Archive for the ‘Jason Zhang’ Category

Are you an effective communicator?

Jason Zhang was a little surprised when the five shirts his friend had bought for him arrived in the mail; he had been expecting to receive long-sleeved shirts and yet found his new garments had short sleeves. Although he thought he had been clear in his request, Jason discovered to his detriment that effective communication is not always as easy as you think…

Last summer, during my visit to Tianjin, I bought a couple of long-sleeved shirts in a department store. These shirts fit me very well and I really love this particular brand. Unfortunately, they’re not available in Beijing, where I live.

A week ago, I rang my friend who lives in Tianjin and asked her to buy five shirts on my behalf. During our conversation, I briefed her in detail on the particular brand name, the size, my favored style and color, and certainly what was an affordable price for me. I thought that was all the information she needed to make the purchase. However, I was wrong as I didn’t communicate to her one of the key pieces of information – long sleeves! In the meantime, she didn’t check this information with me either as she took for granted that short sleeves would fine with me. This is understandable, as Beijing is pretty hot in summer – with daytime temperatures as high as 38 degrees centigrade. Most people on the street have short-sleeved shirts, but my preference is long sleeves.

This is a real example to illustrate the importance of effective communication in our life and our workplace. Basically, in the workplace, at any given time, we all have to communicate in some way with our internal or external clients. As an effective communicator, you can bring real concrete benefits to your work and your organization. At the very least, you avoid having to do things twice, as you get it right in the first instance.  

In our capacity as professional consultants, perfect communication – both internal and external – is a crucial factor in building our sustainable competitive strengths, like efficiency, productivity, and a comfortable working environment.

As a business-to-business market research agency, our typical clients are marketing and business development professionals from national and international organizations. They come to us for help in making difficult and expensive decisions. At every point in the process, these clients’ expectations for effective communications from their suppliers are very high.

You would agree with me that the foundation to effective communications is precise information via an appropriate medium at the right time. At each contact point with clients in our work, effective communications are vitally important, from taking enquires, RFQ/RFP (request for quote/proposal), briefing, commissioning meeting, project design, through to the final reporting. It is our company’s normal practice to deliver an interim presentation, to ensure all the parties involved in the project have the same level of understanding of the exact project deliverables. 

Within the marketing research and consulting business sector, to ensure client liaison in an effective and efficient way, your essentials skills are listening, plus market insight, to understand a client’s particular business and needs.

In any communication, trying to use easy-to-understand expressions rather than special terminology or abbreviations, is a good idea. Let me give you an example. Last year, we conducted a market assessment study for a leading American industrial valve maker, to help them penetrate Asia’s pharmaceutical markets. For this market entry study, we used PEST (Political, Economic, Social and Technological) analysis to review the attractiveness of the opportunity and the barriers to entry to each individual market in Asia. When our project team leader and myself co-delivered the final presentation to the Client, we kept talking about PEST and IPR (Intelligence Property Right) issues in China. When we approached the end of presentation in the Q&A session, one of the audience asked the question, "What do you mean by PEST and IPR?" I then realized we should have clarified the abbreviations we had used.

It is quite normal in all walks of life and in all ways of communication to expect the audience to have the same level knowledge as we do. However, on many occasions, this is not the case. This is the reason why our project team always has detailed briefings, commissioning meetings and interim presentations with our Client. With these efforts, we can ensure both sides have the same level of knowledge and expectation from the marketing research and consulting project.

The other day, I got an email enquiry forwarded by our New York office. There were merely two sentences in the email: "We’re from Brazil looking to acquire a Chinese company. What is the cost and time frame for you to research this target company?"

How do you find the communication of this email enquiry? If you were sending out an enquiry for this sort of buying and acquisition study, what information do you think you need to provide to your agency?

Posted in Acquisition Research, Jason Zhang, Market Research, Market Research China, Thursday Night Insight |
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Where are your opinions and perceptions from?

In this, his first Thursday Night Insight blog post, Jason Zhang, Deputy General Manager of B2B International’s Beijing office, takes a look at stereotypes and preconceptions, and reiterates the importance local knowledge plays in understanding people’s opinions and perceptions. Presently working out of the B2B International UK head office, Jason knows first-hand that, in spite of some common ground, there is still plenty to talk about when the East meets the West…

Before coming to Manchester for a two month placement in our Stockport office, I went to see my uncle in my home town near Beijing to say goodbye. My uncle, who is nearly 70 years old, has worked his whole life as welder for a local pharmaceuticals manufacturer, and has never travelled outside of China. In spite of this, he does know the name of Prime Minister Gordon Brown and he knows Manchester to be the hub of England’s textile industry. However, he also asked me “Are there still a lot of people in London who suffer because of the heavy smog?” It surprised me that my uncle still thought London to be a heavily polluted city as I know that this has not been a real problem for some years now.

To be honest, I myself also have some preconceptions about the UK. Two Saturdays ago, I went to watch Stockport County play MK Dons at football. I was expecting to experience some sort of hooliganism but there were none there! I am not a football fan, but just thinking about English football makes the concept of hooligans spring to mind.

Let me tell you another funny story about myself. Some years ago, when studying for my Masters degree at the University of Hull, I did some shopping in the supermarket ASDA. At the cash point, the staff asked me “Cash back?” I was so excited to hear that, as in our country the supermarkets have some kind of lucky draw to reward their customers by giving them cash or vouchers. So I answered, “Oh great, how much can I have?” When I saw everybody in the queue laughing at me, I finally came to realise that there was something wrong with my understanding of the expression “Cash back”.

It is fair to say that everybody has got his or her own perceptions and opinions about the outside world. However, the most successful companies out there are those which are very good at continually listening to their customers and understanding their perceptions. In turn, these companies then inform their target audience with certain information via specific vehicles.

Let us look at the example of Carrefour, one of the most successful foreign supermarkets in China. The French operator opened 19 stores alone in 2007 across mainland China, with the total number of stores now standing at 109.

Some years ago, I supervised some customer satisfaction face-to-face study projects for Carrefour in Beijing. There I leaned that this French operator was the first supermarket in China to introduce live seafood displays of fish, crabs, prawns, etc in their stores. They understood through listening to local customers that Chinese people like live fish as they are fresh. Previously, the only place to buy live fish was in the open market. Now you can see, in all the Carrefour supermarkets in China, big glass tanks full of water where live fish and other water creatures are swimming around.

So, perhaps you should ask yourself – How good is your company at listening to customers and translating this into marketing campaign actions?

Posted in Customer Satisfaction, International Market Research, Jason Zhang, Market Research, Market Research China, Thursday Night Insight |
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