What makes Chinese people tick?” What a great opening sentence for a book. Because what makes Chinese people tick is also what makes Chinese people buy. And these days, virtually everyone involved in selling anything, anywhere, wants to know how to sell it to the Chinese.
The line comes from What Chinese Want: Culture, Communism and China’s Modern Consumer, a new tome from Tom Doctoroff, chief executive of advertising agency JWT in Shanghai and the doyen of foreign marketers in China. But the theme – understanding China’s transformation, and how it affects those who want to make money from it – is so popular that two other books published this spring also take a crack at it: The End of Cheap China: Economic and Cultural Trends that will Disrupt the World by Shaun Rein, founder of one of the mainland’s leading market research groups; and All Eyes East: Lessons from the Front Lines of Marketing to China’s Youth by Mary Bergstrom, a rare westerner in China who understands what makes the younger generation tick.
No one should plan on landing in Shanghai without all three. Each has its separate strengths but none is enough on its own. For example, they all tell the story of KFC, the first western fast-food brand to enter China and by far the most successful. They could hardly do otherwise – KFC is the obvious case study for how to adapt to the Chineseness of China without losing the advantages of foreignness. But what those who want to sell to China really need to know is how KFC did it and on this question, each tells part of the story.