China Marketing Mix

One of the four components of 4Ps of marketing is the Product with the others being Price, Place and Promotion. In this post, I will look into specific considerations for this aspect of marketing that have to be taken into account in the case of doing business in China.
The central concept of the “product” element of the 4Ps is the idea of designing and selling the right product, the one that already has or will have its place in the market. Of course, in some situations, a unique product creates its own market but those would be very rare and unique circumstances. One example of such product is an iPad – the gadget that has spawn its own market once it was launched.
Much more often, pre-existing market is the required condition before a product is introduced. How companies can make sure that the product does have the market? The most obvious answer is conducting market research. The problem in China is that the reliable market data is not readily available and finding a suitable market research study is extremely difficult.
While finding some general information about the size of specific markets is usually easier, locating more targeted data on Chinese market proves to be much more complex. There is a number of market research companies which advertise their services with regards to Chinese market research, however, generally low quality of their analysis and unreliable data they base their conclusions on is usually a major concern.
Customized marketing studies can also be very expensive and there is no guarantee of the quality either. Unfortunately, good quality market research for Chinese market still remains a very hard thing to come by.
Of course, the easiest way to figure out the specifics of your product’s intended market is to look at your competitors, companies who have done their homework already or those who simply decided to take a risk. Those are the the questions you should be asking:
How well are they doing?
What could you do better?
How...