The other day while talking with my friends,  I  found something interesting about marketing culture difference between China and Canada.  While discussing about what could influence our purchase decision of a bottle of laundary detergent, I mentioned about celebrity.  In China, sometimes my intension of selecting one product over another may simply be that I saw celebrities who I like promoting  that product on TV ads.  Surprisingly, I found out that celebrities  never promote for laundary detergent here in Canada.

In China, we can find celebrities everywhere on TV commercials, not only for cosmetics and perfumes, also for shampoo, tooth paste, video games, and even for feminine pads! (I don’t find it shocking, but my friends almost screamed when I told them about the commercials)  Yes, in China companies market every product with the social influence of celebrities.   Having celebrities on advertisements seems to be the most popular way of marketing in China.  Earnings from commercials share large portion in the income of the stars.  However, it works.  When considering purchasing products especially less important goods, soap for instance, consumers’ decisions could be heavily affected by the social influence of the celebrities that showed up on TV commercials.  Here is a commercial Jay Chow(a super star in China) did for a video Game. lol

We can see McDoanald’s everywhere in Vancouver today; however, it took me half an hour to find a KFC store to get their fried chicken. It is obvious that the McDonald’s is probably the most popular fast food resturant in Vancouver.  However, as a person living in China for 20 years, I would say KFC in China is doing a much better job in terms of marketing than it is in here.  In fact, the number of KFC chains  is no less than those of McDonald’s, and the biggest  competitor of the McDonald’s in Chinese market is KFC.

Therefore, here I’d like to talk about the marketing strategies that KFC applied according to Chinese market.  First of all, they do know their customers.  At the beginning, KFC spend large amount of money on advertizing as McDonald’s did.  Unfortunately, they weren’t able to compete with McDonald’s.  McDonald’s had been widely accepted by Chinese people, but KFC didn’t do well (although KFC stepped into Chinese market earlier).  The reason why they almost reversed the situation is that they seem to know their customers better .  They understand that they are facing Chinese people who can not simply be satisfied by fried chicken and burgers. From then on, the menu of KFC has been getting updated frequently.  They provide roasted chicken wings instead of fried ones.  Their New Orlean roasted wings have been the most popular dish in KFC.  Later, they created their own burger called New Orlean roasted chicken leg burger, which became their another best seller.  Such new dishes that  hit right on Chinese people’s taste brought KFC to the level where McDonald’s spend large amount of money and time to achieve.  I would say, as a Chinese international student, I miss the KFC in China=(.

image sources: http://image.baidu.com/

Chinese Fried Fritters     New Orlean roasted wings

How much will you pay for a purse/wallet?

I asked 5 of my guy friends.  Steven, a commerce student,  told me his wallet is around $100, which is a Diesel.  Ricky, who is also an commerce student, bought his wallet from Guess for around $40.  Another friend of mine, Lu, a science student, told me he will never pay more than $30 for a wallet and his bought his wallet from China, which is around $6.  My close friend just bought a Chanel purse for $2500.  I was so surprised that she would actually pay thousands of dollars for a purse and asked why she did that.  Her answer was only one sentence. “Because it’s Chanel.”

I also did some research about Chanel in Chinese market.  I thought in a market like China, where you can get an super nice purse for $10 or an identical Chanel purse for $30, people may not pay thousands of dollars for a wallet.  However, women in China are even more enthusiastic about luxuries.  Actually in China, a Chanel purse is around $4000 and Chinese women are still crazy about them.  I would say Chanel is a typical brand that using profit orientation strategy.  According to my friend, Chanel doesn’t need any advertisement.  The logo itself is the best ad.  Chanel is elegance, taste and feminity.  People spend surprising amount of money on it because it is Chanel.

Nike+Apple, a team of the most competitive brands.  These two companies are working together and take exercising and digital-music players to a new level. The new product is called the Nike+iPod Sport Kit.  it allows runners and walkers to listen to songs and to record, store and share information (such as speed, distance covered and calories burned) with others about their exercise sessions.  From a personal perspective, it is true that I have to listen to music when I jog.  Jogging will be super boring without music. This is a good idea in terms of the effectiveness of co-branding.  The brand personalities of these two brands are kind of similar because they are both cheerful and popular among young people.  This product attracted attention of the market and actually improved the brand awareness of both brands.

Here’s another example of co-branding promotion: coca-cola & Apple.  Coca-cola company are joining forces with apple, launching a new promotion of giving out free iTune songs by giving out promotional packs of Coca-Cola, Diet Coke and Coke Zero.  I think it’s a good idea to promote these two brands together since both of the two brand are well-known and they actually make good partners together.  Probably because of the creative advertisements of coca-cola, coke is somewhat related to awesome music in my mind. Coke commercials always go with exciting music as background.  On the other hand, iTune is the world’s most popular online music store.  In addition, iTune does leave me an impression of something cool.  Therefore, the two brands make a terrific combination.  It is just delightful to see the words”free songs on iTunes” on the bottle of coke-zero because it makes zero seem even cooler.  In other words, the co-branding of coke and iTune enhances brand awareness of both brands.  As a consumer myself, this promotion did attract me to go check iTune store online after I saw it on the bottle of coke-zero.