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CHINESE RETAIL 2010!

TRENDS YOUTH

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Changing Priorities In 2008, we did a survey to uncover the important factors youth considered when buying in a store for Women’s Wear Daily and updated the results for Advertising Age China this year. We found that youth expected more – and were willing to do less than before.

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Welcome to the retail round-up, our top 10 picks of new retail changes affecting youth this year.

Young people in China are being bombarded with new ways to shop, new things to buy and new ways to buy them. !

TOP 10:2010 1.Socializing Shopping Online 2.Imagination Station 3.Everyday Luxury 4.Chinese Brands Switch On 5.Buy Now! 6.In-Store Advantage 7.Wallet Free Lifestyle 8.China-Vision 9.Touch-and-Feel Retail 10.Offline is On

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trend #1: Socializing Shopping Online

Glamour-sales.com allows users to see the ages and genders of other shoppers

Chinese youth are expert online shoppers and they value others’ opinions. New sites marry the two concepts.

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B2B site Holaba is also B2C allowing users to compare product and brand recommendations. Mega-SNS Kaixin also introduced functionality allowing users to vote on styles, looks and brands this year.

Glamour-Sales allows shoppers to see ages and genders of people who have purchased specific products. The site, focusing on deep discounts to up-market branded products, incents its audience to act quickly by taking advantage of flash buy promotions and frequently rotating its product line-up.

“What do others think?”

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Luxury Kids

trend #2: Imagination Station As we saw the focus of Chinese childhoods shifting to more fun times ahead, 2010 offered some great new environments for kids to flex their imagination. Yes, many of these trends had older international cousins but this was their first incarnation in the mainland.

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Parents now have the option of taking their tots to a kids-only hair salon, offering high class service to the underage crowd. One such salon is Zusso Kids at Isetan Meilongzhen Plaza, Shanghai. Exclusively for kids, mini BMW and Mercedes-Benz cars are transformed into playful barber chairs. Cartoons, such as Pleasant Goat, Teletubbies baby, Doraemon and SpongeBob, play on individual TVs – or clients can bring in their own DVDs. When the stylist completes the cut, the pint-sized customer would be rewarded with a bottle of Yakult (a popular Japanese yogurt drink). Check out our former post here.

Ai Time in Nanjing is 5 floors of fun, Packard Golf World hits 4-13 year olds

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simple luxury- china goes bridge

trend #3: Everyday Luxury Luxury in China is being redefined. It is no longer just about big brands with even bigger price tags. Youth are looking at ways to enjoy the simple things in life and brands are responding by creating products that are basic but couple quality and design.

Kit Kat offers new sophisticated flavors in 2010

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Moleskin took a new interest in the mainland this year. Their previous Chinese-language presence online was managed by users (Moleskiner.net) but in 2010, Moleskin.cn was launched and a new exhibit “Detour” hit Shanghai displaying Moleskin notebooks of famous creatives including author/race car driver Han Han, director Jia Zhangke and fashion designer Jenny Ji.

Hot on Moleskin’s heels is Jiu Kou Shan. This Shanghai brand’s 2010 series of notebooks titled “Life Documents” focus less on design and more on interests. Each book has a layout specific to how the user might want to record information related to that particular passion.

Drinks are another example of simple luxuries introduced in 2010. While Evian presented roller skating babies to Chinese audiences, Chinese brands picked up on the cue that drinks needed a “bridge” category. 2010 popped out a myriad of new options that are in between designer brands Evian and Vitamin Water and basic drinks. Power One, Bamboo Charcoal Water, Rosbacher and ALKAOUA offer design and functional benefits at a lower price point.

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trend #4: Chinese Brands Switch On

Chinese brands took confident steps this year – from savvy marketing at home to launching new concept brands to packing their bags and heading to new territories.

Li Ning headed to the US with a controversial TV campaign

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This year, iconic Chinese bicycle brand C-Forever was re-launched by a Chinese company! Apparently taking notes from the French and American resuscitation of iconic sports brands Huili and Feiyue, C-Forever redesigned classic bikes with popping colors and marketed them in an arty way.

Shanghai Vive, Jahwa’s luxury skin care brand opened shop (albeit a very hard to find one) in Shanghai.

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trend #5: Buy Now! To incite customers to make quick purchase decisions, retailers offered flash buy and group purchase options.

Group purchase + flash buy

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Sec-kill (aka flash buy) has been a hot topic this year, starting with KFC’s “sec-kill gate” where customers were denied the offer when demand overwhelmed supply creating a PR mess for KFC. Other brands including Taobao and McDonald’s have used the promotion successfully – careful to be able to honor the promotion and not anger customers.

Group purchases this year evolved to marry sec-kill and a group. Sellers will sell items only if a certain number of people respond to the offer.

Check out the McDonald's Sec-kill ad here.

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trend #6: In-Store Advantage Brick and mortar stores recognize the threat that online shopping poses in China – cheap, easy and from one’s home is hard to beat. In 2010, retailers made moves to attract shoppers back to stores.

Customers line up outside of Edison’s Shanghai store

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353 Plaza has opted to target young shoppers by. creating the 353 Club, which offers a small library of new magazines, a snack bar, activities like movie showings and gifts to its members.

On the other side of Shanghai, Joycity mall hopes to lure customers with a Ferris wheel

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trend #7: Wallet-Free Lifestyle Beyond cash or credit, 2010 brought some future-fantastic payment options to Chinese consumers.

Mobile Wallet system at Starbucks

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Mobile Wallet is a mobile-enabled application and payment service that enables its network of subscribers to make convenient payments to any designated affiliate (including Mobile Wallet’s appointed network of merchants) to accept MW points as mobile-based payment gateway.

Pay by Finger is another new way of paying for things without a wallet. To set up the system, representatives will come to homes or customers can go into a bank to sign up. Attached to users’ bank accounts, consumers simply make an electronic imprint of their fingers to buy items. To date, there have been 7 banks and over 250 shops using the pay-by-finger payment system.

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trend #8: China-Vision

Shanghai welcomed Hermès new concept brand Shang Xia specifically for the Chinese market

In marketing, products and brands, Chinese were targeted like never before.

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At a lower price point and with well-designed basic Chinese-inspired looks, Hermès Shang Xia (‘topsy-turvy’ in Mandarin) launched in Shanghai. The opening collection included fashion, shoes, home furnishings and dishes – banking on China’s many gifting occasions as well as consumers interested in quality and design at a bridge price point.

Levi’s introduced its own ‘made for Asia’ brand dENIZEN this summer. Apple entered Shanghai with Shanghai-inspired iPhone and iPad cases and employees shed traditional black shirts for red with the slogan “Designed in California, Made for China” in Mandarin which was also reflected in product labels. Gap launched with Western and Chinese models and 1969 jeans specifically for Chinese (although the sizes were not small enough for one staffer here) and Uniqlo presented a China-designed T-shirt series.

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trend #9: Touch-and-Feel Retail

Media Markt entered Shanghai with selection

The old-school retail rules in China told customers “don’t touch or try it if you don’t want to buy it.” However, new shops embraced experiential retail.

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Customer experience is becoming a vital part of the buying process. Besides consumer electronics retailers, China Southern Airlines allowed the public to experience first-class seats.

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trend #10: Offline is On This year, Taobao experimented with an offline shop but we also noticed some offline retailers bringing the Web into their brick and mortar shops.

Meters/Bonwe tag directs customers online

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In addition to Meters/Bonwe’s Web-friendly tagging system, Gap launched its site the same day as its shop in Hong Kong Plaza.

Traditionally not thought of as online purchases, grocery sites like Yi Hao Dian launched as did Sam’s Club.

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