Starbucks '"foreign brand" misread by Chinese people

The flatter the world is, the more three-dimensional the misreading is.

With regard to concepts, brands, tastes, fashion, lifestyle and cities, old misunderstandings are resolved and new misunderstandings emerge.

New luxury is popular in China. The mainstream consumption values are experiencing luxury, owning LOGO, overdrawing credit cards, enjoying misread profits and pleasures. Anti-consumers are marginalized and become vulnerable groups.

Starbucks Starbucks

Asperkund used the word "coffee religion" when discussing Starbucks brands in his book the Spirit of the Company. He believes that Starbucks'"coffee religion" is a community of people with roughly the same life sentiment and social identity. Howard Schultz, chairman and CEO of Starbucks, said: "We are not looking for maximum sales size. We try to make our customers feel the romance of tasting coffee. " Their saying is best reflected in China: the most prime location, the most exquisite customers, the romantic elegance of petty bourgeoisie.

However, CCTV host Rui Chenggang, who started blogging to ask Starbucks to withdraw from the Imperial Palace in 2006, believes that in the general concept of Westerners, Starbucks is "the representative symbol of food culture that does not enter the hall of elegance." film and television works often make fun of words such as "Starbucks everywhere" and "Starbucks opens to the White House". In the United States, Starbucks is all over supermarkets, shopping malls and downtown areas. Starbucks' green mermaid logo appears more frequently than McDonald's Big M. Drive on any road in the city center and you can see a Starbucks within a few hundred meters. An American friend joked: when there was a fire, the US Fire Brigade told Starbucks customers on this side of the road to evacuate, where to? The other Starbucks across the street. Because there must be another Starbuck 50 meters away or across the street. In the waiting hall of an American airport, there is a mocking slogan: the last Starbucks. How can Starbucks, which sells for only $4 in the United States, require it to be high-end and elegant?

Starbucks is a very inexpensive popular drink in the United States, which can be regarded as a fast food in coffee, but when it emigrates to China, it has become one of the elements of fashion and elegance. The nature has been completely changed. Chinese Starbucks consumers no longer care about the most direct elements of coffee, such as taste, price, weight and quality, and pay more attention to the atmosphere experienced at Starbucks. If Starbucks sells coffee in the United States and comes to China, it has become a sales sentiment and culture.

Chivas Chivas

In foreign countries, whisky is considered to be an old man's wine, and it is hard to imagine that whisky will be chosen at a graduation party for college students. In fact, when Chivas entered China on a large scale in 1992, the consumer audience was the same as all foreign wine brands: successful people. But successful people in China have not brought sales success to Chivas.

But now Chivas has become the largest whisky brand in China, and China has also become Chivas's largest market, surpassing the United States and Europe in sales. Chivas is inconspicuous among hundreds of whisky brands in the famous whisky center in Edinburgh, Scotland, and many Britons don't know it comes from the Scotch Whisky brand until they arrive in China. But in China, Chivas has become synonymous with whisky. In a bar, you order a whiskey on the rocks, and the waiter will send you a Chivas without thinking about it.

Chivas's global strategy is "Chivas Life", like the famous ad: soothing songs in which several seemingly successful but not young men fish happily on an iceberg. But Chivas's life in China is a bizarre nightclub, a passionate dance, a night, and a young Chinese.

"our target audience is young people: more open-minded and receptive to new brands." "they see party life abroad and they really want to experience it," said David David Hunt, China general manager of TEQUILA Public Relations, which is in charge of Chivas's integrated marketing strategy. In 2004, although Scotch Whisky's global sales grew by only 2%, its sales in China increased by 170%. It is ironic that a wine that is supposed to be a successful person is a great success among unsuccessful young people.

Haagen-Dazs Haagen-Dazs

A lovelorn girl bought a box of Haagen-Dazs and sadly thought that her lover was gone, leaving her to "enjoy this beautiful and expensive food alone." Annie Baby wrote the wishes of the petty bourgeoisie. Some advertisers say that Haagen-Dazs may not be the best ice cream in the world, but it may be the most conceptual ice cream brand. "if you love me, take me to eat Haagen-Dazs", which makes Haagen-Dazs expensive because of love.

Mr. Hu first knew that Haagen-Dazs was not as reserved as he thought. He learned from his classmates who were flight attendants that Haagen-Dazs was free on international flights and that few people ate it. A foreign student went to the United States to find that Haagen-Dazs, which is regarded as a luxury in China, is a very common brand in its birthplace, the United States, just like Hexue in China, which is mainly sold in supermarkets and vending machines, with few specialty stores. Many Americans have never heard of it. The price is also very civilian, with a domestic family outfit selling 78 yuan for only $2.99 in the United States. "pushing and shoving behind the window with a bunch of brands of ice cream I've never heard of, like a maid in the war," the foreign student described it.

Haagen-Dazs takes the high-end route in China and only chooses to open stores in bustling parts of big cities. So that the presence or absence of Haagen-Dazs has become a symbol of whether a city is fashionable or not, and some city mayors even call for Haagen-Dazs to move in. Without Starbucks, Haagen-Dazs and IKEA, Guangzhou was once considered unfashionable. In 2000, Haagen-Dazs opened its first store in Guangzhou and specially invited Nicholas Tse, the most popular at that time, to cut the ribbon. The media and citizens were very excited that Guangzhou finally had Haagen-Dazs.

Pasta spaghetti

Three Chinese women who had been single for a long time got together to cook and agreed that they would each serve a dish. Half an hour later, they brought out three bowls of spaghetti. There is no better food in the world than spaghetti, Garfield said. But for a person who is slightly particular about diet, there is nothing more boring than spaghetti.

Take the most common "spaghetti with meat sauce". In the past, it was the food of the poor, who could not afford to buy large chunks of high-quality steak. They could only buy some beef belly with uneven fat and thinness, cooked with tomatoes, stewed into rotten meat paste, and poured with tablespoons on the cooked spaghetti. It was a "quack dish" for Italian drivers and sellers.

JamieOliver, a handsome British chef, once taught people on TV to make authentic "spaghetti with bolognese" and chose good beef. Such a luxurious crime would have angered both rich and poor people 300 years ago.

In the West, a bachelor who has just graduated from college cannot cook his own diet without Pasta. A large pot of water boils all kinds of spaghetti and pours it with supermarket sauce or self-fried sauce, and breakfast, lunch and dinner is much more exquisite than a sandwich hamburger. Spaghetti is to westerners what instant noodles are to easterners.

Why is it that noodles have almost become the most unified staple food in both China and the West and across Europe and Asia? The unanimous "simplicity" is the only answer. In China, driven by a bunch of boring people such as Haruki Murakami, mediocre spaghetti is labeled as "lonely" and "petty bourgeoisie".

As for the spaghetti invented by Cantonese or Hong Kong people, such as Sautéed Beef Filet with Black Pepper fried spaghetti and papaya meat sauce spaghetti, I'm sorry, they are already Chinese food.

IKEA Ikea

Entered Shanghai in 1998, entered Beijing in 1999, entered IKEA home in Guangzhou in 2005, and became an ideal high-end household brand for white-collar workers and petty bourgeoisie because of its DIY design style and high price. The American comment is "cheap IKEA". Buying furniture is like buying clothes. They buy them as soon as they look good, use them when they look good, and change them when they get bored. The fate of a lot of furniture is either exchanged, sold or thrown away.

What caused this misreading? "first, there are differences in income levels, and second, consumption habits are different." Shen Yan, marketing manager of IKEA home stores in Guangzhou, said that in Europe and the United States, IKEA is the lowest-priced household brand, and from a global point of view, consumers' income is in the middle. Take Guangzhou as an example, the average monthly income of the average household is four or five thousand yuan, while more than 60 percent of those who come to IKEA for consumption have a monthly income of more than 8000 yuan. Prices were high when they first entered China, and they have made great adjustments in recent years, reducing half the price or even lower, but still at the upper-middle level. But Shen Yan also found that during the May Day holiday, some teachers also began to enter IKEA, "which shows that we are getting closer to the general public, that is, our target customers."

"Chinese and Westerners feel different about home," Shen Yan says. European and American people feel that furniture is not durable goods, but fast-moving consumer goods that can be changed at any time according to interest and demand. "they emphasize appearance and function, but light materials. They visit furniture stores several times a year and often change small furniture to keep it fresh." And the Chinese people are often one-time decoration one-time consumption, pay special attention to materials, but also require a piece of furniture can be passed on for several generations.

In an effort to keep its profile down, IKEA moved its Asian headquarters from Singapore to Shanghai and stepped up its local procurement efforts, thus saving cost to create room for price cuts. In addition, the distribution of free "good Home Guide" and membership cards among residential areas to provide customers with free home decoration solutions in the store is also a strategy for IKEA to get closer to the general public.

Evian Evian Water

When asked "what to drink", many people are used to saying faintly: "I just want Evian water." There is an unconcealed sense of superiority in the voice.

A fan of Evian invests nearly 1,000 yuan a month on drinking water in restaurants, bars, at home and out. She believes that only this exquisite water can match her clothes; a woman who pays attention to detail washes her face with Evian water every day. She thinks that delicate women should not only use CD perfume, but also take care of their every pore. Evian Water seems to have become one of the fashion indicators of the Chinese people. It is funny that foreigners treat Eyun Water, but it is only equivalent to our treatment of Farmer Spring.

Many people think that Evian water is to play with fashion and luxury, which is a misunderstanding, if so, it will soon be out of date and will be replaced by something more up-to-date.

Bordeaux French Wine (Bordeaux)

Louis XIII is the founder of the French Bourbon dynasty and the top brandy in France with an aging period of more than 50 years. A bottle of brandy costs tens of thousands of yuan in China. Also made from grapes, it is also a top French brand, and Bordeaux wine is also exciting for a few people. French wines are seen as a measure of all the high-quality wines in the world.

In foreign countries, only a few people can enjoy the thrill of wine, while most people can only drink beer. In foreign countries, there are countless literati praising the elegance of grape sprinkling. Like French perfume and fashion, wine symbolizes French romance and aristocratic temperament.

But all aristocratic romance will be filtered by Chinese catering culture. Wine is the same as all wines used for dinner, except that the color is relatively red. Like Fu Biao with an empty bottle of drunken Fu Biao, no one knows that his bottle is not a 65-degree Erguotou.

A sales manager of Changyu Wine said that at present, foreign brands have only a small market share in China, and there is no shortage of fakes.

In order to meet the general needs of Chinese consumers, wine has taken a mass consumption route in China. Now we can find more than ten yuan a bottle of wine on the market. For wine, a purely imported product, its aristocratic temperament has disappeared in China.

Interestingly, when most foreign civilian brands enter China to become middle-class or even high-end brands, wine has taken the opposite path. According to a survey conducted by relevant institutions, by 2010, the country with the strongest growth momentum of global wine consumption will still be China, with a growth rate of 35.91%. In China, the transformation between aristocrats and civilians is very easy.

"ELLE"

Readers who buy "ELLE" think they are elegant, and girls who don't like "COSOMO" are childish, utilitarian and vain. People who buy "Vogue" do not like "ELLE". They think that "ELLE" women are pale, mindless and petty, but in fact they are all the same group of people: in China, people who buy "OK!" and "HELLO" are the same kind of people who buy "FHM" magazine, as well as "Esquire" and "GQ" at the same time. Anyway, as Sun Zhe, the former editorial director of ELLE, said, there are only two kinds of people in China, the poor and the newly rich.

In China, there are fewer people who read magazines, and even fewer readers with spending power. Hong Huang, the publisher, once jokingly called the magazine of copyright cooperation "the Chinese adopted daughter of a major international family." in fact, these adopted daughters of different faces have only one purpose: to get married as soon as possible. When a "FHM" for truck drivers and construction workers arrived in China, it suddenly became a "yuppie" and the editor-in-chief talked about "middle class" and "post-modernism" all the time. Two girls' magazines, SENVENTEEN Youth and COSMOGIRL Jiao Dian, which are co-authored by copyright, were originally intended for high school and junior college students, but in China, readers have been pushed up by age in order to win over advertisers. Now one has disappeared, and the other has been reduced to a thorough reading of young women. Therefore, it is extremely difficult to identify any fashion magazine at a Chinese magazine stall: from cover to content, from theme to interest, they are more or less the same. Some people say that just pick a few Chinese fashion magazines, tear off the cover, mix it up and merge it into a new magazine, and the editor-in-chief can't tell which magazine the page numbers come from.

Cigar cigars: it's enjoyment, not show.

There is a famous analogy for the properties of tobacco: cigarettes, cigars and pipes are compared to prostitutes, lovers and wives, respectively.

Because you can ask anyone to smoke cigarettes, you can compare cigarettes to prostitutes; because few people smoke cigars in their own homes, and because they don't like to take the initiative to share their cigars with others, cigars are compared to lovers; because smoking a pipe requires a lot of cleaning tools and a relatively long quiet period, it is compared to a wife.

Chinese people's feelings for cigars are probably like this. There has been a flood of parallel imports in the Pearl River Delta, which is nothing more than serving the ostentatious mentality of the Chinese people. Three years ago, La Casa Del Habano, a cigar franchise, opened a branch in the White Swan Hotel mall in Guangzhou, selling from 10, 000 to 30, 000. Despite the good momentum, they invited Cuban master cigarette craftsmen in May to demonstrate the birth of a cigar. "We want to lead consumers to a high quality of life." Mr. Li, the manager, said. The price of a Cuban cigar ranges from 100 yuan to 400 yuan, while the more expensive Cohiba costs between 150 yuan and 400 yuan. It is not difficult to consume one once in a while, but getting into the habit of smoking cigars requires the support of financial resources and taste. David Duff's cigar dealers in Shanghai define China's "middle class" as an annual income of 100000-150000 yuan. This is a fairly well-off group, but not a cigar consumer. At present, only the rich can consume cigars all year round in China. The target consumers of Cuban cigars are 30-year-old businesspeople with successful careers at the age of 50, with an annual income of more than 1 million yuan, which is only equivalent to that of the middle class in the United States. "A lot of people know cigars, but they don't know how to enjoy them." It takes at least 25 minutes to smoke a cigar, which is not only expensive, but also willing to spend that time.

Among people who really know how to enjoy cigars, there is another joke: good Cuban cigars are rolled up on the thighs of virgins. The production of cigars is extremely meticulous manual work, girls make a living on their legs, but it has become the most wonderful fantasy when smoking cigars. In Cuba, 60% of men smoke cigars and 70% of men smoke cigars, which is an integral part of the daily life of ordinary people. These luxury goods in the eyes of the Chinese are just important foreign exchange earning products of another socialist country.

Golf Golf

In 1984, the first international standard golf course in mainland China, Guangdong Zhongshan Hot Spring Golf Club was established. Over the past 22 years, golf has almost stumbled forward. In the autumn of 2006, Peking University, Xiamen University and Shanghai Finance University even became the protagonists of university golf. Some people questioned that under the background of uneven distribution of educational resources, "luxury sports" invaded the campus. Golf is like dragon dance, lion dance, baseball, physique, hip-hop dance, taekwondo, but it is a new sports skill learning, which can increase the gold content for college students' employment in the future.

"Golf is neither an aristocratic sport nor a civilian sport, it is a kind of healthy sport, a kind of etiquette, a kind of quality and a kind of aesthetic and standard of life," said Zhang Qin, deputy director of the organizing committee of the 2006 all-Star Golf Competition. Once there was an enterprise boss in Hainan who hot promoted the project of "playing golf for 99 yuan", which was an extreme collision between the common people and the aristocracy.

In the past, some people thought that tennis was an aristocratic sport, but now almost all universities have tennis courts. Golf has nothing to do with aristocratic sports, but with the cultivation of etiquette.

Resort Resort Hotel

In China, there are only two really decent holiday cities: Sanya and Lijiang. Four Seasons, Kempinski, Regent and Oriental Mandarin have been enclosed in Sanya, and Banyan Village and Oman will take root in Yunnan.

The common faults of resort hotels in China are: there are many people, especially many tour groups, the environment is not quiet, food is more expensive than Hong Kong, and transportation is inconvenient. From the outside, there is no obvious difference between a holiday in China and The Business Inn: the first feeling of a person staying at the Hilton Sanya is "suffocating luxury" rather than the "ease and comfort" that the resort should have. There are also hotels known as the "Forbidden City of Yalong Bay". Do tourists come here to receive patriotic education?

Bohemia bohemian wind

Some netizens called the popular bohemian style clothes "more and more people squeeze up and down the road in blankets, sometimes a shawl, sometimes a piece of cloth like a tablecloth and a sheet". Miss Wang, who has studied fashion design, said that people often refer to "everything that looks crazy" as bohemian. In China, the concept of bohemia has been infinitely magnified, even real estate developers are peddling "bohemian architectural style", which is shameful.

The concept of bohemia has also experienced repeated misunderstandings in Europe. Bohemia originally refers to a medieval area under the control of the Holy Roman Empire centered on Prague. Later, "Bohemia" became a byword for unruly artists. The Latin district of Paris was defined as the most famous bohemian settlement by Muirge, the "excavator of bohemia". However, the spiritual core of the bohemian unruly and challenging the mainstream life remains unchanged, on the basis of which bohemian style came into being.

The popularity of bohemian style, in addition to fashion magazines following and promoting international trends, may also be related to the hot concepts of "France" and "Paris". Isn't the Latin district of Paris regarded as the most important bohemian settlement? after the concept of "left bank" was overused, "bohemia" became the next lifesaver.

(source Xinhuanet)

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