How Best to Target China's Diverse Cities
If you’re already exporting to China, we're guessing you’re probably also selling to a host of other countries – markets like Dubai and the other six emirates could be on the list. In the UAE, there’s a good chance you’ve engaged some localisation for the country – culturally sensitive and resonant branding & communications, legal & regulatory allowances, logistics & distribution, and possibly even some new product development and packaging. In China, it’s probable that you’ve also localised the mix. But how local is your localisation?
Few people come to China without hearing that the country is like Europe; made up of varied and diverse regions. Yet in the same moment of acknowledgement, many will turn around and ‘localise for China’ with a homogenous strategy that they hope will win the hearts of consumers spanning the country.
China Skinny does a lot of research across different cities and provinces in China, and we usually find notable variances between the regions. There are the obvious differences in food tastes, climates, lifestyles, pollution and even body size, but it is the emotional cues that are often the most pronounced. We only need to look at one of the most common themes in Chinese advertising – families. Even in Guangzhou and Shenzhen - two tier 1 cities just 30 minutes apart on the fast train, the reality for families can be quite different: a large share of millennials in Guangzhou live with their parents and see them most days. In Shenzhen - a city built by domestic migrants - many millennials may only see their parents every few months, or just once a year during the Spring Festival.
Whilst some overarching localisation should be implemented across China, there is often a case to get city-specific with marketing and other initiatives. Take Shanghai, it has population greater than Australia, and a 13% larger GDP than the UAE, yet unlike the UAE-specific localisation, many brands will roll out the same strategy for Beijing, Guangzhou, Shenzhen and many other cities across China.
China’s metropolises are of a scale and affluence that they justify an element of localisation. The hyper-competitive nature of marketing in Chinese cities is finding it increasingly harder to connect with consumers without it. That means localising messaging, and even sometimes the digital platforms you use to share it. In certain demographics in some cities, digital channels aren't always the best option to reach Chinese consumers, highlighting the need to have regionally-specific plans.
Over the past few years, brands have become increasingly focused on cities beyond tier 1, and even tier 2, with good reason. These ‘smaller’ cities are often much less contested and less apathetic to interesting, new foreign products. Half of the 50 million Chinese households entering the middle to affluent classes between 2016-2020 are expected to reign from cities outside of the top-100 cities according to BCG. They’re buying more imported products, and travelling abroad more which influences more purchases. The number of direct flights between cities in China and Thailand grew from 69 to 148 over the past three years for example. Yet with such variances between lower tier cities, brands would be wise to do their due diligence before entering and localising for them.
On the subject of cities, China Skinny has launched a new tool on our site to help you make sense of it all. We’re often getting questions about which cities fall into which tier, so we have created out City Tier Calculator which provides detailed information about which tier Chinese cities are, some of the key indicators, their rankings in that tier, and even how many Starbucks they have. Use the tool here. The tool is part of an overall redesign of chinaskinny.com, which is long overdue – we’d suggest you take a look.
Here are this week's news and highlights for China:
Chinese Consumers
Uncover China's Tier Cities: Finally, the complete list of China's Tier 1-6 cities, with an easy-to-use tool to evaluate and learn about each city's profile and ranking. Some nice pics in there too. Also in Chinese.
There’s More to China than Beijing: While they still warrant consideration, the large economies of Shanghai and Beijing in many product categories and industry segments have already become saturated markets - and amongst the most competitive and hotly contested marketplaces globally. In the coming decade, China’s smaller urban centres are likely to be at the forefront of driving growth and consumer spending accounting for 75% of the 166 million Chinese expected to move from rural to urban areas in the next 14 years according to Morgan Stanley.
Forbes China's Best 100 Cities For Business List (Full Ranking): Shanghai remains China's best city to do business in followed by Guangzhou, Beijing, Nanjing, Wuhan, Shenzhen, Chongqing, Suzhou, Qingdao and Hangzhou according to Forbes analysis.
2018 Lexus-Hurun China Rich List: Where China's Mega-Wealthy Live: 50% of China's wealthiest people live in 7 cities, led by Beijing with 293, Shenzhen: 193, Shanghai: 160 and Hangzhou: 120. Guangzhou, Hong Kong and Suzhou rounded out the 7. Only 1,893 individuals made the cut this year, down 11% from 2,130 last year and the first drop since 2012, mainly the result of a 20% drop in the stock exchange. Women made up 28.7%, a record high since the list began 20 years ago. The average age was 55, with the average member joining the list at 29. 132 were born after 1980, 56 after 1985, 10 after 1990.
Trump Calls Truce in China Trade War a Big Success, but Little Is Known About the Deal: Mr. Trump and Mr. Xi have agreed to pause the trade war for 90 days and work to resolve several areas of tension, including the trade gap between what America imports from China and what China buys from the United States. But nothing beyond their official statements exists and deep divisions remain.
Digital China
In China, Where You Live Determines the Tech You Use: 21% of users of supermarket and fresh grocery apps in China live in tier 3 or lower cities, 38% of second-hand resale app users, 55% who use ebook apps and 67% of short video users. 29% live alone and 27% live with their parents in tier 1 & 2 cities, versus 17% living alone and 43% with their parents in lower tier cities.
Taobao to Offer Two-Hour Delivery in 8 Chinese Cities for ‘Double 12’ Ecommerce Holiday: Taobao is hoping to reignite growth in the mature ecommerce cities showing shopping festival fatigue by offering two-hour delivery time for this month's ecommerce shopping festival. Consumers in Shanghai, Chengdu, Wuhan, Guangzhou, Xi’an, Fuzhou, Xiamen, and Shenzhen won't have to wait long for their purchases. From 12am-1am on December 12, shoppers can snag limited-time discounts of as high as 70% on certain goods. In addition, Taobao will hold its first Double 12-themed variety show to spice things up this year.
Weibo Acquires Top Live Streaming Platform Yizhibo: Weibo's acquisition of live streaming platform Yizhibo will help create a stronger social-interaction based business model for both parties allowing Weibo to continue to gain traction with quality video content. Weibo claims a monthly active user base of 446 million in September, up 70 million year on year.
Food & Beverage
Chinese Hunger for Exotic Flavours Drives Food Import Growth: China imported $61.65 billion worth of food last year, a rise of 11.1% over 2016. Over the last 20 tears, food imports have grown 14.6% a year on average, far surpassing GDP growth. In that time, the private sector has gone from supplying 0.7% of imported goods in 1997 to 51.3% last year. Meat products, dairy, aquatic products, grain products, vegetable oil, fruit products and liquor were the top imported categories last year. The fastest growing categories were dairy (particularly butter and yoghurt) - up 36.1% for the year, tea with 33.9% and nuts with 31.8% growth. The US, Australia and NZ were the top-3 countries for supplying food.
Chinese Tourists
Young, Independent Female Travellers Fuel Growth of China's Outbound Travel: The proportion of Chinese tourists from the post-90s and post-00s travelling between January-September this year exceeded 30% in total, surpassing the post-80s for the first time according to a study by Ctrip and Mastercard. Females who travel independently have risen from 46% in 2016 to 58% in 2018, 16% more than their male counterparts. Females also spend 14% more than males. Most outbound travellers are from first-tier cities such as Beijing, Shanghai, Guangzhou and Shenzhen however there is a rapid growth in outbound tourists from lower-tier cities like Guiyang, Changzhou, Nanchang, Kunming and Taiyuan, where growth exceeded 250%. Diversified travel experiences, venturing further in a country, wealthy private groups, parent-child travel and insurance were other trends.
Entertainment
Crazy Rich Asians Didn’t Connect with Chinese Theatregoers: The rom-com blockbuster, which made more than $173 million in the US, has only scraped a little over $1 million in China in its opening weekend, not helped by launching four months after the US. Much of the sequel is expected to be set in Shanghai.
Fashion
China to Overtake US Fashion Market for First Time: China is set to overtake the US as the world’s largest fashion market for the first time in 2019 accounting for 18% of all final goods consumed according to a McKinsey and Business of Fashion study. Fashion in China is evolving from manufacturing to consumers wanting to express their own style, and excited to do so.
Luxury
Why Small Chinese Cities like Hohhot are the Future of Global Luxury Goods Consumption: More than half of all luxury consumers in China live outside the top 15 cities, 70% are female, and have an average age of 28. Two out of three are aged 18 to 30 with a bachelor’s degree or above. Mobile apps and content take up more than half the online attention of luxury buyers, through engagement by social media accounts of key opinion leaders and the brands themselves, and via apps, advertisements and third party e-commerce platforms
.That’s the Skinny for the week! See previous newsletters here. Contact China Skinny for marketing strategy, research and digital advice and implementation.
