Prying Open Chinese Wallets.

I was sent an article today from the author of buzzandthecity; it was a link to a FT article titled “China Goes Shopping” wherein Chinese are described as “penny pinching, ruthless, suspicious shoppers”.

One key excerpt from the article caught my eye:

“Even when they can easily afford it, buying a PC typically involves six visits to a store, and more often than not, customers will wait six months before making their decision after consulting blogs, online comparison sites and – the most important source of information in China – friends and family.“

That’s interesting isn’t it? It suggests that while hard push advertising campaigns may get the word out, what really makes the final sale is social influence; or what peers say about the product, in addition to keeping constant contact with the prospect over the 6 month buying decision period.

This then supports the idea of social media as a tool not only to get Chinese consumers interested in your product, but as a way to keep constant contact beyond the typical 3 month ad campaign, and also push for final sales. This  assumes the community where they share information is optimized to send traffic to a call-to-action sales page when the target is ready to buy. Ah yes, always a string attached, ya?

We’ll if you’re interested the team over at ZeroDegrees may know how to build the right traffic channel structure to funnel leads to your online POS thru China SNS… you’re just a few clicks away from finding out how.

Now that I’ve finished pitching my own services, I’ll gently segway into pitching another: buzzandthecity is a great new blog on China advertising so check it out.

To read the full article on FT’s website, click here.

Related articles from around the web.

• Diane Francis: China jitters (huffingtonpost.com)
• Trouble Ahead (china.blogs.time.com)
• Festival of updates #2: China business! (jamesfallows.theatlantic.com)
• China Postpones Controversial Web Filter (abcnews.go.com)

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