Meng's Blog

When we are out shopping for different items, it is often not surprise to see the product label with “made in China”. In fact, the relative cheap material and labour cost had made many businesses to chose manufacturers in China to produce their products. Just like many others, I was very used to the idea of “made in China”,in fact, I was too used to the term that when I saw ” made for China” appear as one of the top 11 trends in 2011, I was took off gaurd.

The trendwatch.com has recently published what they percieve as the yop 11 trend in the coming year, with “made for China” being the number four trend on the list. While many manufacturers were still in the old “made in China” era, it seems like other businesses have see the marketing possibility of Asia. The trendwatch.com has given some example of how certain western businesses have marketed in a way that adapts the consumer market in China, such as Levis Jeans and BMW.

While reading through the examples of how each business adapts to the Chinese market, I had a better understanding of the meaning of “made for China”. In previous years, there has always been a market in China with businesses becoming more globalized, multinational businesses such as Apple, McDonald and even Zara had earned their share of market in Asia, . However at that time, businesses were still more focused on how to make Chinese customer understand their product rather than orientate their product/services on what was sought after by the local Chinese consumers. However, the business examples in the trend list were more consumer orientated in the way that they tried to bring in a product/services that would satisfy consumers’ need by adapt to the culture, local trend and even local competition.

Personally, I think the transition from “sell in China” to “made for China” is very significant because it remind me of the transition from “product-oriented” market to ” consumer-orientated” market, where businesses who understand the need of consumers often achieve greater success than the ones who underestimated the power.

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