DiligenceChina

The owner of the café has just come over with my diet coke. I restrain myself from complaining about the music – it’s just a touch too loud, but that’s one of the crosses we expats have to bear in Shanghai these days. Standards are rising steadily, but expectations are moving into warp speed.

It’s hard to know who is pickier lately. While the demands of expats are moving rapidly into line with international standards, the expectations of MWMs (Mainlanders With Money) are shooting up even faster.

Images of monied Chinese elites falling all over themselves in a rush to fork over big piles of cash for name-brand luxury items always played better overseas. Marketers in China told tales of woe – either there was no demand at all or their target customers had the resources to shop in HK (or Paris). The true holy grail of the China market has always been the middle class, and over the last few years the number of super-consumers in urban areas hasn’t disappointed. Not only big commercial centers like Shanghai and Shenzhen are getting broadly wealthier, but every township, village and settlement on the coast seems to be booming at the top half of the demographic.

International businesses looking to slip into the China party now had better adjust to a new breed of picky, hypercritical customer: middle class Chinese. These folks have been on the margin of Chinese society for a long time, but now they are moving to the forefront and having their say. Rights, freedom and representation? Nah. No thanks. Selection, service and value? That’s more like it.

There was a time when all an importer had to do was localize the brand image, get a good Chinese name and sell his soul for a distribution deal. Now things are a bit less simple. Chinese consumers will slice and dice your product or service for seemingly simple insignificant reasons – or for none at all. Middle class Chinese consumers are as fickle and irrational as middle class buyers in the US or Europe. Zao gao!