The difference between Chinese and American network marketing

This article was written in a very early time, as it should be in May of this year, earlier than the summary of my new media and new media marketing. Recently published in the new issue of the "sales and market", here to do a collection. The reader of this article is not a student in the new Media circle (some of the notes can clearly reflect this). If you have been in the internet for a long time, you don't have to look.

There is little doubt that the Internet in the United States is more advanced than the Internet in China. From the Internet population, although China is close to 300 million (according to the 23rd China Internet Development Statistics Report, CNNIC2009 January), known as the world's most populous country, but compared with such a large real population, China's internet penetration rate has reached 22.6%, More than the global average, it is still far below 72.5% of that country on the other side of the ocean. More importantly, China's Internet society is showing a very strong entertainment situation. This sentence has two layers of meaning, one, itself a large number of high-density use of the application of entertainment, such as network music, network video; second, even seemingly less entertaining events, in China's Internet, will be in the form of considerable entertainment to spread. This kind of cultural characteristics with a spoof nature, I call "the Chinese Internet Society subculture." The emergence of this situation, and the Internet is in the real environment, and secondly also with the Chinese people's own characteristics.

Another visible aspect is that e-commerce applications in China are underdeveloped. Despite the rapid development of online shopping in recent years, online shoppers grew by 60% in the year to 2009, but they accounted for only 25% of the internet population, compared with 71% in the US. More interestingly, in Chinese netizens, communication between them prefers to use instant messaging rather than email. China's instant messaging tools, such as QQ, are the first in the world, more than 75%, but China's e-mail usage is not so high, only 56%. This seems to explain a problem: the Chinese prefer to chat casually, rather than serious to write any mail there. Although in China, there are a large number of copies of the United States Facebook site (so-called SNS) exists, including some of the high number of visits to the site, such as at home, school, but as long as a careful thinking, China's largest SNS community, in fact, is QQ, This so-called hundreds of millions of-user front from the portal to the communication tools to the community-all-encompassing giant companies.

In fact, QQ (that is, Tencent) is quite entertaining, from its penguin logo can be seen, more lovely rather than serious. QQ game or QQ show is good, Tencent is a strong profit of the big head, all is to take the entertainment route. It is no wonder that the MSN even backed by Microsoft such an oligopoly, can not and QQ confrontation. Not to mention the interface so Gtalk (another internet oligopoly Google produced chat tools) can only be used in a small circle.

Entertainment, low-end use, not seriousness, and so on, are the typical characteristics of China's Internet. Instead of seizing on this feature, they began to use the Internet to do marketing and to copy some of the American way, obviously losing more than winning less. One of the most important is the reliance on technology (or superstition), which is the key to many failed cases.

China, in theory, is a unification country, but in fact there is a great diversity of cultures everywhere. Although the Chinese people have "conformity" or "collectivism" of the common, but all over the country have their own strong cultural characteristics. Many people mistakenly think that the use of a kind of killer technology, can be a recruit to win the entire Chinese market, this is very big misunderstanding. Although the Internet has no borders, business is built on relationships. The meaning of this sentence is not to refer to the Chinese people "relationship", but marketing itself is the expansion of customer relationship, establishment and maintenance.

Network Marketing, in general, can be divided into two discussion paths. One is the network company (Internet Enterprises) marketing expansion, the second is any company to use the network to do marketing expansion. The two are slightly different.

The first thing we need to understand is that China's internet companies are not strictly High-tech enterprises, but paradoxically, they are labour-intensive enterprises. Whether Sina, Baidu, Alibaba (including Taobao) or Tencent, giant or grand, have a huge ground troops, the industry commonly known as "push" (ground promotion). It is no precedent to pry the Internet companies across the continent by setting up a major city headquarters. This is evidenced by the results of Google and Baidu competing in the Chinese search engine market, which is roughly 3:7 per cent of the market share based on the Analysys report.

Who is the force to deal with? The answer is: Internet cafes.

It is hard for people in the developed coastal cities to imagine how popular the internet cafes are. Surfing the internet and running out? There is free internet in the company, the home is installed or ADSL or wired broadband, why go to sound a bit smoky internet cafes?

But the numbers tell us that's not the case. In China, the first Internet location is the family, occupies 78.4%, the second is the Internet café, there are more than 42.4%. The internet in the company is ranked third, only 20.7%, is half of the Internet café.

Another very important statistic is the growth of Chinese farmers ' Internet numbers. This growth is staggering, by the end of 2008, the rural network population has reached 85 million, compared with the more than 50 million figure at the end of 07, an increase of more than 60%. Once there is a simple can not be simple site hao123.com, to tens of millions of of the price sold to Baidu. This site only provides services like this: You can click on this website "Sina" two words to www.sina.com.cn. In fact, in China, do not know Sina is a sina.com.cn. And hao123 is so hot (, according to Alexa Statistics, is ranked in the global Top100 site), is said to be because there are too many Internet café administrators tired of repeated replies to the Netizen proposed I want to see the news to what the site's problem, The homepage of all the computers in the Internet Café is set to hao123.com. In other words, in China, Internet cafes are an important channel to do business on the internet!

In the case of online gaming companies, the important task of the force is two, one is to post a large number of promotional posters in the Internet café, and the second is to let the Internet café all the computers pre-installed company produced online games. You know, downloading and installing a network game, for many people, is a very technical threshold of work. Most users of Internet cafes, playing online games may be very skilled, but to install a network game, it is a bit difficult.

For another China's very famous search engine company, its push force will be as far as possible to let the Internet Café Administrator to set all the Computer Browser homepage to the company's Web page. This relationship is not built by telephone faxes, emails and instant messaging tools, and requires interviews, meals, karaoke, and even some affordable costs, in short, face-to-face business expansion. As far as this is concerned, the business development of internet companies, and the business expansion of any other industry, is no different.

The internet is essentially a Western (or American) invention (if it can be called an invention), but China's internet companies, the iceberg part of the sea level, are very similar to American internet companies: a bunch of highly intelligent, highly educated elites, but this is only a small part. The vast iceberg, at sea level, is replete with the characteristics of Chinese businesses: the use of huge, low-cost manpower for pervasive infiltration.

For the second category, "cement" companies that want to use "mouse" to expand their business have more to pay attention to.

The first is the domain name problem. Domain names are westernized in nature: not letters or numbers. For Americans, Loreal is very clear, but not for Chinese. Yes, most of the first-tier women of course know what Loreal is, but what about the two-tier city? What about the township? L ' Oreal itself is not one of the high-end cosmetics brands that many people have imagined for the city's white-collar women (l ' Oreal's 17 brands, which cover almost all levels of women). When you enter www.oulaiya.com, the result returned is a dead link (l ' oreal China website is www.lorealchina.com). Although the Chinese people like a little taste of the brand name, but to the letter level, I am afraid that pinyin than English, much more.

The second issue is also cultural. The oriental cannot simply use "humour" to describe, the more precise word is: cunning, so in the eastern country will appear parody such words (the word from the Japanese kuso). Chinese is a people who like divergent thinking (compared with many languages, Chinese itself is a less rigorous language system), although with the strong imprint of Collectivism, but in a wide range of circumstances, called "eight, recount". This culture is actually very related to the history of thousands of years: Since Qin Dynasty, the Imperial Orthodox power of Chinese feudal dynasty has never penetrated the following level of county. Township, is actually autonomous.

Therefore, the same is the entertainment of things, the more popular, the more you can find that flashing oriental wisdom. The Chinese are very good at deconstructing things. Layers of deconstruction, the original carefully constructed concepts, images, symbols, ideas are fragmented, and even stray miles. But this kind of situation, to the marketing this essentially belongs to the dissemination thing, is a difficult challenge.

For example, many multinationals value their brand logos, valuing the degree to which the approval of the headquarters is required by a slight change in color, line weight, and placement. In the eyes of many companies, the logo is definitely not allowed to "spoof" the audience. This understanding can not be said to be wrong, but if the rise to the company and all can not spoof the height, then, the spread of the brand is a very difficult task.

Some companies don't. It allows people to use their brains in a certain range, to appear creative. As I said before, Chinese people like to join the fun in a frame-defined situation. One of the most recent advertising cases is Intel Corporation and its "embarrassing". Using this long-lived word on the internet, coupled with the story of a small box of Internet Reds (fictional characters) and Chubby (real people), Intel is using prizes as bait to call on netizens to upload their own "embarrassing" stories or embarrassing experiences.

For Intel, who has always been high on the cold and High-tech image, this is a daring attempt. This attempt is not necessarily to direct its sales (in fact, the computer CPU is rarely directly to the public consumer), but this is undoubtedly to create a more pro-people image. With Intel's support for low-priced netbooks, this populist image is essential. Computer this thing, today should no longer be "mysterious", "complex", "advanced" pronoun.

Finally, any person engaged in network marketing work must realize that the Chinese Internet, although there is also a mass media, but can never ignore the huge interpersonal communication. This is a very big difference between the Chinese Internet and the American Internet. In a country where the application rate of the instant Tongxu tool is as high as 75% (less than 40% in America), people are very fond of word of mouth. In fact, gossip or rumors, on the Chinese Internet, will be quickly spread out. One-night fame is a common example, but the same, after the fame of fresh-keeping period but a few months of the example is not uncommon: because there are new things can be passed.

In my opinion, the influence of interpersonal communication on the brand is much more negative. As the saying goes, good things do not go out, bad things spread thousands of miles. In the words of mouth, more can be found, is gossip. At the organizational level, this has gone beyond the scope of traditional marketing, but involves the quality of the product or service itself. An unpleasant experience, a case of improper service, will take root in a variety of unexpected corners, and then spread quickly.

In the case of "Colgate Cancer" a few years ago, we can see how much gossip is damaging to the brand. After a few months, I asked many people in Hong Kong, and hardly any Hong Kong people knew about it, but in mainland China, the sales of Colgate toothpaste plummeted. But the reason is that a media mistakenly translated a small influence of the foreign media coverage.

Although Colgate first time to open a rumor, although Colgate has set up a special topic on the website of one of China's largest portals, Colgate has been looking for the original author to claim that she is also using Colgate, and the media is pure misinformation, but it has always been unwilling to do something: apologize. To Westerners, apologizing means actually I'm wrong, but in the eyes of the Chinese, it's just a gesture of sincerity. In addition to the incident that year, quite a few overseas giants angered the Chinese people's national feelings, so the multinational company has always condescending posture in the hearts of the people are firmly established. In the eyes of the Chinese people, the organization that does not know how to adapt is self-willed, is to big bully small. Although according to the classic crisis management strategy, Colgate did not do anything wrong (apology is sometimes a legal dispute, so the foreigner is easy not to apologize), but on the cultural level, it entered China for many years, still do not understand the Chinese people.

Marketing this thing, few textbooks or reference books say this is a matter of culture, in more sense, they teach you how to determine strategy, how to design tactics, how to contact with the target audience, how to mobilize the enthusiasm of the audience to echo your marketing activities. But if you admit that marketing itself is the establishment of interpersonal relationships, then, culture two words, always can not go around the threshold. And the source of the difference between the Chinese and American network marketing, in the final analysis, is the cultural difference.

This paper originates from it talks& #8211; Wei http://weiwuhui.com blog, original address: http://weiwuhui.com/2746.html