You must know this to plan your research projects in China

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.

(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.

(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.

(Chester Alvarez, 2017)

(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. 

(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!

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​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.