USA vs CHINA in Consumer Marketing.

[IamTalkingaboutmoney]

In today’s world, all companies dream of winning in both the USA and China. These two countries are the top two economic powerhouses, and they represent two distinctive kinds of markets: developed Western markets and developing Eastern markets. My clients often have asked me what the main differences are between these two markets. What are the causes of these differences?

Here I’d like to share three insights on what the key consumer market differences are and provide some tips for global brands to quickly adapt to these two markets.

1. Personal Appeal vs. “Desire to Be Seen”
If I ask you, “Bill Gates and Guo jingming , a young Chinese new rich, attend the same conference. Which one of them will dress in a more flashy style, and more likely will dress in luxury brands?” It’s highly likely that Guo will wear the latest season’s Prada, but Gates will come in a low-key shirt. As the richest guy in the world, Gates doesn’t need to prove himself or get attention with brand labels. He just needs to buy what he really likes and feels comfortable with. However, Guo, a “new rich” from a small town, still needs external confirmation of his success. He not only needs first tier brands, but he also needs people to notice that he is wearing them.
The USA today, as a developed market, is more like Gates. Most consumer goods are within an affordable range. Consumers choose products more for their advantages to themselves rather than their reputations. Americans care more about how well things work than what image they project. China, a developing market, is more like Guo. People use brands not only for their functionality but also to project social status. That’s why some international brands changed their brand positioning in China. Häagen-Dazs, an ice-cream brand sold in American supermarkets, successfully reinvented itself as a luxury ice cream brand sold in boutique stores. Its absolute price in China is more than twice that in the USA. Americans treat Häagen-Dazs as ice cream, but Chinese see it as part of a high-end lifestyle.

2. Innovation vs. Brand Credibility
According to a consumer research study, the most important reason to choose a brand is “innovation” in the USA, but “brand credibility” in China.
China is in a crisis of trust. The crisis is not only between the people and the government, but also between consumers and manufacturers. Especially in the recent decade, China has faced deep consumer product quality problems. If food and other consumer products were really compared against the official standards, nearly 50% would be judged substandard. In this context, when buying products, Chinese consumers dearly need assurance. For them, a big brand, a well-known brand, or a word of mouth endorsement is a proof of quality. Thus, the advertising of Chinese brands tends to emphasize brand history or product formula history. For example, all local Chinese cosmetic brands, even some just founded day ago, either like to claim that they are partnering with a Western brand having a long history, or claim their product formulations are from some ancient Chinese recipe.

3. Regional Differences vs. Ethnicity Differences
These two big countries both are multifaceted, because they both have huge populations and large geographical size. There is no one size that can fit all of China, and the same for the USA.
In the past twenty years, China has undergone a vast transformation. Due to the inequality of the government’s open door policy, there are huge incomes gaps between city and countryside, west and east, and coast and inland. The metropolitan cities and the coastal provinces are very developed, similarly to those of developed countries like the USA.

[vero]

Commie China is on the verge of financial ruin. Millions of unsold homes across China in ghost cities and thousands of unfinished useless white elephant projects. Now the commie Chinese stock market is falling like a rock and there's no transparency on their valuations. Nobody wants to buy junk and toxic commie Chinese products. The smog in Beijing is so thick no tourist want to go there. Commie China is fighting all their neighbors in the South and East China Seas. Everything is going wrong with commie China. Chinese should throw out their leadership for being so inept.

[ridery99]

Commie China is on the verge of financial ruin. Millions of unsold homes across China in ghost cities and thousands of unfinished useless white elephant projects. Now the commie Chinese stock market is falling like a rock and there's no transparency on their valuations. Nobody wants to buy junk and toxic commie Chinese products. The smog in Beijing is so thick no tourist want to go there. Commie China is fighting all their neighbors in the South and East China Seas. Everything is going wrong with commie China. Chinese should throw out their leadership for being so inept.

Are you some CIA agent or something? USA is going to be destroyed, not China 

[eyeknock]

Are you some CIA agent or something? USA is going to be destroyed, not China 

i dont know if usa is going to be destroyed or not, but look at chinesse exchanges, look the btc volume every week, china dont care about american or europe economy they have more than 3 million bitcoin volumen on his exchanges.

soon they will rule in any way, since they are  building his own economy pretty faster...

[Harry Hood]

The cause is "cultural differences"

There's a culture in the US, driven by capitalism and a free market, that embraces innovation, and credit, and freedom to act without fear.

[Ironhorse]

The world economy increasingly depends on China. If China will be a global catastrophe falls.

[bryant.coleman]

The world economy increasingly depends on China. If China will be a global catastrophe falls.

No. On the other hand, the Chinese influence is waning. Labor costs are increasing in China (as a result of the ageing population), and many of the brands have shifted their manufacturing units from China to cheaper third world countries such as India and Ukraine. The Chinese dominance is now limited to the continent of Africa.