Wealthy Chinese People and the Chinese Version of the Brands Websites

For some big luxury groups, I have been conducting many qualitative studies (focus groups and interviews) on the Chinese HNWI and/or the Middle Class concerning their relations to the brands websites. All these studies tend toward the same idea : ahead of all other media, the website is the brand’s key point in promotion.

What is going on in a Chinese head when surfing a brand website?

At first, the consumer’s curiosity is stirred by a brand stimulus:
by a commercial break or a special advertising feature on TV,
through magazines and newspapers, by some advertorial or advertising,
on the internet, through forums, e-commerce websites, social media…,
on the point of sale in an advertising framework or when listening to the advice of a clerk,
by word of mouth when invited to a friend’s house.

Following this stimulus and often on the same day, the consumer flings onto the internet (Google or Baidu) to find the chinese version of the wished website. The pages which are mostly looked at describe the products of the brand and its background history. Aware of this phenomenon and rightly so, many brands include some detailed pages about their background which are specially written for their Chinese customers.

Once the website has been checked this way it is considered as secured and the purchase can be made. How can that be?
Well, it gives all information to sort things out:
there are lots of pseudo-brands on the market for instance, like the “Lafite Cellars” or the “Clos Margaux”, etc…presented this year at the Chengdu wine fair.
Moreover, chinese brands often choose occidental names : It looks trendy, it “sells”.
And do you think that the consumer does not know that, in spite of their objective-looking, most TV or magazines reports are financed by the brands? It does also work this way in China. As for the sales staff, they sell what their boss ask them to sell…
When you have a discussion with some consumers, they all say the same thing: “a brand website tells the truth”. This can seam quite surprising to the marketer but, within this world of subjective stimuli where the will to sell is winning, websites are obective values.

A brand website can also be a source of knowledge as, in China, it is important not only to possess but to show it and, what’s more, to be able to talk properly about it in order to gain face. Brands did invent a new culture, the capitalism culture itself and this has been very well understood by the Chinese people as one might discover through the Pop Art trend of their contemporary art.

The brand website turns out to be an objective source of information, a guarantee and a cultural tool so, please, take good care of the chinese version of your websites for the game is worth the candle.