When do men start preparing for the festival?

It is estimated that 27.1% of men start preparing only 1-2 weeks ahead. 15.4% of them start before 2-4 weeks, and there is a small group of men start preparing even a month ahead. One third of the men surveyed (34.7%) had no intention to prepare ahead and just want to let it go naturally.

In terms of different relationship statuses, married men and dads have the least intention to prepare gifts for wives, while men who are in a relationship but unmarried are most active in the preparation. (no surprise here hahah)

Key takeaway:

• Create multiple campaigns with different messaging and launch them at different times based on the age and relationship status of your target consumers

Selecting restaurants

The number 1 element that has the power for men to choose restaurants for Qixi dates is whether the restaurant serves dishes that match with their taste. This is 49.5% of men’s top reason for choosing a restaurant. Following this, men also want to know the cost performance of the restaurants (46.1%) and whether it has been mentioned by their partners (34%).

Men are also prepared to wait in line for the dinner on the day. Only 18.1% of men don’t want to wait. Heads up for brands, waiting might be a beautiful thing to show one’s sincerity. Half an hour, I think this is the longest period that most people would be open to waiting, beyond that, they might get annoyed.

Key Takeaway:

• Think about what men want to eat when promoting your holiday menus! haha

Where do men seek advice on gifts?

When Qixi is around the corner, men tend to seek advice on selecting gifts on different online platforms. 13.8% of men visit Hupu (虎扑, a sports information platform), Douban (豆瓣, a forum platform) and Zhihu (知乎, a forum platform as well).

When men are searching what to buy for women, the most frequent phrase they type is 七夕 (Qixi), followed by 礼物 (gifts), 七夕礼物 (gifts for Qixi), 口红 (lipsticks), 精致 (sophisticated) and so on. A phrase that is worth noticing is 面子 or face, meaning the gift can help the man earn dignity and have his partner worship him for choosing a good gift.

Key takeaway:

• Brands should incorporate these keywords in their product names and descriptions as well and KOL posts on social media to help to get more exposure for the products you would like to promote during the holiday.

• Work with KOLs on platforms that male consumers are most likely to use.

Men love gifting entry luxury products

52.1% of men go for entry luxury products on this big day. They don’t cost as much as high-end luxury, but they are not cheap either, which shows their sincerity. In a word, this is a safe choice for many men.

Following this, 38.1% of men choose international brands. Though Chinese brands are developing fast, yet only 12.5% of men buy them as gifts.

What I think about this is that the majority of Chinese consumers choose domestic brands mostly for their own daily activities, but when it comes to festivals, domestic brands may not be their first choice to send as gifts. Time for domestic brands to think about how to win more attention in such big gifting-focused festivals, and for international brands to grasp the opportunity to get more exposure and boost sales.

Key takeaway:

• For entry lux brands, this festival is a huge opportunity. If you have limited resources, it may be more relevant to focus on marketing for this holiday than some of China’s many other holidays and shopping festivals.

What gifts do girls love to receive?

While this article is focused on male consumers, the report also had some great insights on females’ preferred Qixi gifts that can help you select which items to include in your Qixi collections next year.

The top 5 gifts that girls love to receive are watches and accessories, red pockets, shoes/apparels/bags, skincare products, and makeup products.

You may have already noticed, that while one of the top searched gifting terms for men is lipstick, lipstick actually doesn’t appear on women’s TOP5 list. This is because women are picky when it comes to shades of lipsticks, and they often don’t like the shade that men select for them. Well, if men buy a whole set, that’s another story.

The other two of the TOP 3 least-liked gifts from men are snacks and toys.

Also, 44.3% of girls don’t directly tell their partners what gifts they want to receive. They feel that gifts can show whether the man is detailed-orientated when he’s with her and pays attention to what she says and does or how she usually dresses. It’s a test for the man. If girls don’t tell their boyfriends what to buy, then who to tell boys? The Internet. So, brands, improve your SEO and get as much as exposure before the festival, especially when it’s around the corner.

The post How do Chinese Male Consumers Prepare for Qixi? appeared first on China Marketing Insights.

The next day, at 5am, the Youth With You official Weibo account posted a statement saying it take responsibility for its wrongdoings. What shocked everyone was that the statement also announced that the show would stop filming.

What is Youth With You?

The boy band/girl group contest show involves 119 trainees from different entertainment agencies competing to form a 9-member male group. This is the 3^rd season of Youth With You. The first two seasons achieved great success, producing popular idols such as Yu Shuxin (虞书欣) and Kong Xueer (孔雪儿). The show carries strong idol culture for the reason that its contestants are young and they succeed because of viewers/fans’ votes.

According to 36kr, Season 2 helped its lead sponsor Zhen Guo Li (真果粒), a milk beverage brand developed by Mengniu Diary, drive nearly 30 million RMB in sales when the show was on air. To stop filming the show would cause massive loss for both brands and IQIYI.

Why did the government stop such a popular show?

Buying Extra Votes Produced Massive Food Waste

As we mentioned, a key element for those contestants to win is viewers’ votes. To create a win-win situation for brand sponsors and the show itself, IQIYI invented a new way for viewers to get extra votes for their idols. To get an extra chance to vote, viewers need to purchase Zhen Guo Li’s beverages. Inside the bottle cap is a QR code which fans can scan to vote.  

While this is a creative way to boost sales for Zhen Guo Li, iQiyi and the brand obviously did not think this through. Idol culture is extremely strong in China. Young fans will easily spend thousands of RMB to support their idols. iQiyi and Zhen Guo Li didn’t set a limit to how many extra votes a person could cast through the bottle cap QR codes. With the drinks at such a low price point, a diehard fan could easily purchase hundreds of bottles if it meant helping their idol win.

Dairy beverages have short expiration periods to begin with. But then add in that in order to get the QR code, fans have to open the bottle. This breaks the seal and makes the beverage expire even faster. There’s no way they can drink all of these beverages. They may not even like them.

It was discovered that fans are pouring the drinks out, leading to great food waste. While this is never a good thing, this is especially bad timing as the Chinese government has been cracking down on food waste. For example, many social media platforms such as Kuaishou and Douyin have been banning food live streamers and KOLs who are overordering and overeating in their content.

Scalpers Selling the Bottle Cap QR Codes

Sometimes it’s not even the fans that are pouring the drinks out. Scalpers saw the opportunity to profit off of this campaign and began buying up Zhen Guo Li drinks. They then throw away the contents and the bottle, selling the caps to fans at extremely high prices.

Scandalous Rumors Around Top Youth With You Contestant

Prior to the show being cancelled, contestant Tony Yu or Yu Jingtian (余景天) suddenly quit the show. This surprised lots of people as he was often the top-ranked contestant with the most audience votes. So of course this also drove additional buzz about the show on Weibo’s hot topic ranking board.

Rumors stated that it was discovered that Tony’s parents run a KTV that had been caught up in illegal activities. There were also other voices saying Tony himself takes drugs. At the moment, we don’t know if any of this is true but it appears the rumors had gotten so bad that Yu had to leave the show because of “health purposes”.

Crazy Idol Culture Is Not Encouraged In China

If an idol can bring positive effects for his/her fans, then there is no harm following him/her. But the government highly discourages fans blindly following an idol just because of his/her look and spending a lot of money supporting the idol.

The idol culture in those contest shows is even crazier than usual because of the relationship that fans feel like they have with the idol. They support their idols at the very beginning, before idols become famous. Fans see the growth and development of their idols and have deeper engagement with them, which means when it comes to support, whether it is voting or financial support, fans are more than willing to spend money for their idols.

On the bright side, this is a happy thing for idols, their entertainment agencies, and brands who are sponsoring them. But on most occasions, excessive support causes waste, such as the milk being thrown away.

Working with idol shows and young idols can be very lucrative for brands, but it is also full of risk, especially because their fans tend to be young, impressionable, and immature. Brands should be cautious when working with these new celebrities and think through the potential side effects of their campaigns.   

Read more: 《青春有你3》暂停录制：偶像失格还是打投失当？

The post Idol Culture Starts Being Questioned In China After ‘Youth With You’ Milk Scandal appeared first on China Marketing Insights.

Introducing Qyer (穷游网), the multi-function Chinese app for all things travel related. China is really good at creating one-stop-does-all apps and Qyer is yet another perfect example of that. You can research travel destinations, book tickets/travel/accommodations, participate in discussion forums, share your own travel tips and experiences, and best of all: connect with other travelers and even make plans to travel with them!

Based on a report released by the company (conducted in association with iResearch Inc.) in March 2020, the app currently has over 80 million users and an overwhelming 75.6% of the users are between the ages of 24-40. Female users consist of 64.5% of total users. Furthermore, it is important to note that despite the characters in the app’s Chinese name 穷游 (qióng yóu) translating to “budget travel”, a majority of the users are well educated, earn at least 10,000RMB a month, and are from top-tier cities.  For reference, the national average monthly income for city dwellers is 3,653RMB.

Qyer was founded in 2004 as a Chinese outbound travel app, poised to help students overseas create a community to connect and share travel stories. Since then, it has really gained traction with domestic Chinese travelers and, given the travel bans due to the current global pandemic, most of its use has pivoted to domestic travel within the last year.

Find a Travel Mate with the Biu Ban Function

A function on Qyer worth mentioning is “Biu 伴” (biu bàn), the lovechild mentioned in the first paragraph. Users can find travel partners by simply posting a free ad with the destination, dates, and details of a trip they’re planning to take. Others on the platform who are interested can respond to the ad. And boy do those responses roll in.

My very first experience using the Biu 伴function was for a trip to Xiamen, China back during the summer of 2019. Within 24 hours of posting my ad, a group of five of us (strangers from all over China) had booked our train/plane tickets as well as Airbnb and were planning to meet in Xiamen two weeks later. I’m happy to report that it was an amazing trip, and we all stay in touch to this very day.

But we all know that with most good things, there are caveats. My first experience using the app was so smooth but then a couple of the experiences I had following that one were less than stellar. Long story short, scammers are real so users should exercise good judgment in filtering through messages and not sharing personal information too quickly. And for what it matters DO NOT DOWNLOAD ANY RANDOM APPS OR SEND MONEY! The app does allow users to report violators and I have received messages from the system that accounts have been locked due to “suspicious activity” so at least Qyer is actively addressing those concerns.

What Data from Qyer Reveals About China’s Travel Industry

Chinese Outbound Travelers’ Favorite Destinations

Well, let’s take a look at some infographics published in the company’s 2019 Chinese Travel Trends Report:

Here we see the top 10 countries Chinese travelers tend to visit: Japan, Thailand, Italy, France, USA, England, Spain, Malaysia, Germany, and Russia.

Although travel bans are still in place due to Covid-19, many believe that we are in the final stretches of the pandemic. Travel is projected to resume soon and based on a forecast from the China Outbound Tourism Research Institute, 100 million border crossings from mainland China are estimated for 2021. When the light turns green, we can definitely expect to see a healthy number of Chinese travelers in the countries mentioned above.

Qyer Users’ Preferred Accommodations

This next infographic shows that a whopping 72.5% of Qyer users between the ages of 25-35 opt for mid to high level hotels when traveling. Understandably, those a little younger (between the ages of 18-24 and likely college students) choose to stay in youth hostels and are willing to embrace simple accommodations.

However, what is most noteworthy is that 41.3% of users are now giving considerable consideration to homestays like Airbnbs, especially the more unique ones. Another factor that helps millennials and Gen Zs make decisions on where to stay is how “Instagramable” an accommodation is. Note to homestays: Play up the aesthetics so that the visitors will want to take a bunch of photos. They’ll be your best form of marketing!   

Qyer Users are Seeking Athletic Experiences

Given that Qyer users are a younger demographic, it comes as no surprise that they love fitness and physical activities. Approximately 44% of users report of having regular workout routines and look to stay active when traveling. Top activities include skiing, diving, cycling, hiking, paragliding, surfing, skydiving, running, and hot ballooning.

To an older demographic, these activities may appear riskier, but for the users on Qyer, travel is no longer just about visiting tourist attractions. They’re looking for the experiences and they’re willing to embrace the adrenaline rush that comes with doing so.

Removing Barriers to Travel

China is a driving force in the global outbound tourism industry. As the quality of life improves for its citizens across the board, China and its travelers will continue to make huge impacts for the industry for years to come. Apps such as Qyer allow us to take a closer look into the trends that Chinese travelers are setting as well as the experiences and services that attract them most.

The average age of the Chinese leisure traveler is decreasing. Travel is no longer just for retirees who have finally saved up enough time and money to follow a megaphone wielding tour guide around from attraction to attraction with 30+ other retirees.

No, travel is just as attainable to the 20-something year old working professional from Shanghai who has a week off and was inspired by a Korean drama to go paragliding through the mountains of Interlaken, Switzerland with friends he/she has never met before.

The post Chinese App Qyer Solves the Problem of Not Wanting to Travel Solo appeared first on China Marketing Insights.

This is the first time the Gala has changed its headlining sponsor, but the organizers needn’t fret as this is a coveted sponsorship position and they were able to immediately find a replacement. 

Why Are Brands Desperate To Sponsor the Spring Festival Gala?

The Gala has an extremely high audience rating. Except 2015, the ratings from 2001 to 2020 are all above 30%. The view in 2020 reached 1.23 billion. According to South China Morning Post, it is fair to say the Spring Festival Gala has the highest audience rating in the world.

The Gala has become many household’s new year background music, just like in the US how the Macy’s Day Parade is to Thanksgiving or the Times Square Ball Drop is to New Year’s Eve – only much bigger. The Spring Festival Gala is a must-have to say goodbye to the past and welcome the new year.

As the Gala is watched all over China, it is also a quick way to introduce your brand to the Xiachen or lower tier cities market. Since it is put on by the state-run CCTV channel, it is seen as an authentic and trustworthy TV show in most people’s eyes. (Which also leads us to think that Pinduoduo was probably asked to pull out of the sponsorship.)

As China’s Economy Has Grown, Sponsorships Have Shifted

The Gala’s first sponsorship was from a domestic watch company called Compas in 1984. At that time, watches, bikes, and sewing machines were called Lao Sanjian (老三件), meaning once a household had these three things, it was a wealthy one.

In the 1990s, the home appliance industry were booming, and the Gala was either sponsored by Haier (海尔) or Midea Group (美的). In the early 2000s, the Gala became the battle field of Baijiu (白酒), a type of Chinese alcohol. Stepping into the 21^st century, the Gala has become the stage for Internet giants.

A Coveted Opportunity for Internet Brands

Being a headlining sponsor will guide massive traffic and for the large Chinese Internet companies who face intense competition for traffic, the Gala is an efficient way to stand out and build a bigger user base.

While the Gala has always been a popular sponsorship opportunity, it became extremely coveted after a successful case study that happened with WeChat 6 years ago when WeChat sponsored the Gala and developed the Shake and Get Red Pocket (摇一摇红包) function where users could interact with the TV show and get free random amounts of money in their WeChat Wallet (often just a couple cents or a couple RMB).

This campaign helped WeChat grow its user base from 8M to over 300M. WeChat used two days to achieve what Alipay had been doing for 8 years. The Red Pocket activity also educated users about the WeChat Pay function.

Following this case, we’ve seen Douyin, Alipay, Taobao and Baidu become the Red Pocket sponsors of the Gala. 

At the Same Time, The Gala Needs These Red Pocket Sponsors

Though the average audience rate of the Gala is high, as a nationwide TV show, it is hard for the Spring Festival Gala to satisfy 1.4 billion people. 

Since 2005, many local TV channel such as Zhejiang Television (浙江卫视), Jiangsu Television (江苏卫视) and Dragon Television (东方卫视) started hosting their own spring festival galas and they invited many popular actors and singers to the event, which lowered the audience numbers and rating of the main Spring Festival Gala on CCTV (China Central Television). 

Working with Internet giants to add in interactive digital experiences helps the Gala appeal to younger viewers and sharing red pockets is a great way to get viewers to choose their show over a show that doesn’t offer red pockets.

According to Chinese media outlet 36Kr, those top runners in the Internet industry have invested over 7 billion RMB in the Spring Festival Gala.   

Read more: 互联网巨头为何热衷在春晚发红包？

The post Douyin Has Replaced Pinduoduo as Sponsor of This Year’s Spring Festival Gala appeared first on China Marketing Insights.

Pinduoduo (NASDAQ: PDD) is one of China’s largest e-commerce platforms, known for its Xiachen (lower-tier city) marketing strategy, extremely low prices, and its famous use of social group-buying. The company stock surged 295% in 2020, becoming the second largest ecommerce platform in China. And in late December, Colin Huang, the founder and chief executive overtook Alibaba Group Holding’s Jack Ma and Tencent Holdings’ Pony Ma Huateng to become the country’s second-richest person with a current net worth of US$63.1 billion.

Yet at the same time this was happening, a young employee died from overwork and now the company is facing a PR crisis so bad that consumers boycotted its sponsorship of the annual Spring Festival Gala, one of the most-watched TV programs in China. The boycotting was so sever that it has been confirmed that Pinduoduo has pulled out of the Gala.

So what happened? 

Mishandling of Employee’s Death From Overwork

At 1:30 am on December 29, a Pinduoduo employee suddenly collapsed while on a work trip in Xinjiang (新疆). After 6 hours of attempted rescue, she passed away. The time that the employee fell to the ground (1:30 am) was the usual time that she finished her work. 

The accident was kept silent until January 3, when a user on Maimai (脉脉), a Chinese platform similar to LinkedIn, posted on the platform saying the girl was her friend and asking why there was no official response from Pinduoduo for the past few days. The next day, the page featuring this post was blocked. 

People also discovered that on Zhihu (知乎), the official Pinduoduo account had responded to questions about the accident with a cold-hearted response saying that “People at the bottom of society are making a living with their lives. If they want to have better lives, they need to pay for it with their health.”

1 minute after it was posted, Pinduoduo quickly deleted the post and claimed that the screenshot was faked. Well, the official Zhihu account came out and said that the Pinduoduo account was verified and Pinduoduo indeed posted those words. So Pinduoduo responded to Zhihu’s announcement saying that it was posted by its employee’s personal mobile phone and wasn’t approved by the company. 

After this incident, people were very angry with Pinduoduo’s cold and irresponsible response. 

What made people angrier was a video published by a former employee of Pinduoduo, Weibo @王太虚 (Wang Taixu). In the video, he was saying he got fired because he saw one of his colleagues being carried to an ambulance and he posted the news on the anonymous platform Maimai. 

Wang also said that at the Pinduoduo headquarters, employees are required to work for 300 hours every month, and in the department which the woman who died in Xinjiang worked for, which manages the fresh produce business, its employees are required to work for at least 380 hours every month. 

Consumers Showing Support and Sympathy

Across China’s internet, people are showing an outpouring of support for the woman that died. Some of them are saying they are so happy to see young people bravely standing out and speaking for themselves, and some are sharing their similar experiences working in some of China’s other major internet giants. In China, employees often need to stay up late until 11pm or even 1 am. Getting off work on time sounds impossible for the majority of them.

This Problem is Not New, and Unlikely to Change Anytime Soon

In fact, this issue is not new, in 2019 China’s 996 work culture (a reference to working from 9AM to 9PM for six days a week) became a buzzed-about topic worldwide after the number one trending GitHub repository was a collection of work grievances against China’s biggest tech companies including Alibaba, Huawei, Bytedance, DJI, and others.

This recent Pinduoduo scandal goes to show that despite the complaints, little has changed. If anything, things became worse this year as consumers were stuck at home due to COVID, and it became even harder to create boundaries between work and personal life.

This Bad PR Will be Hard for Pinduoduo to Get Over

To make matters worse for Pinduoduo’s PR team, Pinduoduo had planned to be a headlining sponsor of this year’s Spring Festival Gala, which is one of the most-watched TV programs in China, it is a CNY tradition for Chinese people and almost every household in China will have the gala playing in the background during family gatherings. 

In response to the overwork scandal, people began going online to boycott Pinduoduo’s sponsorship of the Gala and request CCTV to remove them as a sponsor. 

This incident has also let loose a whole host of other complaints about the platform. For example, many people are saying they are sick of seeing so many Pinduoduo links in their WeChat Moments or WeChat groups, and that they don’t want to see those anymore. 

Unfortunately, we’re not optimistic that this incident will drive any meaningful change, considering the results of past incidents and Pinduoduo’s response to date. But will it have a long term impact on the company? Only time will tell. 

Read more: 拼多多员工猝死背后：疯狂公司奔逐疯狂赛道

The post Consumers Boycotted Pinduoduo’s Sponsorship of the Spring Festival Gala – Here’s Why appeared first on China Marketing Insights.

Despite a tumultuous year surrounding the drama with TikTok in the U.S., TikTok’s parent company ByteDance is doing well and is looking to fill more than 10k job positions in China by the end of 2020.

While many people in the West only know of TikTok, ByteDance actually operates many platforms including Douyin, Toutiao (今日头条) and Xigua Video (西瓜视频). So far, ByteDance has hired more than 30k employees this year in China. Adding 10k, the company will have over 100k employees worldwide. So crazy.

Most of the new job positions are related to education, games and ecommerce, which can give us an idea of ByteDance’s strategy and key growth areas. Why these three areas?

Education

According to Zhang Yiming (张一鸣), founder of ByteDance, education will be the company’s next key focus. Though the company isn’t known for education, it is building the development team and launching apps gradually, the Guagualong (瓜瓜龙) series is one of them.

Games

The game industry is covered by two players at the moment: Tencent and NetEase (网易), with 70% of the market in total. ByteDance aims to break the situation.

We know that games can be classified into two categories, one is called casual games, for example the classic link game, and the other type is moderate-intense engagement games, such as Honor of Kings (王者荣耀) and Onmyoji (阴阳师). While ByteDance has achieved great success in casual game development and 80% of these games have achieved monetization, the company still has a long way to go for those big mobile games. Reasons why this is happening is that, users who play casual games match with Douyin user base, most of them are young and fashionable females. On the other hand, if you look at Douyin’s livestream ranking board, you will find that most of the popular content is about performance, emotion and life or singing, there is barely any game livestreaming. The atmosphere is not fertilized enough to grow a big mobile game.

Ecommerce

Three main ways of monetization on the Internet are: advertisement, games and ecommerce. Douyin is always hoping to build its own ecommerce platform so that they don’t drive users to Taobao or Tmall and instead they can finish the purchasing cycle on Douyin.

In fact, another short video and livestreaming platform Kuaishou (快手) has acted faster than Douyin. Since December 2019, Taobao’s links can no longer be placed in Kuaishou content and the platform has been building its product warehouse, guiding influencers and MCNs to open stores.

But have a look at today’s main ecommerce platforms: Taobao is known for its wide range of product categories, JD is a place to go if users want to buy home appliances and Pinduoduo is known for group buying and extremely low price. Can ByteDance find a novel position in the market? We will see if this can happen.

With the expansion of its team, Byte Dance is looking for more office buildings. News about ByteDance purchasing buildings often show up. In June, the company bought land in Shenzhen worth 1.08 billion RMB to build its new office building. Outside of first tier cities such as Beijing, Shanghai, Guangzhou and Shenzhen, Byte Dance is also expanding and opening offices in second tier cities such as Wuhan (武汉), Chengdu (成都), Xiamen (厦门) and Zhengzhou (郑州). 

Read more: 字节跳动年前再招1万人，员工总数将破10万

The post ByteDance Will Hire 10k More Employees By The End of 2020 appeared first on China Marketing Insights.

Pinduoduo is one of China’s largest e-commerce platforms and an industry leader who helped popularize the concept of social commerce in China. Yet while it initially became famous for its wildly popular group-buying feature, Pinduoduo has since evolved into much more than just a group buying platform. 

In this episode Ada Yang, Head of Social Community at Pinduoduo gives us an overview of the platform, and then shares several other features and initiatives you many not have heard of such as:

• A virtual farming game where users can earn real fruit sent to their home for free
• Its relatively new live streaming feature and how PDD is iterating on the popular live streaming trend
• Its New Brand Initiative that leverages user data to help export factories who have been hard hit by COVID and the negative geopolitical situation to create entirely new brands aimed at the domestic market, guiding them through product development, branding, and marketing.

Guest: Ada Yang

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/pinduoduoinc/

Twitter: @pinduoduoinc

The China Ecommerce Podcast

Medium

Learn more about the topics we discussed:

• Pinduoduos effort to help farmers with technology and alleviate poverty in rural areas
• New Brand initiatives 
• Shanghai vintage brand Campaign 
• MIT Tech Review article on PDD C2M model
• An article about Duoduo Live

The post Understanding Pinduoduo’s Evolution, with Ada Yang appeared first on China Marketing Insights.

Never’s image is featured on one of the eyeshadow palettes in the Discovery Collection. The shades in the palette are created by Austin and inspired by Never’s personality. Profits from the palette will be donated to an animal protection fund in Beijing. The product is going fast – during the live streamed launch Austin already sold out 180k palettes. 

Read more: 美人计｜连李佳琦的狗都开始联名带货了

Key Takeaways From Questmobile Report on Young Consumers in Lower Tier Cities

As of November 2019 there are over 200 million post-90s consumers located in 3rd-tier and lower cities in China. This is 10.1% growth YOY. In Chinese these consumers are referred to as 小镇青年 (Xiaozhen Qingnian) or “small town youth”. Here are some key takeaways from the report: 

• Their average monthly screen time is 127.9 hours, slightly higher than young people in 1st and 2nd tier cities (127.3 hours).
• Students and white-collar workers make up 60% of Xiaozhen Qingnian. Their income is lower than 6,000 RMB. The average amount per month is around 4,000 RMB.
• Yet since living costs in lower tier cities are much lower, they have more disposable income. 
• Xiaozhen Qingnian’s favorite topics to search online are: food, travel, fashion, ecommerce shopping, auto, and wealth management. 
• Xiaozhen Qingnian spend on average 7.1 hours/month on ecommerce platforms. 
• The top 3 e-commerce platforms they use are Taobao, Pinduoduo, and Xianyu. 
• The group places more value on recommendations from friends and acquaintances, and often group buy together. 
• They are sensitive to price and are willing to spend more time browsing other platforms to compare prices. They love searching for coupons and discount information as well. But when it comes down to it they care even more about quality and brand name.  
• They show great interest in second-hand products. 
• When it comes to planning travel, Xiaozhen Qingnian’s interest in vacation rentals like Airbnb has increased significantly since 2018. 

Read more: QuestMobile2019小镇青年洞察报告：2亿青年每月128小时都在干嘛？

Art & Aroma Essential Oil Skincare

Art & Aroma (Chinese name 芳研社) is a small Chinese essential oils skincare brand founded in 2014 by two friends, a chemist and a biologist. While still small at only 10 SKUs, the brand has been featured by one of China’s top business writers Wu Xiaobo Channel (吴晓波频道) and has a very loyal customer base, with a repurchase rate of 80%. Here are some of the things they have done to grow such a loyal customer base: 

Emphasis on Private Traffic: 
Art & Aroma focuses heavily on private traffic. They operate 4 personal WeChat accounts with a total of 4,000 connections across all accounts. All of their private traffic users are customers of their Tmall store. After each and every person purchases a product, the team will actively encourage the person to add the company’s WeChat. After adding the accounts, the users are segmented into different categories and WeChat groups, such as skincare, hair care, new products launching and discounts.

These four accounts regularly post content on Moments with 25% of content about skincare, 25% about event and live streaming notifications, and the rest is about the daily lives of the three founders and other lifestyle content. They also actively participate in customers’ lives by liking and commenting on customers’ Moments posts.

Passion for Proving Product Quality Helps Gain Visibility:
Once team members shaved part of their hair just to test whether their shampoo product could increase hair growth rate. The story was later featured by the popular WeChat Commerce platform Youzan(有赞). On that night Youzan posted the article, Art & Aroma did over 200k RMB in sales, and sold out 3,000 hair care sets within 4 hours.

Giving Consumers Ownership:
Similar to a domestic beauty brand Chioture(稚优泉), Art & Aroma invites its customers to participate in the decision making process. This includes choosing scents, ingredients, packaging styles and product names. Co-founder Qing Fen(清芬) said involving customers in this process makes customers happy while simultaneously promoting new products. 

Offline Aromatherapy Certification Courses:
In the past the brand has held offline aromatherapy certification courses. This is a great way to interact with customers in real life and for the co-founders to demonstrate their professional expertise and inspire trust. Right now a growing number of Chinese beauty and skincare consumers are known as 成份党 or consumers that pay great attention to the ingredients. Classes like this would appeal to that consumer base. 

Livestreaming:
Art & Aroma’s livestreaming is very different from most brands. One of the co-founders Xiao Ke(小珂) live streams three times a week. Unlike other brands, she doesn’t actively try to sell products. She typically sits in her kitchen or dining room drinking a cup of tea and chatting with viewers. Usually, she shares a book, a movie or her hand-made crafts. Sometimes she shares her thoughts on essential oils and skincare. 

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China Marketing Podcast Ep. 64: An Overview of China’s Burgeoning Fragrance Market 

Today’s conversation is with Dao Nguyen, founder of ESSENZIA, a boutique marketing creative strategy agency helping fragrance and cosmetics brands reach young Chinese consumers. We dive deep into China’s rapidly growing fragrance market which has changed dramatically over the past 5 years.

Dao gave an overview of the market, answering questions such as:

• Who are the main consumers?
• What types of fragrances tend to appeal to a Chinese audience?
• Which brands are doing well in the China market and why?
• Are there any mistakes brands tend to make?

Later in the episode we also discussed China’s beauty industry and I ask Dao to share her thoughts on the rise of China’s domestic beauty brands.

Listen on Spotify, iTunes, or XimalayaFM

Women In China Marketing

This is a new online directory dedicated to women who specialize in helping brands market to Chinese consumers.

It was created by the wonderful Olivia Plotnick after a report on China marketing trends for 2020 in which only 1 of the 22 report contributors was a woman.

Check it out here
And if you’d like to add someone to the list, feel free to submit a profile!

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