Archive for the ‘China’ Category
Wednesday, February 17th, 2010
Following on from the announcement last week that we had been shortlisted for an award at the Greater China Achievement in International Trade Awards 2010, we are thrilled to announce that, from a total of 14 entrants, B2B International was declared runner-up in the China Rising Star category.
Businesses, organisations and education institutions from all across the North West of England were honoured at the ceremony, organised by the Northwest Regional Development Agency and UKTI North West, and held on Friday 12th February 2010 at the Lowry Theatre, Salford Quays.
On receiving the accolade, Alaric Fairbanks, General Manager of B2B International in China, said: “We are delighted to receive recognition from our home region of North West England. The company sees this award as a reflection of the hard work and achievement in providing world class business-to-business market research, not just in China and Asia-Pacific but also around the world.”
Nick Hague, Managing Director at B2B International in the UK, added: “Establishing permanent operations in China three years ago was partly in response to demand from existing clients for high quality market research services covering mainland China, Hong Kong, Macau and Taiwan, but at a strategic level was guided by recognition of the globalisation of the market research industry and its customers. Having a permanent presence in China and the wider Asia-Pacific market is seen as essential positioning internationally and is vital in gaining access to these growing markets – in particular to China as the world’s fastest growing large economy.”
Learn more about our China offering at: www.b2binternational.com/China
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Asia, B2B News, China, Nick Hague |
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Wednesday, February 10th, 2010
B2B International is delighted to announce that it has been shortlisted in the China Rising Star category at the Greater China Achievement in International Trade awards ceremony, to be held this Friday at The Lowry Theatre, Salford Quays.
Supported by the Northwest Regional Development Agency and UKTI, the awards are being held this weekend to coincide with celebrations for the Chinese New Year.
With entry available to all businesses located in the Northwest of England with strong links of 3 years or less to Mainland China, Hong Kong or Taiwan, the China Rising Star Award 2010 will be judged on:
- Business objectives and strategy in Greater China.
- A company’s approach to penetrating the Greater China market and how successful it has been.
- Evidence of direct link between Greater China and what impact this has had on the overall success of the business.
With a long-established presence in Manchester, and the opening of our office in Beijing 3 years ago enabling us to offer existing and new clients alike easier access to b2b market research across the Asia-Pacific region, we await the results of the ceremony with bated breath…
To find out more about our China offering, please visit: www.b2binternational.com/China
Posted in
B2B News, China |
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Friday, August 14th, 2009
With so many people interested in the state of the economy, Alaric Fairbanks this week takes a look at some of the more unusual indicators which may tell us whether prospects are looking up.
Even – perhaps especially – here in Beijing, as elsewhere, not a day goes by without mention of the economy and how quickly it will recover or not. Supplementary to this are the business confidence or climate surveys and their subsequent reports of optimism and pessimism.
These are all very well, and may be a good source of column inches or publicity for a research company. This is all OK with me but, even if reflective of whatever business community or industry sector’s level of confidence, it is perhaps worth thinking about which sources of information are behind, say, agreement with a statement expecting an increase in profit, revenue, headcount, etc.
From examples I have seen, including, I confess, a climate survey we conducted, there is little attention paid to the sources of information upon which these feelings are based. When it does appear, it is usually a choice of ‘respectable’ sources, such as newspapers, journals, or official statistics. Less expected or rational influences are often overlooked and, even if included in the question set, a respondent may not admit to having been influenced by an alternative or informal source.
Of course, it would be great for our business if businesspeople took tailored market research as their main source of guidance for decisions and even opinions, but as this is not always the case, I was curious as to what observations people were making to inform their levels of confidence.
To this end we spoke informally to contacts in the Western business community about any indicators used to reflect on their business prospects. A common theme emerged around indicators being derived from the physical environment, especially through observation. A simple example of an informal indicator was counting or estimating the number of new building sites passed on the way to work – the more new sites, the stronger the economic prospects.
These conversations suggested that observations were aimed at levels of activity. They tended be a mixture of fairly Beijing-specific and the more general. Observed indicators from work and life in Beijing with a perceived positive correlation included:
- The number of properties marked with the character “chai”, indicating ready for demolition.
- Visibility of yellow construction helmets seen at lunchtime
- Levels of air pollution, sometimes with reference to the official air pollution index
- Time taken to get to work
And with a perceived negative correlation:
- Number of unsolicited job applications
- Number of cold visits by salespeople
- Ease of purchasing train tickets.
Interestingly, although not all of these are anecdotally based, they all appear to have some underlying rationale. It would be interesting, at least to me, to look into how effective these indicators really are… but things are fairly hectic here at the moment, what with projects, proposals, etc – another way of showing how things are going right now!
Posted in
China, Economic Downturn, Economic Indicators, Economic Recovery, Market Research China, Statistics, Surveys |
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Wednesday, July 22nd, 2009
The World Bank recently raised its forecast of China’s economic growth rate to 7.2% in 2009 from its earlier forecast of 6.5%. It now projects GDP growth of the world’s third largest economy to reach 7.7% in 2010.
Better than expected economic data from China is likely to raise hopes that the world’s largest emerging economy could help to pull the rest of the world out of recession. The National Bureau of Statistics announced an 8.9% jump in industrial output in May 2009 compared with a 7.3% rise in April.
UK direct exports to China in April were down 9% from a year earlier at £468m, while direct imports were up 15 % at £1.52 billion. 1
All this growth and positivity is on the back of the fact that due to global change from the current recession, China’s overall competitiveness in the world has slipped to 20th position when compared to 17th position in 2008. 2
If you are interested in market research in China then please visit our website at http://www.b2binternational.com.cn/English/
1 HMRC – http://www.hmrc.gov.uk
2 IMD Business School – http://www.imd.ch/
Posted in
Alaric Fairbanks, BRIC, Business Confidence Index, China, Exports, Forecasting, Imports |
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Friday, July 3rd, 2009
In his latest Thursday Night Insight post, Matt Powell reflects on his experiences working in our China office and the difficulties inherent in conducting business across cultural boundaries.
I recently saw a TV advert from one of the world’s major banks that professes to its excellent local knowledge in every single country. Of course, this campaign has been going for quite some time now as the bank positions itself not as a sprawling, faceless mega-corporation, but indeed as a very localised and personal bank. Whether or not the bank does in fact deliver upon its promise remains to be seen, but the importance of local knowledge cannot be underestimated.
There are many horror stories about corporations naively taking one product or brand that is successful in one country and launching it into a foreign market without first adapting the product or its branding to meet the local culture. Pepsi and Coca-Cola give two sterling examples of ‘how not to do it’.
When Pepsi launched their cola in China, the company thought it would be sufficient to translate their slogan "Pepsi Brings You Back to Life" into Chinese and simply launch the product. Unfortunately, the slogan was translated a tad too literally and instead proclaimed that "Pepsi brings your ancestors back from the grave." Of course, the problem was rectified, but damage had already been done.
Coca-Cola did something fairly similar when launching their product in China; they chose to launch their brand using Chinese characters that read phonetically as “Kekoukela”. Of course, the phonetic spelling sounded similar ‘Coca-Cola’ to a westerner, but I imagine there weren’t many Chinese consumers looking to purchase a refreshing can of “female horse stuffed with wax”. Surely, even just the smallest foray into market research would have highlighted these significant blunders, and saved the companies millions of dollars – let alone the damage done to the brands.
Indeed, in many cases, the same message or piece of information can still cross hazy lingual and cultural boundaries. I myself had an experience when on secondment in our Beijing office, where lingual barriers became slightly hazy to say the least. Each day when finishing work I would order a taxi to where I lived, pronounced ‘Hua Mao’. Every time I asked, the taxi driver would either laugh, shake his head, ask to see a map, or (in one extreme case) make a loud cat-like ‘miaow’-ing noise at me. I knew I was saying the name of the location correctly, so although slightly perplexed at the behavior of the Beijing taxi drivers, I thought nothing of it… until, that is, one day towards the end of my stay when I took a taxi with some of my Chinese colleagues. When I asked the taxi driver to me to my destination my colleagues burst into uproarious laughter – it turned out that for two months I had been saying the words correctly, but pronouncing them with the wrong tonal inflection – and, of course, was asking the taxi driver to take me to ‘cat with flowers’. At least the miaow-ing taxi driver seemed slightly less disturbing after that.
Although it is an amusing story, it does indeed highlight the importance of local knowledge and just how critical the nuances of any language and culture really are. To most westerners, what I was saying and what I should have been saying sounded fairly similar indeed, but (despite me always managing to get to my destination) the difference it made to the local person – the person who mattered – was huge.
At B2B International we, like the large bank, recognise just how important local knowledge is. Every country is different and brings with it a whole set of language issues and cultural traits. We use ‘mother-tongue’ interviewers when conducting international interviews for this very reason; the cultural nuances are critically important in understanding information and indeed any subtle inferences that may be missed by someone who is not completely immersed in that particular culture or language. Indeed, across our three offices we can span the globe from Asia, to Europe, to the Americas.
Our expertise can help our clients in many ways – from conducting multi-country studies in various languages, to conducting in-depth research and analysis in specific countries, to researching new markets to enter. For more information about how we could help your Company, contact a member of research team at our European headquarters in Manchester, our Asian headquarters in Beijing, or our American head office in New York.
Posted in
China, Culture, International Market Research, Market Research China, Matt Powell, Thursday Night Insight |
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