Our college textbooks are filled
with the case studies of Ebay, Amazon, Yahoo, and Google. The few
translated internet books displayed in the bookstore are also full
of successful US websites stories about how user friendly their
product is and how advance their technologies are. However, we see
complete difference in reality: US websites are usually quite
inadequate in their China development. They are generally
unsuccessful. In the mean time, those successful Chinese
competitors have never followed any US-style routines. As the
matter of fact, they even often do business in the complete
opposite way.
Although China press world began to question the general failure of
these US websites, their analysis are shallow, vague, and
ineffective without touching the root cause. I have partied with
many marketing people from top US internet companies. Based on my
personal observation, they fail mainly because of the wrong concept
of doing things. They have good strategies, smartest staffs,
adequate cash, best product, and greatest technology. However,
without changing their business concept, there is hardly any chance
to create one single successful website in China.
- Prefer elite user's penny
despite general public's fortune v.s. sweep both white-collar's
wealth and everyone's pennies
It is a vital mistake from those US internet sharks which they
haven't realized yet. All the executives are from HK or TW; all
their employees are seating in the slick office building in
Shanghai. Their visions are limited. White-collars and top 500
corporations are primary target customers of their product design,
website style, and marketing promotions. They never consider
general public nor small businesses.
Their education, aptitudes and vision lead to the exclusion of the
grass root at heart. They often ignore those kids in the internet
cafes, nor those internet users from thousands of small towns (Note
these two groups already account for more than half of China's
internet population). Even the most generally beloved TV show,
"Super Girls"(the Chinese remake of American Idols), is deeply
contempt by them.
They announce their elegant by knowing only gmail and msn, but not
163 nor QQ. From the bottom of their hearts, they would rather go
out of business instead of making a no grade website meeting public
demand.
The hope of making a mainstream website will be doomed without
meeting public demand.
- Rather be forgotten instead of
be hated v.s. be hated but never be forgotten
The former one is the philosophy of US websites, while
the latter one is what Mr. Ma, Yun(CEO of Yahoo China) and
Mr. Zhou, Hongyi (ex CEO of 3721.com and Yahoo China)
believe.
US sites are afraid of negative press news. However, Chinese sites
only worry about not having negative news. They believe that the
best promotion is to let thousands of people "hate" you.
Getting 10 times higher salary than those Chinese rivals, the US
website staffs fear losing their jobs. They'd rather have no
performance instead of make mistakes. They take no risk and keep
low key. They are timid, polite, and well educated, but not ready
to fight. At the end, they are often bloody beaten by their
energetic straightforward competitors.
(To be continued)
