Starbucks "Foreign Brand" misread by Chinese people

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

Old misconceptions about ideas, brands, tastes, fashions, lifestyles and cities are resolved and new misconceptions are created.

New luxury is popular in China. The mainstream consumption values are to experience luxury, possess LOGO, overdraw credit card, enjoy misread profits and happiness. Anti-consumers are marginalized and become vulnerable groups.

Starbucks Starbucks

Jasper Kunde uses the term "coffee religion" when discussing the Starbucks brand in his book Corporate Spirit. Starbucks '"coffee religion," he argues, is a community of people with roughly the same ethos and social identity. Starbus chairman and CEO howard schultz says,"we're not looking for maximum sales. We try to give our customers a taste of the romance of coffee." Their saying is best reflected in China: the most prime location, the most exquisite customers, a romantic elegance of the petty bourgeoisie.

However, Rui Chenggang, the CCTV host who started blogging in 2006 and invited Starbus guests to withdraw from the Forbidden City, believes that Starbucks is "the representative symbol of unrefined food culture" in the general concept of Westerners, and films and television works often take "Starbucks everywhere" and "Starbucks opens to the White House" and other languages to make fun of. In the United States, Starbuses are found in supermarkets, shopping malls and downtown areas. Starbuses 'green mermaid logo appears more frequently than McDonald's' big M. Drive down any road in the city center and you can see a Starbucks within a few hundred meters. An American friend joked: When the fire broke out, the American firefighters let the Starbus customers on this side of the road retreat. Where to retreat? Another starbus across the street. Because there's gotta be another starbus 50 meters away or across the road. In the departure lounge of an airport in the United States, there is a teasing slogan: The Last Starbus. How can a $4 starbus in the United States be classy and elegant?

Starbus is a very inexpensive popular drink in the United States, which is regarded as a fast food in coffee, but immigrated to China, it has become one of the elements of fashion and elegance. The nature is completely altered. Chinese Starbucks consumers no longer care about taste, price, weight and quality, but pay more attention to the flavor experienced by Starbucks. If Starbus sells coffee in the United States, it has become a sales atmosphere and culture in China.

Chivas

In foreign countries, whiskey is considered an old man's wine, it is difficult to imagine that there will be college students graduation party choice whiskey. In fact, when Chivas made its big push into China in 1992, the consumer demographic was the same as all foreign wine brands: successful people. But Chinese success has not brought Chivas sales success.

But now Chivas has become the No. 1 whisky brand in China, and China has become Chivas 'largest market, outselling the United States and Europe. In Edinburgh, Scotland's famous whisky hub, Chivas is unremarkable among hundreds of whisky brands, and many Britons only know this brand from Scotch whisky when they travel to China. But in China, Chivas has become synonymous with whiskey. At the bar, you order a whiskey on the rocks and the waiter will unthinkingly serve you a Chivas.

Chivas 'global strategy is "Chivas Living," as in the famous commercial: a few successful but not-so-young men happily fishing on icebergs amid soothing songs. But Chivas 'Chinese life belongs to fancy nightclubs, to passionate dancing, to the night, to Chinese youth.

"Our target consumer group is young people: more open-minded and receptive to new brands." "They see party life abroad, and they want to experience it," said David Hunt, general manager for China at TEQUILA, the public relations firm that oversees Chivas's integrated marketing strategy. In 2004, Scotch whisky sales grew by 170 per cent in China, although global sales grew by only 2 per cent. It's ironic that a wine that should belong to successful people is a success with young people who aren't.

Haagen-Dazs

A lovelorn girl bought a box of Haagen-Dazs, sadly thinking that her lover had disappeared, leaving her alone to "enjoy this beautiful and expensive food alone." Annie Baby wrote the voice of the petty bourgeoisie. Advertisers say Haagen-Dazs may not be the best ice cream in the world, but it may be the most conceptual ice cream brand. "Love me, take me to eat Haagen-Dazs", Haagen-Dazs because of love and expensive.

Mr. Hu knew for the first time that Haagen-Dazs was not as expensive as imagined. He learned from his classmates who were stewardesses that Haagen-Dazs was free on international flights, and few people ate it. A foreign student went to the United States to discover that Haagen-Dazs, which is regarded as a luxury in China, is a very common brand in its birthplace, just like Helu Snow in China. It is mainly sold in supermarkets and vending machines. There are few specialized stores. Many Americans have never heard of it. The price is also very common, selling 78 yuan in China for only 2.99 dollars in the United States,"pushing and shoving behind the window with a bunch of miscellaneous brands of ice cream I have never heard of, just like a palace maid who has suffered war and dust," the student described.

Haagen-Dazs takes a high-end route in China, choosing only to open stores in busy areas of big cities. So much so that Haagen-Dazs has become a measure of whether a city is fashionable or not, and some city mayors have even called for Haagen-Dazs to move in. Guangzhou was once considered unfashionable because it lacked Starbucks, Haagen-Dazs and IKEA. 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 excited that Guangzhou "finally" had Haagen-Dazs.

Pasta

Three Chinese women who had been single for a long time got together to cook. After discussing that everyone would serve a dish, half an hour passed and three bowls of spaghetti came out. There is nothing better than spaghetti in the world, Garfield said. But for someone who is a bit particular about what they eat, there is nothing more boring than spaghetti.

Take the most common "meat sauce spaghetti" for example, used to be poor food, can not afford to buy large pieces of high-quality steak, can only buy some uneven fat and thin, five-flower three-course beef belly meat, put tomatoes cooked, stewed into a touch of rotten meat paste, large spoons poured on cooked spaghetti, is the Italian car seller belly "Jianghu dish."

British handsome chef Jamie Oliver once taught people to make authentic "meat sauce spaghetti" on TV, choosing the best beef, such a luxury crime, put 300 years ago, whether poor or rich, estimated to be angry.

In the West, a bachelor who has just graduated from college must be inseparable from Pasta. A large pot of water cooked all kinds of pasta, poured on the supermarket to buy sauce or fried sauce, breakfast, lunch and dinner on this pass, much more delicate than what sandwich burger. Spaghetti is to westerners what instant noodles are to easterners.

Why is it that noodles have almost become the most unified staple food in history, whether in China or in Europe and Asia? The one-word "simple" is the only answer. In China, ordinary spaghetti is labeled as "lonely" and "petty bourgeois" because of the promotion of a group of boring people such as Haruki Murakami, and thus has become five different ways.

As for Cantonese or Hong Kong inventions such as fried spaghetti with beef fillet and papaya sauce, sorry, they are already Chinese food.

IKEA IKEA

IKEA entered Shanghai in 1998, Beijing in 1999 and Guangzhou in 2005. With its DIY design style and expensive price, IKEA became an ideal high-end home brand for white-collar and petty bourgeoisie. The American comment is "cheap IKEA", they buy furniture like buying clothes, good to buy, buy to use, tired to change, the fate of many furniture is not changed, sold or thrown away.

What caused this misunderstanding? "First, there are differences in income levels, and second, consumption habits are different." IKEA Guangzhou store marketing manager Shen Yan said, In Europe and America, IKEA is the lowest price home brand, From the global point of view, Consumer income level is in the middle. Take Guangzhou as an example, the average monthly income of ordinary families is 4,000 or 5,000 yuan, and 60% of those who come to IKEA for consumption have an income of more than 8000 yuan last month. "When we first entered China, the price was at a high level. In recent years, we have made great adjustments, dropping half price or even lower, but it is still at an upper level." However, Shen Yan also found that during the May 1 Golden Week, some teachers 'wives also began to enter IKEA,"which shows that we are slowly approaching the general public, that is, our target customers."

"Chinese and Westerners feel different about home," Shen Yan analysis, Europeans and Americans feel that furniture is not durable goods, but often can be replaced at any time with interest and demand fast-moving consumer goods,"They emphasize appearance and function, light material, visit furniture stores several times a year, often change some small furniture, in order to keep fresh feeling." The Chinese are often one-time decoration one-time consumption, especially pay attention to materials, but also ask a piece of furniture can pass several generations.

IKEA moved its Asian headquarters from Singapore to Shanghai in an effort to lower its profile and increased its efforts to source locally, so the cost savings created room for price cuts. In addition, IKEA distributes free "Good Home Guide" and membership cards among residential areas, and provides customers with free home decoration solutions in stores, which is also a strategy to close the distance between IKEA and the general public.

Evian Water

When asked "drink something", many people used to say lightly: "I just want Evian water." There was an unconcealable sense of superiority in his voice.

A month in the restaurant, bar, home, go out and so on drinking water investment of nearly a thousand yuan, she thinks only this kind of exquisite water can match with their own clothing; a woman who pays attention to detail every day with evian water wash, she thinks delicate women not only to use CD perfume, but also should take care of each of their pores to the best. Evian water seems to have become one of the fashion indicators of Chinese people. What is interesting is that foreigners treat Evian water, but it is only equivalent to our treatment of Nongfu Spring.

Many people think that Evian water is to play fashion, play luxury, this is a misunderstanding, if so it will soon be outdated, will be replaced by more fashionable things.

Bordeaux French Wine (Bordeaux)

"Louis XIII" is the founder of the French Bourbon Dynasty, but also the French aging period of more than 50 years of top brandy, in the country a bottle to tens of thousands of yuan. Also made from grapes, also a top French brand, and also exciting to a few is Bordeaux. French wines are considered the standard by which all the world's high-quality wines are measured.

In foreign countries, only a few people can enjoy the stimulation of wine, while most people can only drink beer. In foreign countries, there are countless literati praise grape sprinkling elegant. Like French perfume and fashion, wine symbolizes French romance and aristocracy.

But all aristocratic romance will be filtered by Chinese dining culture. Wine is the same as all wine used for dinner, the only difference is that it is red. Just like Fu Biao who was drunk with an empty bottle, no one knew that what he had in the bottle was not a 65-degree Erguotou.

A sales manager of Changyu Wine said that at present, foreign brands of wine have only a very small market share in China, and there are many fakes among them.

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

Interestingly, while most foreign civilian brands have entered China to become middle-class or even high-end brands, wine has taken the opposite path. According to the survey of 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 transition between nobility and commoners is easy.

ELLE

Readers who buy ELLE think they are elegant and look down on COSOMO girls as naive, utilitarian and vain; people who buy Vogue look down on ELLE and think ELLE women are pale, brainless and petty. In fact, they are all the same group of people: in China, buy OK! "HELLO" and "Vanity Fair" are the same kind of people, buy "FHM" magazine, but also buy "Esquire" and "GQ", anyway, as "ELLE" former editorial director Sun Zhe said, China only two types of people, the poor and the newly rich.

China has fewer people reading magazines, and fewer readers with spending power. publisher hong huang once jokingly called the copyrighted magazines "chinese adopted daughters of international families." in fact, these adopted daughters of different faces have only one goal: to get married as soon as possible. A copy of FHM for truckers and construction workers arrived in China, transformed into Men's Clothing, and suddenly became "yuppie". The editor often talked about "middle class" and "postmodernism". Two copyrighted teenage magazines, SENVENTEEN and COSMOGIRL, were originally intended for high school students and junior college students, but in China, in order to win advertisers, readers are pushed up. Now one has disappeared, one has been reduced to a complete reading for young women. So it is extremely difficult to identify any fashion magazine on a Chinese magazine stand: from cover to content, from subject to interest, they are all alike. Some people say that if you pick up a few Chinese fashion magazines, tear off the covers, mix them up and make a new magazine, the editor himself can't recognize which magazine the pages come from.

Cigar: Enjoy, not show

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

Cigarettes are compared to prostitutes because they can be invited to smoke; cigars are compared to lovers because few people smoke cigars in their own homes and do not like to share their cigars with others; smoking pipes requires a lot of cleaning tools and a relatively long quiet time, so it is compared to wives.

The Chinese feel this way about cigars. There has been a large flood of parallel imports in the Pearl River Delta, which is nothing more than serving the flaunting mentality of the Chinese people. Three years ago, La Casa Del Habano, a cigar franchise, opened in Guangzhou's White Swan Hotel mall and sold 30,000 cigarettes from 10,000. Despite the momentum, they invited master cigarette makers to Cuba in May to demonstrate the birth of a cigar."We want to guide consumers to a high quality of life," he said. Manager Li said. A Cuban cigar costs between 100 and 400 yuan, and the more expensive Cohiba, between 150 and 400 yuan. It is easy to consume one occasionally, but it takes money and taste to make it a habit. David Duff's cigar distributor in Shanghai defines China's "middle class" as an annual income of 100,000 - 150,000 yuan. This is a fairly well-off group, but not a cigar consumer group. At present, only the rich can consume cigars all year round in China. Cuban cigars are targeted at successful business people aged 30-50 with an annual income of more than $1 million, which is only comparable to the income of the middle class in the United States. "A lot of people know about cigars, but don't know how to enjoy them." Smoking a cigar takes at least 25 minutes. Not only does it cost money, but you have to be willing to spend that time.

Among those who really enjoy cigars, there is another saying: good Cuban cigars are rolled up on virgins 'thighs. Cigar production is extremely meticulous manual work, girls to leg for the table to make a living, but become the most wonderful cigar fantasy. In Cuba, 60 - 70 per cent of men smoke cigars, which are an integral part of the daily life of the general population. These luxury goods in the eyes of the Chinese are just important foreign exchange products of another socialist country.

Golf Golf

In 1984, Guangdong Zhongshan Hot Spring Golf Club, the first international standard golf course in mainland China, was established. For 22 years, golf has almost stumbled forward. In the autumn of 2006, Peking University, Xiamen University and Shanghai University of Finance and Economics became the protagonists of the university golf storm. Some people questioned that this was under the background of uneven distribution of educational resources, and "luxury sports" invaded the campus. However, golf was just like dragon dance, lion dance, baseball, body dance, street dance and taekwondo. It was just the learning of new sports skills, which could increase gold content for college students 'future employment.

"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)