Can a Small Business Survive? (4)

It’s time to move on to the macroenvironment!

I would like to share some opinion about the current market situation in China.

Let’s start with an interesting video.

I have to say I don’t know most of the things until I watch this video. However, I think it’s way too exaggerated (or maybe I’m brainwashed?). To me, it is just about Facebook, Twitter, Youtube are not accessible and I cannot search some political stuffs that I don’t care.

What really happened is Chinese people copy Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube and develop them, so Chinese people actually have everything in Chinese style which, to me, is even more functional than the original ones.

(www.renren.com  Interestingly, it was called “In School Networking” at first and only people in school register for it. This website decide to expand their market and so they change the name to “Everyone Networking”, but due to its brand name and the original customer base, it’s customers are still mainly students.)

Beside these successful IT examples, we also have cheap copies of “everything”. The most popular one is smartphone, since IPhone was not sold in China at first and most people cannot afford it.

(Meizu M8)

As a sad result, serious polarization and distorted world view exist.

Some people, especially those who are richer, are so eager to differentiate themselves from poor people. It’s being said that people buy the benefit of a product, not the feature, but what happens in China is people are actually buying the feature. They “love” the LV logo so much that they buy a lot just for showing off. People, especially “after 80 and 90” (referred in post (1) ), love and buy everything that can show their dignity and go to any place can show their taste. In short, the more expensive a product is, the more popular it is. The real “Made in China” become the symbol of cheap, low quality stuffs, even though the products are getting better.

However, the blindness does generate a lucrative market, doesn’t it?