Word: market
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...Those same sales staff also offer a key channel for market research, assessing how Master Kong is received in the homeliest neighborhoods. And that all helps further growth. Wei acknowledges that Master Kong has to stay humble. "If you tell people Kang Shifu is a company that makes good coffee, they will never believe it," he says (coffee being too foreign and expensive-sounding). "So our brand extension is limited by our customers." But those customers have been great for Tingyi, especially amid the uncertain economy of 2009, when it was a distinct advantage to be dealing in low-cost...
...Chinese companies sometimes start out as carbon copies of successful overseas ventures. But replication doesn't happen overnight. Take Ctrip, the market leader for online travel reservations. The company, founded in 1999, initially hoped to be an instant Chinese version of Expedia but soon realized that rushing to provide the same features of the U.S. travel website - which offers package tours, hotel reservations, plane tickets, rental-car reservations and cruises, among other services - was a reckless, if not impossible, task. Instead, it focused on mastering one service before adding another. (See pictures of Chinese investment in Africa...
...Today, Ctrip holds 54% of China's online travel market by revenue, according to CLSA, versus 10% for challenger eLong, which is majority-owned by Expedia and has followed a more fitful progression - initially offering vacation packages, but temporarily withdrawing them in 2007 to focus on air tickets and hotels. Both players offer nearly identical prices, so customer service is a key point of difference. While Chinese Web users have become more sophisticated about researching prices on the Internet, they still prefer to buy tickets by phone (just 35% of Ctrip's customers buy their air tickets via the website...
...Very gradually, however, he began to notice that his customers, mostly 25- to 45-year-old professionals, wanted their garments to have Chinese touches. "As the Chinese economy grows, and its market matures, we've realized that Chinese consumers have their own distinctive needs," Zhou says. That's why in Septwolves shops jackets are just as likely to have a Mandarin collar as a notched lapel. Color palettes are geared to domestic tastes and all garments, even those intended for casual wear, have a certain dressiness, fit and attention to detail that Chinese men prefer - you'll see no skater...
...part of our Housing Market series, we'll be posting reviews and rankings for each of Harvard's 12 residential Houses over the next few days. Click here to read more about our project...