How to make a Western brand successful in China: should it rely on its Western image or adapt to its products' market? (PDF)

Master's Thesis from the year 2013 in the subject Communications - Public Relations, Advertising, Marketing, Social Media, Tongji University, language: English, abstract: The Chinese market has become very attractive for Western companies. It is a huge consumption market with more than 1, 3 billion inhabitants and it is at the same time a goods' provider with a very low labor cost. Western companies can nowadays be very successful in China because the population knew lately huge changes. Chinese people purchasing power is rising and they can afford goods that they could not reach before because it was too expensive or not available. The development of a rich elite and a large middle class has been accompanied by a rising strong taste for Western image, particularly in the luxury field.
But the Chinese market is still quite different than Western ones. The Chinese culture is totally divergent than in the West and the economy doesn't work the same way and that impact on the Chinese consumers' profile. Besides, there are huge inequalities in China since the whole country doesn't evolve in a homogeneous way.
To be successful on this market for a Western brand, it is necessary to develop a marketing strategy adapted to the Chinese consumers' expectations according to the products' activity segments.
In the present thesis, we study which marketing strategy a Western brand should follow to be successful on the Chinese market according to its activity segment. Indeed, we assume that a mass market brand should rather follow a Chinese consumer's adapted strategy and that a luxury brand should keep the same Western strategy in China.