It will be interesting to see if the buying behavior of the Chinese changes as the country becomes wealthier. For now the major difference I see between our two economies is that the Chinese consumers both value and manage their money more than we do in the USA.
Wednesday, December 1, 2010
What Chinese Consumers can Teach Us?
In this article, Rick Newman is interested in how quick and efficiently China recovered from the global recession. He uses McKinsey and Co's recent survey of 15,000 Chinese consumers to analyze the buying behavior of a typical consumer in China. This piece is interesting because it compares the current Chinese consumers to the American consumers in 1950's/60's; both somewhat naive and fueled by optimism. One of the reasons to the quick recovery is that Chinese consumers, no matter the income, are not interested in credit. Because the success of the economy is somewhat a new thing, the consumers could change as they begin to trust in the government more while the economy continues to grow. Another behavior that US could learn from is how carefully they budget their disposable income in China. They are careful to spend only within their means. The elaborate research Chinese consumers perform before making the final decision on a product is an interesting variable in their economy. If US acted this way I imagine the way our price system works would have to change.
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I believe that the recent recession and its impact might change this buying behavior of the Americans. People are now more aware of their incomes, interest rates and savings and thus will act in accordance.
ReplyDeleteYou can tell by the current buying behavior of consumers that this is already taking place even though one might argue that this is because people have just undergone harsh times.
The Chinese are very focused on their goal to achieve power through economic strength. The consumer habits of the Chinese are very different to those of the Americans. One of the reasons is because in the US, a large chunk of consumption is facilitated by borrowing. This trend has had to change as financial institutions crashed. If the Chinese are as financially conscious as the world thinks they are, they will learn from the mistakes of the US and pave their consumers' behavior in a different way.
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