Thursday, October 4, 2012

Annotated Bibliography

Kayla Hedman and Ryan Steinmetz
Core Independent Study: China Marketing
Dr. Rob Williams
October 5, 2012


Annotated Bibliography
Bergstrom, Mary. All Eyes East: Lessons from the Front Lines of Marketing to China's
Youth.
New York, NY: Palgrave Macmillan, 2012. Print. ISBN: 978-0230120624


Kayla: This book has countless information, not only on China’s youth, but on the past generations to explain their purchase power. The post-70s generation, brought up during the Cultural Revolution, is similar to America’s Silent Generation that grew up during the Great Depression. Both cultural phenomenons affected the generations and their future spending habits. The post-70s generation in China is perceived to be the last generation to value financial responsibility
and save, instead of spend. For the Chinese economy, this is good news. The next generation, the post-80s, is status-minded and was witness to the new consumer market opening up. This generation, to capitalize on individualism, introduced the notion of personal luxury (14).

Joan Ren, Marketing Director of Shanghai General Motors, compares America’s “nation of nations” to China’s “market of markets.” There are so many markets in China that marketing to too many consumer groups could stretch the value of a product too thin (28). As stated in Wang’s Brand New China, corporate brands are recognized more than products, so marketers are advertising specific brands and endorsed sub-brands (GM’s sub-brands include Cadillac, Chevrolet, Buick, etc.) exclusively to specific segments of consumers by making an emotional connection rather than selling the features.

The car market in China is dynamic and evolving at a lightning speed. Buyers are extremely well informed about their options in both domestic and foreign brands. GM estimates that new car buyers tend to be young (25-35 year old) and new to the category (85% of purchases made by first-time buyers) (28). Young single women are also a top market for automobiles, especially luxury brands. They enjoy more earning and spending power and are able to afford what they want, when they want it because they save money on rent and mortgages by living with their parents until marriage. Because of extremely high import and engine size taxes, ultra-luxury cars carry a price tag in China more than double of what they would be sold for in other countries, but women are still opting to step into the driver’s seat. The number of women buying Ferraris in China is double the worldwide average and three times the number of Maseratis sold to European women are now being sold to Chinese women (73).  In China, females account for 30% of Maserati sales, and this market is now expiring an expansion of color options to appeal to the increasingly feminine customer base. The large market of single successful women in their thirties is also expanding; they are known as “leftover women.” This ever-growing cosmopolitan market is targeted in an ad campaign for “Benz” (as Mercedes-Benz is known in China), depicting good natured, confident, elite and healthy individuals. Lastly, men of status’ mistresses account for one third of the luxury market in China. Online “netizens” (Internet citizens) refer to Mini Coopers and BMW 3 series cars as “mistress cars.”

There is so much valuable information in this book that Bergstrom collected from many sources. This book offers many other accounts of marketing luxury products, and the expanding market of people with more tools at their disposal – income, a social network, and confidence (137). Bergstrom is the founder of the Bergstrom Group, an insights consultancy with a passion for telling the story of new China, based in Shanghai. She and her team help companies to leverage trends, develop new products, and localize brands and messaging for the Chinese market.
Brady, Anne-Marie. Marketing Dictatorship: Propaganda and Thought Work in         Contemporary China. Lanham: Rowman & Littlefield, 2008. Print. ISBN-13:         978-0-7425-4057-6
        
Kayla: As highlighted in many timelines in the post-Mao era in China, there were dramatic changes in China’s demographics, economy and politics in the late 1970s, on. With the rural de-collectivization of the late 1970s, beginning the largest internal migration in history, and a freer labor market in the 1980s had resulted in a breakdown of the traditional methods of conducting propaganda and thought work. Because Chinese society was considerably more fractured than in the Mao era and the country was becoming increasingly more influenced by Western culture (forces and trends), the Communist party needed to reassess the existing methods and integration of propaganda in Chinese society (66). The media model of American philosopher (among other professional interests), Noam Chomsky, was a huge influence on China’s reform and modernization of propaganda system. This included the concentration [and regulation] of media ownership, advertising as the main source of media income, utilizing media for government and business messages, and lastly modifying his fifth point to have nationalism as the national “religion” and control mechanism of the modern Chinese population (since China doesn’t have a primary religion) (69). Within Chapter 4: China’s Unseen Engineers, author Anne-Marie Brady focuses on modifying the West’s models and theories and adapting them to Chinese needs. This book focuses on the major issues within marketing and propaganda in the People’s Republic of China through monitoring websites, television and radio broadcasting, the publishing industry and all other forms of media in the post-Mao era.         
Ryan: Throughout time, propaganda has evolved in order to keep up with its viewers.  This book runs through the evolutions in the post Mao era.  The nature of the Chinese Communist Party’s propaganda and thought work in the current era and the extent of the propaganda system’s power is a highly secret, sensitive matter in China.  With this kind of information, I can read examples of an escalating form of advertisement and compare it to the advertising that it is today.   Cheng, Hong, and Kara Chan. Advertising and Chinese Society: Impacts and Issues.         Frederiksberg, Denmark: Copenhagen Business School Press, 2009. Print. ISBN-         13: 978-87-630-0227-1         Kayla: In the book Advertising and Chinese Society, many contributing authors present studies on the growth of advertising in China. China has emerged as one of the largest global markets and has become one of the largest advertising markets in the world (14). At the rate that China changes, there are not many books or studies devoted to the current roles of advertising in China. This book, published in 2009, examines the social, psychological, legal, and ethical impact, perceived or proven, that may result from advertising. It will help me understand the role of advertising as a form of sociocultural communication in contemporary China. On pages 47, 55, and 63, contributing author Katherine T. Frith touches upon the market of luxury items and the rise of middle class. In table 2.2 on page 47, Frith lists the top ten product categories in Mainland China: Real estate, pharmaceuticals, foodstuffs, home appliances, cosmetics, medical services, automobiles, garments, liquors, and travel. It was estimated that by 2015, China’s middle class will be 400 million strong, and by 2010, about 250 million Chinese would be able to afford luxury goods and become the dominant high-end buyers’ market (55). As with many of my other sources, this will take online research to see the most recent predictions or fulfillments of these predictions, but through thorough research this book lays out the general trends and how luxury products are marketed to these growing markets.           Ryan:  This book has many charts that give very specific statistics on how each form of advertising effects different topics.  These charts are important to give supporting facts relating to the effectiveness of each example that I will bring up in my paper.  Not only are there charts, but there are also actual advertisements that I can use to prove my point.  With different authors writing, I can get many different viewpoints. Dunne, Michael J.. American Wheels, Chinese Roads: The Story of General Motors in         China. Singapore: John Wiley & Sons (Asia), 2011. ebrary.com. Champlain         College Library. Web. 3 Oct. 2012. ISBN-13: 978-0262572323         Kayla: Dunne tells the story of General Motors’ success in China since GM’s bankruptcy scare in America in 2009. In the socialist economy in China, the government makes the rules for and competes in the auto industry. Luckily, GM has the city of Shanghai on its side, as a business partner and a competitor. The most valuable information in this book is the prediction of GM’s future market in China and the competition with other global and Chinese carmakers for demanding Chinese consumers – the world’s newest class of wealthy consumers. This plan of how to address the competition includes their strategic marketing plan. China is already the number one car market in the world, and it will only get bigger. James D. Power IV, Former Executive at J.D. Power and Associates, states in a review, “Dunne knows China and the automobile market until anyone else I’ve ever met.” I can ensure that this will not only be a reliable source, but a good read as well.
Fallows, James M.. Postcards from Tomorrow Square: Reports from China. New York:         Vintage Books, 2009. Print. ISBN-13: 978-0-307-45624-3         Kayla: The entire book, Postcards from Tomorrow Square, gives a strong account on Fallow’s experiences investigating China’s markets – from popular television to the gaming market. Within the chapter “China Makes, the World Takes” Fallows lucidly discusses the economic, political, social, environmental, and cultural forces working to turn China into a world superpower at an accelerating rate. Fallows recounts a memorable anecdote from Susan Shirk, where in her book she called China a “fragile superpower.” Shirk said when she talks about the book in American, people ask: “What do you mean ‘fragile’?” But when she talks about her book in China, people ask: “What do you mean ‘superpower’?” (142). The chapter does not specifically touch upon marketing in China, except for that they have a long way to go with branding their own companies. China’s companies are numerous but small. The Chinese government obviously wants to strengthen the country’s brands – for instance, with an aircraft company it hopes will compete with Boeing and Airbus – it’s “industrial planning” has mainly taken the form not of specific targeting but of general business promotion and incentives (98). “Many people I have spoken with say that the climb will be slow for Chinese industries, because they have so far to go in bringing their design, management and branding efforts up to world standards,” wrote Fallows (102). He believes that Americans need not be hostile toward China's rise, but they should be wary about its eventual effects. The United States is the only nation with the scale and power to try to set the terms of its interaction with China rather than just succumb. So starting now, Americans need to consider the economic, environmental, political, and social goals they care about defending as Chinese influence grows (70-1). Within the chapter Fallows touches upon how the increase in the number of cars (“millions of new cars that hit the road each year” 191, “Between 2000 and 2006…number of vehicles on [Beijing’s] roads doubled to 3 million – apparently the scare stories about a thousand extra cars per day joining Beijing’s traffic are true” 195), in addition to the plants and heavy-industry facilities, is contributing to air pollution in China. Even with the market of individually owned cars growing, especially the market of luxury automobiles, China still has barely one-thirtieth as many per capita as the United States (68). This is the market I plan to focus on in my final report.         Ryan: Postcards from Tomorrow Square: Reports from China is filled with different stories that give different experiences.  This book will help in understanding the new world that China is to me by being able to place pictures in my head of what China might actually look like before I get there.  This might not be the best book to get facts on advertising but I can definitely get a better feel of how people will react to the advertisements I will be talking about.  The idea of traveling around and how different people react to different situations will be a big focus on my paper. Gifford, Rob. China Road: A Journey Into the Future of a Rising Power. New York:         Random House, 2007. Print. ISBN-13: 978-0-8129-7524-6         Kayla: In China Road, Gifford tells the intimate story of his travels across China from Shanghai to the border of Kazakhstan. He does a great job summarizing his role as a Westerner in China and the Chinese’s expectations of him. “It can be embarrassing these days in China for the not so technically adept or the not so fashionably inclined Westerner,” he admits. Gifford goes on to tell of the Chinese’s obsession with new technology and how nosey they can be to observe what foreigners are doing, what they’re wearing, and how advanced their technology is. He was even reprimanded for his shabby car, an old Jeep Cherokee rather than a Mercedes or Audi (197). In saying this, a lot of Chinese marketing is more word of mouth or just paying attention to what is in western media. In Gifford’s photograph of Shanghai’s legendary shopping center, Nanjing Road, the caption says, “Communism is now submerged in a blaze of neon, as the market economy has taken hold across China.” China is now a buyer’s economy; there is a consumer boom going on in all cities large and small where you can buy anything that is available in the West (14). The problem is that most people do not have access to the consumer boom – in China you need power to get money, where it is the reverse in the States (15). China Road will help me explore this phenomenon and the concept of what people want versus what they spend money on.            Ryan:  Like Postcards, China road brings a level of experience to the table.  The author describes his travels in China.  With this information I can better understand the reactions that certain people would have to advertisements.  My thesis of the paper will be taken from this book which will simply be “The brighter the better” When analyzed this can mean many things, which I feel will make a great thesis.  When I first read this, I realized that this is exactly what I want my independent study to be, because it closely relates the type of person I want to be.  No spoilers, but it’s a good one. Hessler, Peter. Country Driving: a Journey Through China from Farm to Factory. New         York: HarperCollins, 2010. Print. ISBN-13: 978-0-06-180409-0         Kayla: On Hessler’s journey through China, he shares how the automobile and improved roads were transforming China by promoting tourism and growing the economy. He started the book with the statement that in 2001, in Beijing alone, almost a thousand new drivers registered on average each day. Most of them came from the growing middle class, for whom a car represented mobility, prosperity, and modernity. Most people learning to drive in China believed that being able to drive was good on your resume and would be very important in the future when so many people will have their own car (49). Hessler noted that in response to other foreigners in Beijing saying, “I can’t believe you’re driving in this country,” he responded: I can’t believe you get into cabs and buses driven by graduates of Chinese driving courses (51). Without saying it outright, he tells how the automobile market is far beyond the purchase of personal cars; it also involves the service of cars, insurance, driver’s education, rental cars, gas, and much more. This book is written incredibly well and has me laughing more than reading. I look forward to further exploring this book to learn about the car market, aside from women in Hondas driving into open manholes (324).         Ryan:  This is another book that will help me relate better to the people reading the advertisements.  The main difference is that it will give me better detail on how being in a car most of the time, the message of ads will still get their point across.  I am interested to indulge myself more in this one so that I can see how anyone in general will react to different styles of propaganda. Researching what the factories involved in manufacturing has become an interest of mine lately, and I would like for it to be a large part of what I talk about.
Isaacson, Walter. Steve Jobs. New York: Simon & Schuster, 2011. Print.
Ryan: This book is a biography on Steve Jobs. I have been reading it slowly as a pleasure book, and I have just reached a point where he begins to talk about having the apple products manufactured in China. He also talks about how getting advertising to work here was so easy. Steve Jobs is one of my idles, not because of what he created, but more of how he presented it. Being able to captivate his audience is one of the reasons I wanted to become a producer.

Lu, Pierre Xiao. Elite China: Luxury Consumer Behavior in China. Singapore: John         Wiley & Sons (Asia), 2008. Print. ISBN: 978-0470822678 Midler, Paul. Poorly Made in China: An Insider's Account of the Tactics Behind China's         Production Game. Hoboken, NJ: Wiley, 2009. Books24x7.com. Champlain         College Library. Web. 23 Sept. 2012. ISBN: 978-0470405581         Kayla: While reading through this eBook, I realized that it is mostly about manufacturing, production and quality management, not marketing. It talks about a concept called quality fade. In quality fade manufactured products start off high quality, but the quality gradually degrades when cost of production continually rise. While going through each of the 22 chapters, I could not find any sections about automobiles either. Midler focuses on four main industries: pharmaceuticals, cosmetics, food, and diamonds. Although, on his website, http://www.paulmidler.com/, there is a section about the cost of driving. In it he says, “China may be the largest auto market in the world, but its expressways are empty.” Midler continues, “The reason is that they are privatized, and it costs drivers an average of 12 cents/mile to use them. When gas runs $3/gallon in the U.S., it’s close to $4 in China; expensive tolls can more than double the figure to an effective cost of $8/gallon +.” This information and that of quality control in manufacturing will add to my final paper on marketing luxury automobiles to white- and gold-collar professionals.         Ryan:  The idea that our Olympic Uniforms were made in China is bothersome.  Out of all things, that is something that we should be proud that we made ourselves.  This book explains how and why everything is made in China.  I am also hoping that it explains why we have not left there yet other than the fact that the labor is so cheap.  The book starts off by saying that China manufactures everything in the world.  This can go hand in hand with advertising and will mesh well together when writing my paper.
Ngan, Jeff. "Vehicles « Ads of China // 中国广告." Ads of China // 中国广告. N.p., n.d. Web. 4
Kayla: This blog features the latest advertising campaigns from the Chinese advertising industry. All of their new posts can be found at http://advertising.chinasmack.com/, but the prior blog cited above focuses mainly on Chinese automobile advertisements. They are very interesting visually, and their concepts are unique to China. That is why Champlain alumn Sarah Ramsey said in her interview that the U.S. advertising agency’s ad proposals were usually not used in China. I will use this website for the media embeds portion of my final paper blog post, and possibly for some other information on the marketing concepts.

Popper, Joseph. Personal interview. 7 Oct. 2012.
Ryan: This coming weekend I will be interviewing my grandfather as he has been to China on several different occasions.  My goal is to ask him about the lifestyle there as well as any marketing that he has found.  I have spoken to him a little bit already, and he has told me stories of the people selling their made goods right next to the wall.  This does not have much to do with my thesis, but I feel it will bring a little charm of family values to make it seem more enjoyable to read.  

Ramsey, Sarah. Personal interview. 6 Sept. 2012.         Kayla: Sarah Ramsey, Champlain College Marketing Major, Class of 2012, has proved to be a great resource for our project. Having worked for an international marketing agency based in Shanghai that's biggest client is Ford Motors, Ramsey has experience marketing to various demographics all over the world, including the Chinese people (although the company isn’t contracted in China, they still pitch to China in the hope of gaining a huge account). Ramsey reported that there are two up and coming market industries in China, the biggest being the car industry and the second is the luxury brand industry.         Since the People’s Republic of China has helped a huge number of people out of poverty in the past decade, and the middle class is the fastest growing demographic, companies are moving to China to market to these people who now have disposable incomes. Since these middle class Chinese can't spend their money on land (government owned/shortage of land) and they don’t move due to the location of their job, they are compensating by buying luxury goods. For example, China is now 25% of Apple's demographic. Other things people are spending money on include luxury fashion, accessories like Gucci purses, watches, and of course, automotives. Westerners in the media influence this purchase behavior. Since my interview with Ramsey, I have decided to focus my report on marketing luxury automotives in China and the unsettling nature of certain car brands in China, such as Japan’s Toyota, through people’s opinions and the government’s restrictions.
"Social Media in China: What You Need to Know." BBC News. BBC, 31 Aug. 2012. Web. 04
Ryan: This website gives a video of an interview with Qiang Zhang. He gives very general information on the different types of social media in China. This video has important facts that will help evolve my paper from advertising into the techy side of Social Media. I intend Social Medias to be more towards the end of my paper due to the fact that this is still all relatively new.

Wang, Jing. Brand new China: Advertising, Media, and Commercial Culture.         Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 2008. Print. ISBN-13:         978-0-674-02680-3         Kayla: Brand New China examines the unique Asian strength of corporate branding as opposed to product branding through commercial, socio-economic and cultural dialogues.  One of the primary focuses is defining the Chinese consumer and not just relying on the assumptions made by Western marketers. China’s gold-collar segment (jinling) that consumes luxury goods primarily makes $43,600 a year or more, stated in 2006. In China’s population of 1.34 billion, only about one million people fall in this segment. Western celebrity CEOs predicted this market was set to peak in 2010, but consumers are mostly predicted to buy premium goods abroad due to luxury taxes in China (2005). Many of these consumers are aspirers, who aspire to own specific brands but do not have the resources to do so. Even with the increase of housing expenses (about 22.6% of household expenditures in 2006) and education tuitions, the luxury market is becoming more popular with the upper-middle class in the Yangtze River Delta due to Internet and mobile phones. Prada chief executive Patrizio Bertelli believes that China will surpass America in the “luxury game” by 2020.         Something I found especially interesting was how the “middle-class lifestyle goods” in China were divided into four categories: necessity electric appliances (color TVs, refrigerators, washing machines), medium-level consumer goods (telephone, mobile phone, CD player, microwave, air conditioner), luxury goods (computer, camcorder, piano, motorcycle), and the last category is the ownership of an automobile (191). Another thing increasingly popular in China is “keeping up with the Joneses” and the idea that you are what you consume (180). Consumption is built on a tiered logic; for those situated lower on the hierarchy, there is no faster way of acquiring social prestige than copying the lifestyle of those higher up. This usually involves the ownership of brands like Louis Vuitton, Prada, Fendi, and BMW.         I feel like this book, published in 2008, is already out of date after experts predicted the peak of the luxury market consumers in 2010. I will use this book’s segmentation of these markets to further research the advancements in the past four years. Sarah Ramsey spoke a lot of the “keeping up with the Joneses” attitude in Shanghai in her interview, and I believe the consumption of luxury goods has seeped into the homes of the upper-middle class (white-collars) in Shanghai – part of the Yangtze River Delta. This is a much larger market for luxury goods than just the gold-collars.         Ryan:  Advertising and Media in China.  These are the main points that I want to hit in this paper.  I would like to find out how important brands are to China due to the fact that people in America cannot stand to have non brand products.  We are accustomed to thinking that a brand name will increase the quality of a product, but it usually means the opposite.  The perfect example is Apple.  I will not go on my rant here, thats for the paper.