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You must know this to plan your research projects in China

8/2/2017

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By Rachel Wang
​Being the world's second largest economy, China is a hot market for the international goods and services. It has a unique culture and a constantly-changing market landscape. I’d like to share with you the fundamental insights that are critical to your research plan. It entails six aspects which are time, geography, people, methodology, research resources, and the internet.
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(Jiyeon Park, 2017)
  • Get ready for the time difference. Greater China, including mainland China, Hong Kong, Macau, and Taiwan, follows Beijing Time (UTC +8), and it does not utilize the daylight-saving time (in another word, summer time). It is 13 hours before New York, 16 hours before San Francisco, 8 hours before London, and 7 hours ahead of Paris.
  • Avoid the big holidays for your fieldwork. Two big festivals are lasting seven days each. One is the National Holiday in October (10.1-10.7), and the other is Spring Festival (Chinese New Year) in Jan or Feb (the date shifts each year because it follows the Lunar calendar). People tend to take off 7-15 additional days during these two festivals to enjoy life. Click here to read the complete holiday schedule of 2018​
  • Best face-to-face interview time is on the evening of working days, and it is more flexible during the weekends.
  • Tailor made your geography design carefully because there is a big difference in income, mindset, climate, taste buds, and lifestyle across region (East, North, South, West, and the Middle) and tiers (tier 1, tier 2, tier 3 and lower tier cities, and rural areas).
  • Consider Shanghai, Beijing, and Guangzhou for the nation-wide opinions as they are the trendsetters (all tier 1 cities) and strike a good geography balance (representing East China, North China, and South China respectively).
  • Consider Hong Kong and Shanghai for the finance projects as they are the financial centers of the country.
  • Consider Shenzhen, Beijing, and Shanghai for the entrepreneur studies as they are entrepreneur hubs of China.
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(123RF, n.d.)
  • Key criteria influencing consuming attitudes and behaviors are gender, marital status (esp. before and after having kids), age, income, occupation, and education.
  • Race is not a critical criteria in segmentation unless you target a particular niche market. It is because China is a homogenous country with over 91.51% of the population Han ("The 6th National Population Survey in 2010", 2011).
  • Sex orientation is still a taboo. Don’t ask about it unless it is your key research topic.
  • Kids study is possible, whereas it needs to get the permission from their legal guardians. Parents see it as a training and social opportunity for kids. Be careful with the “back-up” kids as both parents and kids would take it personally. Prepare an extra interview room and exercises for the kids you over-recruit. 
  • The common qualitative methodologies are Focus Group Discussion, one-on-one interview, ethnography (home visit, accompanied shopping, and other types of shadowing), and desk research. Online research (online forum, real-time groups, video-chatting interview, online dairy, etc.)  is rising strongly.
  • The online research and big-data are taking over in the realm of quantitative research. E-commerce platforms and social media agencies store up national consumption behavior records. Brands are building the corporate big-data system incorporating the data of customers, sales, and finance. Pre-recruit interview (face-to-face or through phone) could be the most-common-to-see traditional methodology that is still alive. Door-to-door is almost dead. Street interception interview and random phone call are available but declining.  
  • Others: P&G and Unilever have their in-house mock-up retailers (shopping mall, supermarket) for shopping experimenting studies. Technologies like eye-tracking and virtual shopping are applied here to facilitate the research.
Picture
(Chester Alvarez, 2017)
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(Štefan Štefančík, 2017)
  • In the mainland China, research resources clusters in the tier 1-2 cities. Researchers and moderators are mainly based in Shanghai, Beijing, and Guangzhou. There are abundant recruiters, research facilities, and translators in tier 1-2 cities and some in the tier 3 cities. Researching in lower-tier cities or countries would be more expensive because of the additional fee of traveling and accommodation.
  • There are abundant research resources in Hong Kong and Taiwan, and the research cost there is much more expensive than that of the mainland China because of the higher level of personal income. 

  • Use VPN service to access your Google-related applications, Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram when traveling to China as the Great China Firewall bans them. The Chinese government claims to ban of VPN in 2017. Many VPN services are still alive at the moment, but their future is unpredictable.
  • Popular local communication applications: Wechat for daily chatting, QQ for free & high-quality multi-party video meeting, and Baidu Cloud for big-size files transfer and sharing. 
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(Igor Ovsyannykov, 2017)
​Contact me if you have any question or would like to know more!

LTH Business Consulting specializes in the Chinese market research & strategy. 
Send your project request to info@lthbconsulting.com 
Follow us at https://www.facebook.com/LTHconsulting

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Author: Rachel Wang
rwangyy@lthbconsulting,com
https://www.linkedin.com/in/rwangyy/​    
ACKNOWLEDGEMENT
Thank you, Allison Rak, for suggesting this topic! Thank you, Cullen Gravity, for the proof-reading!

​Bibliography
  • Jiyeon Park. (2017). Retrieved from https://unsplash.com/@greenpjy123?photo=OshG1lLSNa4
  • The 6th National Population Survey in 2010. (2011). Stats.gov.cn. Retrieved 26 July 2017, from http://www.stats.gov.cn/tjsj/tjgb/rkpcgb/qgrkpcgb/201104/t20110428_30327.html
  • 123RF. https://www.123rf.com/clipart-vector/chinese_girl.html.
  • ​Chester Alvarez. (2017). Retrieved from https://unsplash.com/search/tool?photo=bphc6kyobMg
  • Štefan Štefančík. (2017). https://unsplash.com/collections/971246/resources?photo=UCZF1sXcejo.
  • Igor Ovsyannykov. (2017). https://unsplash.com/photos/vdWewqfr_V0?utm_source=unsplash&utm_medium=referral&utm_content=creditCopyText.
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What languages to use when conducting the MR in China?

6/17/2017

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By Rachel Wang
If you are wondering what language to use in your next market research project in China, the quick answer is Mandarin (spoken) + Simplified Chinese (written) in the mainland China, Mandarin (spoken) + Traditional Chinese (written) in Taiwan, and Cantonese (spoken) + Traditional Chinese (written) in Hong Kong and Macau.
Table 1: the common languages by region
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I thought all Chinese speak Chinese. You may wonder. What is Mandarin, Cantonese, Simplified Chinese, and Traditional Chinese? Well, read the following Chinese language insights, and you will be an expert.
 
 
Mandarin Chinese is the dominant language in China
Mandarin Chinese is the national language of China, and almost everyone speaks it. There are different Chinese dialects spoken in the land of China that people use for daily dialogue, but with Mandarin Chinese people can understand each other. It is like in the U.S.; people may speak Spanish, French, and Italian in their communities while most people speak English.
 
Mandarin Chinese is the official language of the People’s Republic China. Over 90% of the urbanites and over 70% of Chinese speak Mandarin ("The Notice Of Checking Mandarin Status In The County Areas"). It was born out of the Beijing dialect of Chinese in 1923 and promoted nationwide as the standard Chinese ("Mandarin Chinese"). China has 130 languages, and Chinese alone has 7 regional dialect groups ("How Many Languages Are There In China"). Most of these languages and Chinese dialects are intelligible. It means people cannot understand each other if they speak different Chinese dialects. It is like how English is different from German. That is why the government started to promote Mandarin as the national language more than 60 years ago ("The Guideline Of Promoting Mandarin").
 
 
The exceptions, which part of China do not speak Mandarin
 
Hong Kong and Macau keep their local dialect Cantonese as the main language. They were colonies of the UK and Portugal until 1997 and 1999 which explains the absence of Mandarin. Another group that does not speak Mandarin is the elders of ethnic Chinese.
 
Hong Kong and Macau widely speak Cantonese, with 95.8% and 80.1% of the population respectively ("Hong Kong Population 2017 - DATA AND INFORMATION", 2017) ("DSEC - 2016 Population Statistics", 2017). Cantonese has over 1000 years of history and has been deeply rooted in the local culture. Before the return of Hong Kong and Macau to China, Mandarin was spoken by the minority Chinese in these territories. The use of Mandarin has started to grow ever since their reunion with the motherland. Employees of the public services are the first to pick up Mandarin. The local businesspeople extend the wave to greet their inbound customers. Parents are encouraging their kids to learn Mandarin so that they can find a good job in the future. According to the latest government census, there are 47.8% people in Hong Kong and 50.4% in Macau speak Mandarin ("Hong Kong Population 2017 - DATA AND INFORMATION", 2017) ("DSEC - 2016 Population Statistics", 2017).
 
The ethnical groups of China account for 8.49% of the population and bring diversity to the nation’s language map ("2010 National Population Statistics", 2011). The 53 out of 55 of minority ethnical Chinese have their languages ("Chinese Languages," 2017). They live in provinces and autonomous regions like Inner Mogolium, Xinjiang, Tibet, Ningxia, Yunnan, Jilin, and Taiwan. They use their ethnic languages in everyday life. Most young people speak  Mandarin, but not the case among the elders.
 
 
Simplified Chinese is the dominant written language in China
 
Simplified Chinese and Traditional Chinese are two versions of written Chinese. Simplified Chinese is the simple version of Traditional Chinese. Most Simplified Chinese characters are born out of the Traditional Chinese, and others inherit from ancient Chinese or create newly.
 
Chinese characters are like pictures. Their shape and structure mimic the objects in real life. To be compared, English characters are more associated with the pronunciation. Take the word 口 (mouth), for example, isn’t it like the shape of the mouth? Look at the word 河 as if it were a drawing, You can tell it is related to water because the left part of this character contains three drops of water.
 
Simplified Chinese and Traditional Chinese share the similar structure. Their difference is Simplified Chinese is with fewer strokes. Give you an example, the bird is 鳥 in Traditional Chinese and it becomes鸟 in the Simplified Chinese. Check the below chart for more examples. Can you find the resemblance? The Traditional Chinese writers can understand the Simplified Chinese instinctively, and the Simplified Chinese writers can understand the Traditional Chinese with some efforts. Thanks to the computer input applications, a person trained in either Simplified Chinese or Traditional Chinese can easily type in both digitally.

Table 2: The comparison of Traditional Chinese and Simplified Chinese
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The Simplified Chinese was created by the People’s Republic of China (PRC) in 1954 ("Celebrating the 50th anniversary of the regulations of "Publishing the Simplified Chinese Plan" and "Promoting Mandarin," 2006). The government wishes to increase the literacy with this simple version of Chinese. Areas like Taiwan, Hong Kong, and Macau were away from the influence of the central government when the Simplified Chinese was heavily promoted nationwide. That is why they have not updated the Traditional Chinese with the Simplified Chinese yet.
 
 
The last piece of reminding 
On top of being fluent in Chinese, respecting the regional culture is key to bond with locals. Every Chinese region has their unique cultural heritages. It could be the region’s history, the lifestyle, the personality, the local dialect, or the vocabularies that are exclusive to this territory. It will delight the locals if you express the admiration towards their culture. A simple trick is greeting them with the local dialect and ask them about their favorite local dishes.
 
So much for today, my friend. If you have more questions about the market research in China, email me at rwangyy@lthbconsulting.com
 
LTH Business Consulting specializes in the Chinese market research & strategy. 
Send your project request to info@lthbconsulting.com 
Follow us at https://www.facebook.com/LTHconsulting

Picture

​Author: Rachel Wang
rwangyy@lthbconsulting,com

https://www.linkedin.com/in/rwangyy/​

Acknowledgement
Thank you, Allison Rak and Jeremy Stabile for suggesting this topic! Thank you, Cullen Gravity and Khristy Belle Timtiman, for proofreading this article! I hope it would benefit my international research fellows and everyone who has the needs of associating with Chinese people.

Bibliography
  • "Mandarin Chinese". En.wikipedia.org. N.p., 2017. Web. 11 June 2017.
  • "How Many Languages Are There In China". Xh.5156edu.com. N.p., 2017. Web. 11 June 2017.
  • "The Guideline Of Promoting Mandarin". People.com.cn. N.p., 1956. Web. 11 June 2017.
  • "The Notice Of Checking Madarin Status In The County Areas". Moe.gov.cn. N.p., 2017. Web. 11 June 2017.
  • Hong Kong Population 2017 - DATA AND INFORMATION. (2017). Country Digest. Retrieved 13 June 2017, from http://countrydigest.org/hong-kong-population/#Hong_Kong_language
  • DSEC - 2016 Population Statistics. (2017). Dsec.gov.mo. Retrieved 13 June 2017, from http://www.dsec.gov.mo/Statistic/Demographic/GlobalResultsOfBy-Census/2016中期人口統計.aspx
  • 2010 National Population Statistics. (2011). Stats.gov.cn. Retrieved 13 June 2017, from http://www.stats.gov.cn/tjsj/tjgb/rkpcgb/qgrkpcgb/201104/t20110428_30327.html
  • Chinese Languages. (2017). Gov.cn. Retrieved 13 June 2017, from http://www.gov.cn/test/2005-06/16/content_6821.htm
  • Celebrating the 50th anniversary of the regulations of "Publishing the Simplified Chinese Plan" and "Promoting Mandarin". (2006). Moe.gov.cn. Retrieved 16 June 2017, from http://www.moe.gov.cn/jyb_xwfb/xw_fbh/moe_2128/moe_2326/moe_1144/tnull_14351.html
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