One of the main reasons Chinese consumers buy themselves silly abroad – including Hong Kong – is the high difference in pricing of similar products in mainland China. Cosmetic giants Estee Lauder and AmorePacific have lower their prices up to 30 percent, as also the government is revamping its import fees. More will follow, tells retail analyst Ben Cavender to the South China Morning Post.Read More →

Fashion has been changing massively, as low-cost manufacturing moved from China to other countries, and the fashion brand focus on value, more than on cheap production, tells Shanghai-based retail expert Ben Cavender in Just-Style. And the transition process in fashion brands will continue to cause pain, as robots move in.Read More →

WeChat has been for long the golden grail for marketing to China´s consumers. But those days are over, says innovation expert William Bao Bean, director of the Shanghai-based ChinaAccelerator to TechNode. Marketing needs more platforms than WeChat, although the Tencent tool is still an important center piece.Read More →

Victoria Secret took on China online, but has now decided to open its first offline retail flagship store in Shanghai. They move very cautiously, says retail expert Ben Cavender in AdAge, and they have a fair chance of getting it right in one of the most difficult retail markets in the world.Read More →

China is proud about its millennia old culture, but just like the rest of society, its culture is also changing very fast. Old concepts like guanxi, losing face and the suppressed position of women are not what they were even a few decades ago. Many so-called China experts still cling to those old idea, but fortunately, we can offer a range of speakers at the China Speakers Bureau who have a clear view on how China´s culture is changing.Read More →

Australian Crown expats who get incarcerated illustrate that sticking to China´s rules and regulations might be a good idea when doing business in China. Airbnb and Apple even risk a backlash of their Western constituency by hosting their China data in China. Still the best way to move forward, says Shanghai-based business analyst Shaun Rein in The Street.Read More →

Getting traction among China´s picky consumers is one thing, keeping it up is another. Larger foreign firms like Yum and Starbucks have been slow in picking up consumer trends in China, says business analyst Shaun Rein to Bloomberg, for example in their adoption of fintech developments.Read More →

When China´s leading white goods producer Haier bought the appliances department of GE it caught the headlines. But the acquisition might not be as important as the underlying strategy to enter American homes, says IMD professor Bill Fischer, co-author of the book Reinventing Giants: How Chinese Global Competitor Haier Has Changed the Way Big Companies Transform to Bloomberg.Read More →

Being perceived as a bull in China does not bother him, tells business analyst Shaun Rein in the China Daily. His on-the-ground observations and research are a solid foundation, for example for what he calls China innovation curve.Read More →