Get Your Message Right              

Ok, this sounds fairly basic but the ‘right message’ in New Zealand may not be the same in Japan or China. Different cultural values and language mean you need to test everything. Involving native speakers and consumers in your message creation is vital. Translations need to be checked and re-checked as a wrong word or phrase can tarnish your brand’s reputation before you start.

Creating Brand Ambassadors

When faced with a new product, Japanese and Chinese consumers will judge it based on a trust factor. If they haven’t heard about it, then what are other people saying? They will look immediately for reviews and are more likely to ask questions. In a country when conformity is the norm, people are less likely to stand out from the crowd. Seeding the market with product and getting early reviews is vital. Nurture your early customers, they will be worth gold in your first year.

One to one Communication

Show your customers you care. Meet them on their own home turf. Start a conversation on one of the top online discussion boards, like Mixi or Tencent, and let them know there are real people that stand behind the brand. Answer questions promptly and professionally and with cultural sensitivity.

At the risk of being very obvious, recent research (by Paul Temboral in his book Advanced Brand Management: Managing Brands in a Changing World) found that customers are more likely to buy from companies that appeared to be: “easy going, modest, helpful, caring, approachable, and interested”.

How does your brand stack up?

For more information on taking your brand to Asia – contact Alister Gates (alister@plus64marketing.com)

I was in Japan to set up a new business and to look at what was trending in consumer products, look at marketing and meet and talk to people about their perception of New Zealand. I also wanted to see how life was a year on from the devastating earthquake, tsunami and subsequent nuclear disaster.

The first word that jumped out at me was the use of ECOLOGY in advertising and billboards. There is a big trend towards environmentally friendly products and a change in consciousness around waste and lifestyle.

Food safety is still a huge concern after the nuclear contamination and although the threat is small and contained to one area, the thought of it is evident shoppers minds. Country of origin is now a more important issue.

Organic shops have popped up all over Tokyo. In a busy train station near our hotel was a bustling organic shop, one of many we saw on our travels in the city. All of the shops had a fairly good selection of international products but noticeably few from New Zealand.

Japanese women are known worldwide for their great skin and while science has shown the biggest reason is down to diet (in fact it seems to be the seaweed in particular) there is a huge market in skincare products. We walked into a few natural skincare shops in the department stores and train stations and of the hundreds of products on display were disappointed to see only one New Zealand brand. Other natural brands have gone to the huge expense of setting up their own shops in the myriad of small shops that are attached to underground malls to build brand.

New Zealand is still perceived by Japanese as a clean, green and pure country. Our opportunity at the moment is taking advantage of what is unique about our natural products and marketing them in that way to the Japanese.

E-commerce sales are soaring in Japan and grew almost 17% in 2010 and while it dropped off somewhat last year after the disasters it is now showing signs of rapid growth. Amazon Japan rates number two in the market but is close to matching the local Rakuten site.

We are very excited to be able to provide a route into Japan for New Zealand products through World Wide Access and our Japan marketing team to customise and grow your brand.

By far the trend setter in China’s eCommerce has been the mighty Taobao, a consumer-to-consumer marketplace owned by Alibaba. They accounted for over 79% of eCommerce transactions in 2010 and have set the stage for online retail. Taobao has since spun off Tmall which is a more sophisticated business-to-consumer (b-to-c) website allowing businesses to set up online shopping in a trusted environment.

eCommerce in China is unique in a number of ways. Despite what Westerners may assume about Chinese there is a widespread aversion to ‘fake’ products. The majority of eCommerce users have disposable income to spare and quality is an important issue. Most internet shoppers will look for product reviews from other buyers before making a decision about the product and shop, trust is the key to success.

Payments by credit card are the exception with the more popular Alipay which holds the money in escrow until the consumer receives the goods and b-to-c purchases work more more often than not on a cash-on-delivery basis.

Shipping and logistics inside China has been a challenge for eCommerce companies which they overcome with they have overcome by setting up their own delivery systesm. The top eCommerce providers have publicly announced that they are striving for an 8 hour delivery cycle from order! Shipping prices are also less than half what we see in NZ and USA.

As I stated in the beginning of this article the already huge eCommerce market in China is set to grow by 30% this year. For New Zealand exporters this opens up a huge new opportunity. Contact us if you would like to know how your company could take advantage of this huge opportunity.