Differing Trends in the Chinese Consumer Market

When I was last in China I got sick and was in the hospital for one week. This actually gave me the opportunity to learn more about China's Consumer Market than I ever have, through the universally understood and valued channel for watching commercials on TV. Here's some fun differing trends from the US consumer market that I noted for my amusement and hopefully your use.

• In beauty standards, chinese women are trying to get whiter while the US women try to get darker. This trend absolutely fascinated me as commercial after commercial showed different products that made your skin white. They didn't address skin health, or cleaning, but very straight forwardly just whiter. By comparison the US skin commercials are like a science course. This is one of the largest personal beauty product markets in China. My chinese beauty magazines had advertisements of different skin whitening products back to back and all the US advertising featured the whitest skin people and whitest pictures I've ever seen.
• Dieting is an even bigger industry in China. You may laugh at this if you've never seen a chinese person over size 6, but you have to understand that in China they don't even make cloths for size 8 and 100lbs is a nice good weight to have for a woman. Every single female is dieting in China, but they use the most bizarre methods, by my definition anyways. There's tapeworms in the stomach, pulling out teeth so the face is slimmer, special chinese medicine scrubs specifically prescriptioned for each body area to reduce fat, and even binding stockings makes your leg the thinner shape. The commercials are quite hilarious and disturbing at the same time. There's really no regulations on truth in advertising as can be easily seen from the scores of law suits against advertised diet products. There was one patch that you stuck on the bottom of foot while you walked around that's supposed to suck the fat out through the bottom of your feet. Never thought I'd say this, but please take those infomercials about weight-loss/fitness products and export them straight to China. Anything we have is better than the stuff they're making themselves.
• On the other side of dieting, wellness products are the next biggest market. There's basically two groups of wellness products in China. One, old chinese medicine formulas that have been handed down for thousands of years and two, brand new products from Europe, preferably Paris. I think this is a symptom of the one-child policy. On one hand, your number of old people greatly outnumbers the adults that have to support them. So wellness products for old age is in great demand, cause health care will be cripplingly expensive. On the other hand, all the children are the only's, meaning the only branch on the family tree and the hope for the future for 3 generations of grandparents and parents. That's where all the wellness products for kids and babies come in. With all the competition these kids will have to deal with on sheer population and each family only getting one shot at Harvard/Beijing University/Baidu executive, I'd be curious to see the market potential comparison between the kid wellness products and the old people wellness products.
• China has sucky wine and beer. This one's more from personal experience than anything. There's definitely a gap in the market, for almost any wine and beer. I'm from washington state with our own hundred's of wineries and micro-breweries so I may be a bit biased but I don't think a country can become developed without a more mature national palate for alcoholic beverages. Maybe merlot and IPA is not the answer for China, but somebody needs to help these 1 billion plus people out. They're drinking red wine in a pitcher with ice with sprite or coca cola!! Can we at least get them to margaritas or something? !
• Chinese people are tourists at heart. For those of you who think they only do this at the statue of liberty and the golden gate bridge is in for a surprise. The travel/tourism industry is the most active in that country. Not only because of all the foreign visitors now, but the citizens themselves. Any professional conference/meeting of any kind, involves a sightseeing trip somewhere. And this is not simply comdex at Las Vegas with a free poker chip in your registration envelop. This is trains of airconditioned buses to see the hoover dam, the grand canyon, to take pictures in front New York New York's Statue of Liberty and buying at least 3 souvenirs per person. Why does this happen I have no idea. I only know that when my husband travelled to china for the first time this year and requested to do what the locals did and not see the touristy destinations, we had no idea what to do with him.
• Foot massage parlors are the businessmen retreat. And no, this is not like the "massage parlors" here. It is extremely popular, and huge franchise, and simply rows and rows of people sitting in a chair getting their foot washed and massaged. A COO I know takes every visiting businessman there and the women are there together with the men and it's the best business bonding activity. Don't ask me why, but in my mind it doesn't get much more chinese than this. One chain of foot massage parlors has 10,000 employees in all of China, this doesn't even count the countless non-franchise ones. And I'll just end with mention of one interesting anomoly, blind foot massage. Yeap, the masseuse are blind, and these type of foot massage parlors are very popular with quite numerous. Don't ask me why. I didn't have a chance to go to one.

So that's some fun different consumer market trends for ya. There's always more, but we'll just start with these.