When Tencent started during the 2014 CCTV New Year show to promote giving red envelopes online, few realized it was the successful kick-off what is now known as WeChat Pay, says WeChat expert Matthew Brennan to the JingDaily. Some luxury brands did not like the concept though: “The idea of a discount communicates value and is generally not an incentive that luxury brands want to be associated with.”Read More →

Cash was king, not so long ago in China. But as wealth and the middle class increased, mobile payments had an advantage, says business analyst Ben Cavender. Because other payment tools like cards did not have a solid footprint, eager smartphone users adopted mobile payments quickly, he tells That’s Magazine. But: “Realistically, I don’t think cash will go away entirely, but it will certainly be relegated to a less important role.”Read More →

China is leading the way in digitalizing the consumer experience in retail, but both major competitors – Alibaba and Tencent – have different retail strategies, says WeChat expert Matthew Brennan to the News Lens. Alibaba focuses on the offline experience, Tencent’s WeChat will stay online. In 2018 the battle will be on mobile payment, he adds.Read More →

Supermarkets in China (and where not) have been unfriendly for innovation – to put it mildly. But Alibaba’s HEMA’s supermarkets, starting the so-called “new retail”, are causing a revolution, writes marketing guru Tom Doctoroff in AdAge. 25 Stores are functional and dozens more will be open soon.Read More →

hejiang province, with its capital Hangzhou, have developed into a preferred destination for billionaires, says Rupert Hoogewerf, founder of the Hurun China rich list. Zhejiang not only passed domestic cities like Beijing and Shanghai, but also Paris and San Francisco in the 2018 Hurun report, writes the Digital Journal.Read More →

Starbucks opened its largest outlet last week in Shanghai, and is moving from US to China as its largest operation. Marketing guru Tom Doctoroff looks at the strategy of the US coffee retailer who entered a tea-drinking nation, and gained tracking few foreign companies got, he explains in IdealsShanghai. “A Houdini act of Marketing”.Read More →

How to deal with Chinese investors? That question is asked more frequently by government agencies, startups, larger and smaller companies outside China, and even soccer clubs. Capital is flowing over from China to the rest of the world, partly through the massive One Belt, One Road (OBOR) investment program. But many Chinese companies, private and state-owned, also have their own investment agenda.

At the China Speakers Bureau, we offer a range of speakers who can help you to deal with that question. There might not be one answer, but as China’s economic standing in the world changes, looking for possible answers becomes more crucial for the world outside China.Read More →

Huge usage of mobile phones, popular internet payment systems and 1.4 billion users are some of the elements that explain why the sharing economy in China is doing so well, says Jeffrey Towson, investment professor at the Peking University at the TV program China Matters.Read More →

Alipay, WeChat and Android are top brands, the Chinese consumer could not live without, says a recent report. Looking at brands works in China pretty different from the rest of the world, says branding expert Tom Doctoroff in the South China Morning Post. “There is no way in America that you are going to have PayPal [the western equivalent of Alipay] to rank No. 1,” Doctoroff says.Read More →

Ashley is a China marketing expert with 12 years of professional experience in China. Ashley is fluent in Mandarin, Russian, German and English. She travels from Hong Kong.Read More →