The importance of adapting to the Chinese MarketSelling to Chinese consumers is very different from selling to consumers in any other country. Unique local traditions and cultural values have a strong influence on the behaviour, thoughts, and buying habits of local consumers. Foreign companies need to localize their products and messages in order to appeal to these culturally-specific tastes and fully penetrate the market (1).
Localization is more than just translating your product interface and documentation into Chinese. Localization is a process of adapting your product and product marketing to a particular locale. It is about adjusting your product to accommodate local tastes, attitudes, and preferences so that the product satisfies expectations, while standing in a field of its own.
Localize Product
The first step to localization is crafting a good name. A good name creates a positive and lasting relationship with your audience. It differentiates you from your competitors and makes you unforgettable. A product marketed with a well-designed and localized name creates an instant connection with local consumers, yet maintains the prestige and perceptions of high quality that are frequently associated with foreign products. Carrefour, a French hypermarket chain, localized its name into “家乐福,”or “jia le fu” when entering the Chinese market. This name literally translates as “Happy Family.” However the individual characters bring with them the associations of harmony, luck and prosperity - a highly desirable combination in Chinese thought.
Generally speaking, localizing a product name requires a lot of research and time investment, but some companies opt for a simpler approach. It is acceptable to localize a name by phonetic similarity. For example, Decathlon, the French sport department store, localized its name phonetically to “迪卡侬,” pronounced “di ka nong.” The phonetically-localized name has no special meaning but it allows Decathlon to maintain its brand name in a culturally-different market, while instantly identifying it to Chinese consumers as a desirable foreign label.
Appearance amplifies the emotional link with your consumers by giving a shape, color, or even texture that can strengthen your product image and improve its positioning. In China, cultural attitudes dictate that some colors are more appropriate to use than others because there can be a positive or negative connotations that the average foreign company never considers. Sometimes, localizing a product’s appearance can also mean changing the product’s physical presentation to fit in with cultural events. Häagan Dazs, the epitome of fine ice-cream, localized its product appearance to capitalize on Chinese holidays, which are peak buying seasons throughout China. An example of a major Chinese festival is the Mid-Autumn Festival, highly celebrated in China where family and friends gather together and people buy moon cakes to give to their family, friends, and coworkers. To fit in with the local culture, Häagan Dazs produced ice-cream in the form of a Chinese moon cake. By doing so, it can both charge a premium price for the “foreign experience,” while taking advantage of a surge in sales usually enjoyed only by bakeries.
Another important aspect of your product is its content. The content delivers on the promises made in the products advertising while completing the emotional connection with the consumer. To localize the content means adjusting the product to the local language, measurement system, currency, and local ideals. One good example is the sophisticated international magazine on fashion, beauty, and style – ELLE. The magazine not only localizes the content into Chinese language, but it also sensitize to local cultural ideals and has adapted its content to profile Chinese models, publish more conservative editorials, and advertise beauty products that appeal to the Chinese ideals of beauty such as whitening cream for a paler complexion.
Taste is strongly related to content, but also encompasses much more. It reflects the cultural habits or preferences of a market. Chinese love the western experience and have a taste for trying new things. KFC is a model example of a foreign company in China that has demonstrated an effective localization strategy to capture the local market. KFC began with an advantage - Chinese prefer chicken over beef, and expanded that advantage by catering to local tastes. KFC extended its traditional menu by offering Chinese-style porridge for breakfast and spicy chicken for lunch (1). Porridge is a common breakfast food and spicy food is extremely popular in the Chinese market
Localize Message
Localizing your products and services by giving importance to local characteristics can greatly improve your product acceptance. But a localized product needs to tell a story that catches the local consumers on their own terms, and that speaks to them about their individual wants and desires. Products also need to have a localized message.
A good example of a localized message is that of Pepsi. In the west, Pepsi is desperately trying to convince consumers that it has the “true” cola taste. But in a new market where consumers have not yet taken a side in the cola wars, Pepsi localizes its message to capitalize on the superstitious beliefs of consumers by inferring that drinking Pepsi brings you “happiness in everything.” It is a fantastic localized message with mass-appeal, due in part to an auspicious connotation of the phrase that is highly valued by the more superstitious Chinese market.
Crafting an effective localized message in China generally involves appealing to family, education, wealth, or utilizing auspicious connotations. These are all safe bets to improving sales, positioning, and branding in the Chinese market.
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