has already owned a sedan, they are willing to have another type of car. The 80’s and 90’s, a group of people who have more personalized and varied demands in vehicles, are becoming the main consuming power, which provides great outlook for the crossover manufactures. The general types like passenger car, SUV, MPV, etc. cannot meet the diversified demands of Chinese customers, which indicates the large potential of crossover in Chinese market.

  The rate of growth of the young type of car’s market share increases rapidly. The first 6 months in 2012, the volume of sales is 301,000 with the year-on-year growth up to 29.1%, while the increase rate in the whole industry is 2.9%.

  As the crossover car can not only meet the demand of common people for both comfort and multi-functionality, but also can satisfy some part of businessman with their business purpose, the range of the target customer of the crossover car varies from entrepreneur of SMEs to family members, from middle-aged people who have the consuming ability to afford another car, to the young people advocating pragmatism and regard comfort as the first concern .Demands of different customers varies. For the wealthy who have already had more than one car and don’t care much about prices, the personalized and fancy design is more concerned, while for some lower income families, they will weight how highly cost effective the vehicle is, which asks for a lower price and roomier interior space. The differentiation among the customers indicates that the manufactures should have a penetrating customer insight and employ differentiation strategy in accordance with the need of target customers.

  In nowadays’ Chinese crossover market, the class varies from high grade to low grade. The main players in high-grade crossover market is Infiniti and BMW. As for the medium and lower class crossovers, which are more popular in China’s market, something like Crosstour（歌诗图）, SUBARU （斯巴鲁）XV, Qashqai, MINI （迷你）Countryman, POLO Cross is mentioned frequently between middle income buyers. What is worth boasting is the performance of domestic manufactures. Aiming at the lower income group, the products of domestic company like Chery（奇瑞）, Great Wall Motor（长城）, Rely（瑞麟）, mostly under RMB100,000 sells well in tier2, 3 cities in China. Not like other products of those companies, which have almost no comparative advantages when competing with the international tycoons, the share of domestic crossovers in the crossover market is soaring-from 9.6% in 2009 to 32,0% in 2012. 

  There exist both opportunities and challenges in the Chinese crossover market. Although it is a market with a rapid growth, the share of crossover in the whole passenger car market is still tiny, about 5% in 2012, indicating its “minority” destiny. Its multi-functional attribute is regarded not exquisite, which drive off numbers of “face oriented” Chinese customers. However, the trend of crossover car is upwards, as mentioned above, and it is widely believed as a blue ocean with large potential. In general, the opportunities more than the challenges.

  There will be a crossover boom in 2014 car market. Companies like Adam, Citroen, Volvo, etc. are going to launch their crossover car, among which Qoros (致观) is also an influential players. At the Beijing International Motor Show, Qoros presents a five-door crossover - the Qoros 3 Cross Hybrid Concept - that features a compact hatchback body, enhanced traction properties and an advanced hybrid drive（混合动力）.

  This concept illustrates how the design themes introduced in the Qoros 3 Sedan may be applied to its future model range. It also offers a glimpse ahead to the brand's future technological developments with a pioneering hybrid drive that not only enhances efficiency but that also provides an exceptional all-wheel driving experience.

The intelligent Qoros modular vehicle architecture is a key factor in ensuring that new models can be introduced quickly and efficiently, and the Qoros 3 Cross Hybrid Concept is based on the same vehicle platform as the Qoros 3 Sedan.

Source:

http://auto.qq.com/a/20120827/000292.htm

http://www.netcarshow.com/qoros/2013-3_cross_hybrid_concept/

http://auto.163.com/12/0710/18/862PVIQA00084TUP.html

http://blog.sina.com.cn/s/blog_4a87159a01011akx.html

http://daxueconsulting.com/market-research-on-cars-in-china-2/

Gymboree conquest of the education and childrenswear markets in China

Gymboree conquest of the education and childrenswear markets in China

With the economic development in China, family spending on education and children clothing is steadily increasing. Gymboree, known as 金宝贝 (jin bao bei : golden baby) in China is an american corporation owning both retail stores of children's apparel and Play and Music centers where parents go with their children for early-learning classes.

In 2003, Gymboree saw in China a huge potential for its Play and Music centers and brought the franchise to Shanghai. In 2009, noticing that only 20 % of the chinese parents enrolled their children in education programs, it decided to target the 80 % leaving one. Not only interested in top-tier cities,Gymboree aimed at setting up centers in smaller cities (around one million inhabitants), the strategy being to reach the bourgeonning middle class.

 There are no doubt that the education market is growing and that chinese parents are ready to do a lot to provide their children with the best possible education, namely because the birth control policy made children become the center of the family. But in 2003, entering the chinese market with play centers was challenging for Gymboree because Chinese parents were not familiar with the concept of children learning by playing in a funny environment, enjoying what they do and discovering what they really like. Today, with more than 200 centers, Gymboree's Play and Music centers are well established in China. The company now sees opportunities in the children's apparel and is starting from scratch a business in that area.

http://knowledge.insead.edu/economics-politics/why-gymborees-china-strategy-is-no-childs-play-1397

A French high fashion house conquering the Chinese clothing market

Already present in Xidan's Galeries Lafayette in Beijing, Faconnable is taking a new step in its establishment on the Chinese market : it opened shops in Shanghai and in Chengdu. Still unknown  to the Chinese public in comparison with luxury brands such as Dior, Armani or Burburry, the brand is called 法康娜布 in China (fa kang na bu, with kang meaning healthy and abundant and bu meaning clothes), a positively-connotated name sounding as Faconnable.

The French brand is determined to seduce Chinese consumers with its authentic French Riviera style: the blue-and-white-striped sailor design of the shops arouses the curiosity of Chinese people who enter the place spontaneously. Faconnable intends to convince Chinese buyers by making them understand the connection between the way of life of the South of France, tourist place they surely know and the the clothes it sells. The influence of Picasso in the creation of clothes could also seduce consumers. Faconnable aims at targeting people practising sports such as golf, polo or yachting for such networks generate word-from-mouth and can help the brand make it known. This establishment is challenging and if this step proves to be successful, Faconnable will not hesitate to invest even more in China...

http://insideretail.asia/2013/06/19/faconnable-debuts-in-china/

http://www.fashionwindows.com/faconnable-rolls-out-in-china/

http://www.askandyaboutclothes.com/forum/showthread.php?110646-Faconnable

http://distribution-in-china.blogspot.com/

Wine Market in China

The wine industry in China is drastically soaring recent years with the rapid growth of economy. The Chinese wine consumption market is also booming since an increasing number of people nowadays are seeking for a life of higher quality. According to the survey by 2010, the annual growth speed of global wine industry is less than 1%, however, the figure is 10% in China. In four years’ time, the growth rate is still accelerating. Therefore, China has undoubtedly been the most potential wine market in the world.

As the latest report pointed out, the Chinese wine market consumption has been continuously increasing and it’s already the fifth biggest market in the world, with the compound annual growth rate of around 25%. In the meanwhile, the statistics also demonstrate a rapid growth of wine from world to mainland China. China is a populous country of 1.33 billion, among which there are 19 million upper middle class drinkers of imported wine. And that middle class is growing. That is to say, the current situation is favorable for imports.

The largest market for imported wine consumption is “on-premise”, at top end hotels, restaurants night-clubs and bars. In these occasions, people tends to impress their guests at a dinner banquet or to use as a gift.In order to satisfy demand of the consumers, the retail market for imported wines is also growing. The number of foreign countries is springing in China and they normally have a wine corner located in middle to high-income districts. High-end domestic department stores also carry imported wine, as do independent wine shops. At present, the market share is divided by three groups. There are local brands with some history, newly coming brands and joint brands in Chinese wine market. Generally speaking, foreign brands take up the high-end market, domestic wine enterprises with some history are dominant in middle-end market and some newly coming brands and other brands are mainly in the low-end market.

Over the past decade, China's per capita wine consumption has risen from 0.25 liters in 2002 to 1.31 liters in 2013. During the same period, Chinese consumers' understanding of wine has also improved. Chinese used to consider wine consumption as a luxury, so they set brand name and high price as the standard of good wine. But now the situation is changing. More people can afford to buy wines but the purposes are quite different from each other.

As for most consumers, wine consumption is for the purpose of collection, taste and banquet respectively. The grade and orientation of wine varies from group to group. In China, as a symbol of fashion, wine is related to health and romance. Various data also provide basis for peoples’ expectation on wine healthcare, showing it can prevent cholesterol, heart disease and diabetes.

In comparison with foreign wine, Chinese customers don’t drink diverse wine to match diverse dishes. Instead, they like to drink up one bottle of wine and sometime open anther bottle. Taking white wine as defective products, Chinese customers reject to drink white wine. For many customers, only red wine is wine and white wine only refers to Chinese local grain alcohol.

Despite the rapid development of wine industry in China, there are tough challenges as well to meet with, like the competitors from European countries, which are the original producers of wines. There's a general consensus that the quality of domestic wines needs to be improved. In today's market environment, we must compete with wines from Europe and other countries, so the first thing we need to do is to improve our own competitiveness. The most important is to go back to the quality from the brand name building as before. To make better quality wine, Chinese wine enterprises need to upgrade the industry, in grape planting, mechanization and cost reduction.

However, instead of really focusing hard on the taste and quality, marketing is also of significant importance. Chinese major wine producers poured their investment and efforts into marketing. As said by RUAN SHI LI, Senior Manager of ChangyuMozel Winery “I think there is a certain gap between Chinese Wine industry and Wine industry, in those major wine producers around the world. The first is in the raw materials, the second is in the marketing.” Major change in marketing pattern of wine enterprises is the shift from competing in the end market to establishing and operating end market on their own. Wine marketing in China used to be shopping malls, supermarkets, restaurants and clubs. But now, wine salon and franchised stores are the major marketing places. Thus the market has been more optimized.

Generally speaking, the wine market in China can be described as promising, competitive and tough as well. With the government regulations restricting government spending on banquets, perhaps more emphasis should be placed on personal consumption. Based on this, the Chinese wine market will be converted into a more healthy and mature one.

By Daxue Consulting

http://daxueconsulting.com/retail-of-wine-in-china-2/

http://online.wsj.com/articles/chinas-wine-market-shifts-toward-entry-level-1405305923

http://online.wsj.com/articles/chinas-wine-market-shifts-toward-entry-level-1405305923

Interview of Jiaqi Wang

MARKET CHINA: Can you tell us more about yourself?

A: I am born and raised in Nanjing, China. Being passionate about both economics and business, I went to France after high school at Sciences Po Europe-Asia Campus for my bachelor degree with a concentration on economics and Europe-Asia relations. There, I met people from different parts of the world and enjoyed talking with them, which really widened my horizon and helped me better understand this world and the people. In my spare time, I play guitar and basketball.

MARKET CHINA: What brought you to Daxue Consulting?

A: As part of the Sciences-Po third year curriculum, I have to do an internship outside of France. I saw the announcement on our school’s website. Being curious about consulting, I found that this start-up company has some really big clients, such as Sumsung, European Commission, etc. After talking with some staff n this company via Skype, I found staff here is really multi-cultural, and really excellent with various professional background, such as Nielsen, German Chamber of Commerce, etc. Even the part-time assistants are from top universities such as ESCP, LSE, Imperial College, Manchester University, Fudan University, Shanghai Jiaotong University etc. Everybody has certain autonomy to do things that are challenging, and the atmosphere is very dynamic. It would be a great experience working with them. Thus, I chose to come to Daxue Consulting.

MARKET CHINA: What is your vision of market research and consulting in China? What do you like about it?

A: Personally, I found the data is more difficult to get in China than European markets. By the time I managed the project of electric bicycle in China, the data collection costed much time. This is partly due to the opacity of SMEs, the entreprises are reluctant to show their financial situation to the public; also due to the unregulated market, the enforcement of law, regulations are very weak in a local level. The more time we spent on data collection, the less time we have on market analysis. Thus, normally a market research project in China is expected to have a longer duration than the one in Europe. I like doing market research and consulting because I feel a great achievement and I love working together with smart minds, the process of brainstorming is something I appreciate a lot. 

MARKET CHINA: Which business verticals do you specialize in?

A: I have an education of general courses including economics, corporate finance. 

MARKET CHINA: What is your consultant’s adage?

A: (I don't think I have an adage so far, but if I have to say, I would say "being efficient, being organized" )

http://chinaparadigm.com/

Daxue Consulting / 

Developing China market of technology

Reach agreement in technological sector

At the beginning of 2002, tablets drives made in China were blocked in customs in several countries of Europe, because the manufacturers had not settled the rights of the used patents. Afterward, Philips, Sony, and Pioneer began a legal battle in front of the European Court of Justice, pressing the Chinese manufacturers of tablets drives so that they pay the rights of the used technologies. Initially, the wanted payment was 20 US dollars by reader, sum considered as too high by the Chinese part which put forward an only 90-dollar sale price by device. Later, they also reached agreements with other companies for the payment of rights: 4 % of the sale price or 4 dollars by reader to NEC, Panasonic, Toshiba, JVC, Mitsubishi, and Time Warner, 10 dollars to DTS, 4,95 dollars to Dolby Laboratories, and 2,5 dollars with Mysimax. More recently, Thomson, the partner of TCL, asked for the payment of 1 or 1,5 dollars by reader, according to his place of sale, in China or abroad. According to Daxue Consulting, at least 50 million tablets were made in China in 2003, the total sum in game is thus very important.

Daxue Consulting provides market research tools to analyze high-tech sectors in China

Practices in Chinese economy

Such practices are typical of the Chinese industry during the last ten years. Multinationals gradually relocated the manufacturing of their electronic consumer goods of the United States and Japan towards Singapore, South Korea, Taiwan and Hong-Kong, and then towards China and other countries to the cheap workforce. They use the patents of key technologies as levers and concentrate on the development of the technologies of the next generation of these products.

China is supposed to absorb and to assimilate these technologies imported to develop gradually national products and progress in the technological scale. Unfortunately, it does not so take place. Situated at the end of the chain, China has other choice no than to continue to pay for the use of foreign technologies. At the same time, the homogenization and the everyday acceptance of these products pull the Chinese firms in valuable wars.

Example in manufacturing sector in China

According to SJ Grand, the phenomenon does not limit itself to the industry of electronic consumer goods. Let us take the example of Legend, the main Chinese manufacturer of tablets staff. In 1998, it exceeded IBM and became leading on the Chinese market. But as said by Liu Chuanzhi, his president, the company especially played a role of "locomotive (banyungong)" for the technologies.

More information: here / JX Paulin / here