What Types Of Studies Are Being Conducted?

By Matthew Harrison, Director of B2B International China

Across industries, it is noticeable that the type of research commissioned is markedly different from the situation in Europe and North America. In the West, research reflects the objectives of companies operating in mature markets, who want to establish customer loyalty, achieve differentiation through branding, monitor the satisfaction of their employees, develop new concepts or segment their target audience. Typical research projects are therefore customer and employee satisfaction studies, branding studies, concept tests and segmentations.

In China on the other hand, a high proportion of research projects (over 60%) are focused on market assessment studies, in which clients (often foreign companies) are asking for a comprehensive explanation of how markets are structured, who are the key players and what is the market size. The following paragraphs discuss the type of business-to-business research being conducted in China: Read the rest of “Business to Business Market Research in China - Part I” or post a comment

By Sebastien Breteau

Quality Control is a crucial part in the process of importing from China. Pressure on production costs, distance, time and cultural differences make it unavoidable.

Implementing Quality Control allows the importer to:
• Minimize the risks (and associated costs) linked to quality, loading, warehousing or non-compliance issues: “My products have been rejected by customs because the labelling done by my Chinese supplier does not comply with European standards.”

• Make sure contractual obligations are met (specification, packing, printing, delivery): “My client rejected my delivery because the colour code of his logo has been wrongly printed on the production lot.”
Read the rest of “Quality Control in China” or post a comment

In this issue I am venturing beyond European borders to China, a fast growing marketplace. But starting operations in a new market is not easy.Will you move your own people to the new location or will you start hiring locally? And if you hire locally, how do you attract the best candidates and what do these new recruits expect?

Read the rest of “Eastern Promise?” or post a comment >>

Just before Chinese New Year, I was in a Shanghai sales meeting where the owner of a European company was discussing post-holiday sales projections. The talk was all “new, innovative, out of the box”, but the walk was all about doing the same old thing only bigger and/or cheaper. I’ve been to this rodeo before. Some of the expensive new marketing initiatives put into place 6 months ago were about to whither and die.

Read the rest of “Warning to China Managers: Out of the box thinking can get messy” or post a comment >>

As you might have noticed already, we have added some new options and chapters to our redesigned Web site. One of these is the Question and Answer chapter.

When you have a China-related question which you would like to be answered by the visitors of our Web site, simply send an email and we will post it. Or, the other way around, when you know the answer to…

Read the rest of “China Business Q & A” or post a comment >>