---
title: "Deep Dive: Why Can't Chinese-Style Marketing Go Global?"
description: "This article argues that Chinese-style marketing cannot go global due to several misconceptions, including a misunderstanding of marketing as mere promotion, an overemphasis on tactics over strategy, a neglect of management in favor of operations, a one-size-fits-all approach regardless of company size or stage, and treating customers as 'gods' rather than equal partners."
author: "高建华"
publisher: "New Distribution"
email: "zhaobo258@gmail.com"
telephone: "+8615854817671"
published: "2017-02-21"
language: "en"
canonical: "https://xinjignxiao.com/en/articles/deep-dive-why-can-t-chinese-style-marketing-go-global-210b090a/"
markdown: "https://xinjignxiao.com/en/articles/deep-dive-why-can-t-chinese-style-marketing-go-global-210b090a.md"
original_source: "https://mp.weixin.qq.com/s/Z5xzBFFHoReYJ7BSjyAZow"
translation: "https://xinjignxiao.com/zh/articles/%E6%B7%B1%E5%BA%A6-%E4%B8%BA%E4%BB%80%E4%B9%88%E4%B8%AD%E5%9B%BD%E5%BC%8F%E8%90%A5%E9%94%80%E6%97%A0%E6%B3%95%E8%B5%B0%E5%90%91%E4%B8%96%E7%95%8C-210b090a.md"
attribution: "New Distribution — https://xinjignxiao.com/en/articles/deep-dive-why-can-t-chinese-style-marketing-go-global-210b090a/"
usage_policy: "https://xinjignxiao.com/ai-policy.txt"
---

# Deep Dive: Why Can't Chinese-Style Marketing Go Global?

> This article argues that Chinese-style marketing cannot go global due to several misconceptions, including a misunderstanding of marketing as mere promotion, an overemphasis on tactics over strategy, a neglect of management in favor of operations, a one-size-fits-all approach regardless of company size or stage, and treating customers as 'gods' rather than equal partners.

**Click the image for details**
**Introduction: Overview of Market Economy and Marketing:**
Why can't Chinese-style marketing go global?
1: The first misconception is a misunderstanding of marketing, which remains at the 'primary stage' of marketing, only meeting the needs of the mass consumption era, without perceiving the coming of the era of abundance.
2: The second misconception is emphasizing tactics over strategy, with everyone focusing on 'tricks' and 'techniques' while neglecting the control of marketing strategy.
3: The third misconception is that operations are ahead of management, with many businesses thriving but unhealthy.
4: The fourth misconception is treating customers as 'gods' to serve, because products lack differentiated value, leading to a one-sided 'accommodating customers' and 'begging customers', violating the basic principle of equal exchange of interests.
Many planners are singing praises for Chinese-style marketing, believing that the Chinese market has its unique aspects and must be conquered with Chinese-style marketing. This understanding seems correct on the surface, but there are several serious misconceptions:
1
**First, the first misconception of Chinese-style marketing is a deviation in understanding marketing. Let's start with the popular slogan 'Marketing wins, channels reign' in the business world.** Because once the guiding ideology is clear, other things will be solved. First, this statement is illogical because channels are part of marketing, not a concept parallel to marketing (like fruit and apples). Since many people mistakenly think marketing is market promotion, and market promotion is advertising, they put marketing and channels in parallel. Of course, if you equate marketing with market promotion, then putting these two phrases together is logical (like apples and oranges). Even if you equate marketing with market promotion, the concept of 'Marketing wins, channels reign' has its limitations. This slogan only applies to large enterprises in the mainstream market (i.e., mass market). For small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) in sub-mainstream and non-mainstream markets (niche markets), following this principle would lead to a dead end, because SMEs absolutely cannot rely on advertising and channels to win.
So what is marketing? Since developed countries entered the era of abundance more than 30 years ago, society has entered the era of niche consumption. **In this era, modern marketing work always revolves around four key points: market segmentation is the premise, product innovation is the core, strategic design is the main line, and tactical monitoring is the key.** Why is that?
**First, in the era of niche consumption, without market segmentation, companies do not know which group of people to serve, and products cannot be positioned.** As a result, companies can only follow what is selling well in the market, returning to the old path of mass consumption. Once the market prospects for a certain type of product are not good, the sales of all participating companies decline, so this model can only create opportunistic success.
**Second, if a company's products have no innovation and rely on imitation, what value can it bring to customers?** Basically no value, it just gives consumers one more choice (sometimes too many choices are a burden or confusion). These companies actually make no contribution to customers, and the products they provide can even be called valueless products (of course, except in the shortage economy era before the mass consumption era). It can be said that the vast majority of Chinese companies never do 'product definition' when developing new products, and marketing becomes an accessory to the 'sales' link, with the marketing department becoming a logistics unit that 'runs errands' for the sales department.
**Third, strategic design is the main line of marketing work and serves to achieve the overall goals of the enterprise.** If a company does not have a clear marketing strategy, departments may act independently, marketing work loses direction, and the company's goals remain at the stage of 'ideas' or 'dreams', never being realized. Therefore, the marketing department must undertake the task of corporate strategic design, lead the design of corporate strategy centered on marketing strategy, and make rational judgments through extensive market research data, detailed competitive analysis, and in-depth customer interviews, laying the foundation for corporate strategy design, thereby avoiding decision-makers making decisions by intuition. Only when this level is achieved can the core position and strategic value of the marketing department in the enterprise be reflected.
**Finally, tactical monitoring is key.** No matter how good the strategy, it is meaningless if it cannot be 'landed'. To achieve the company's strategies, it is necessary to break down the strategy layer by layer into many operable 'actions'. The so-called 'actions' must be sentences with verbs, such as 'submit xx', 'check xx', 'complete xx', etc. In addition, each 'action' must have a completion time, responsible person, evaluation criteria, and evaluator. These issues seem simple, but in many companies' written materials, we often find tactics without verbs, more like 'slogans', but unclear how to start or who is responsible, and the result is naturally that they are left unresolved.
It is not difficult to find that Chinese-style marketing is still at the 'primary stage' of marketing, only meeting the needs of the mass consumption era, without perceiving the coming of the era of abundance. **Because most Chinese companies do not do market segmentation (some even do not understand the concept), and few companies include product innovation in the scope of marketing, and strategic design is not the main work of the marketing department. What we can see of marketing work is actually one aspect: tactical execution (product promotion).** This primary marketing model leads to an inevitable result: product homogenization is extremely serious in the Chinese market, with almost no differentiated positioning among brands, and everyone can only rely on advertising and channels to win competition. Of course, in the mass consumption era dominated by consumers who are just seeking basic needs, this problem is not prominent, but with the arrival of the niche consumption era dominated by the middle class, problems begin to emerge because everyone uses the same tricks, and the only way to win is to compete in 'physical strength', that is, to see who can persist to the end.
2
**The second misconception of Chinese-style marketing is emphasizing tactics over strategy, with everyone focusing on 'tricks' and 'techniques' while neglecting the control of marketing strategy.** The lack of strategy is a fundamental problem that many successful Chinese companies commonly have (but are not aware of).
It is said that when Jack Welch of General Electric came to China to give a speech, the Chinese entrepreneurs in the audience were somewhat disappointed, feeling they had not obtained the true essence and there was nothing new. They said to Jack Welch: 'The principles you mentioned are just common sense we already know!' Jack Welch replied: 'You are right, you all know these principles, but only I have implemented them.'
**It can be said that strategy discusses the development issues of the next 3-5 years, not the survival issues of this year and next year;** it is about finding differentiation from the perspective of the complete product, not simply producing homogeneous products; it emphasizes brand characteristics and personality, not product functions and price; it seeks the source of innovation through low-key (quiet) 'underground work', not through high-profile (showy) 'stage performances' to promote products. After the corporate strategy is clear, it takes a long time to conduct market research, new product definition, new product development, etc., so the product development roadmap should consider the overall plan for the next 2-3 years. I think it is reasonable for multinational companies to emphasize execution after strategic design, but for Chinese companies that basically have no strategy, it is still too early to talk about 'execution', because the primary issue restricting the development of domestic enterprises is strategic design, but this strategy is not that strategy. Many people have a deviation in understanding strategy, mistaking ideas and pursuits for strategy, so they mistakenly think their company has a strategy.
3
**The third misconception of Chinese-style marketing is that operations are ahead of management, with many businesses thriving but unhealthy.** Taking the relatively excellent large enterprises in China as an example, their management level is at least 20 years behind multinational companies. Unfortunately, everyone either turns a blind eye to this or does not think so, with arrogance replacing confidence. As a result, business owners are on tenterhooks all day, worried about when problems will arise.
So what are 'operations' and 'management'? What is the relationship between them? Generally speaking, operations focus on how to build the business, that is, through what business model to serve which markets and customers, and how to stand out in competition. Management focuses on how to be more effective, stable, and sustainable in the process of doing business, so management involves all aspects of enterprise operations, such as cost control management, product innovation management, human resource management, corporate strategic management, etc. **To make an analogy, the quality of operations is like whether a person is rich, and the quality of management is like whether a person is healthy. How many people are willing to sacrifice health, or even life, for money?** Conversely, few people think that being healthy is enough; life without money is not good either, so 'money' and 'health' are both indispensable. We just need to replace 'person' with 'enterprise' to understand, the principle is the same. **If operations are done well, the enterprise can be very rich (performance goes up); if management is done well, the enterprise can be very healthy. So 'operations' and 'management' complement each other, and we cannot focus on only one aspect; they must advance simultaneously.**
However, it is understandable for SMEs in the survival period to focus on operations (business), and it may even be the best choice, because any enterprise must first pass the survival test. Only when the survival problem is solved and the enterprise no longer worries about whether it can keep its job, can it climb the 'pyramid' and pursue higher levels of success. If the survival problem is solved, where should the focus be next? If it continues to focus on operations, the enterprise's performance may continue to rise, and the growth rate may be faster, but problems will accumulate. Because as the enterprise scale expands and personnel increase, the complexity and difficulty of management will multiply. If SMEs in the growth period still put all their energy into operations without considering the construction of other supporting management systems, or do not realize the importance of management, or do not understand the interactive relationship between operations and management, they may face many problems caused by lagging management, such as loss of excellent talent, sales corruption, procurement corruption, overstaffing, inter-departmental buck-passing, and operational loss of control (dropping the chain). Therefore, for enterprises above medium scale (hundreds of millions in revenue), **while focusing on operations (business), enterprises should gradually free up hands to strengthen the construction of management systems, even at the expense of some development speed.** As the saying goes: haste makes waste! If management problems are not solved well, it is only a matter of time before the enterprise has major problems.
4
**The fourth misconception of Chinese-style marketing is the overly single marketing model, where regardless of company size or development stage, almost everyone operates with the same or similar marketing model.** A very common phenomenon is that the marketing model of SMEs is no different from that of large enterprises, always following large enterprises, doing whatever is selling well in the market. The vast majority of SMEs have not yet moved from copying to imitation, and few have moved from imitation to innovation. Many SMEs still remain in the era of mass consumption.
**For the vast majority of SMEs, it is necessary to understand the characteristics of the niche era one step earlier than large enterprises and upgrade marketing early.** Once SMEs shift their focus from the mass market to the niche market and understand the characteristics of the era of abundance, they can easily find their own 'blue ocean', avoid direct conflict with large enterprises, and thus calmly serve a smaller niche group, establish their own base, and strive to become the leader in a small market.
**We divide the development of enterprises into three stages: survival, growth, and maturity. In the survival stage, the focus of marketing work is to survive.** At this time, marketing work is simple, just simple sales work and customer relations, because it is a small enterprise, without market foundation or successful customers, it is difficult to win the trust of new customers, so it relies on salespeople to persuade customers, even using various relationships to improve credibility.
**Once the enterprise has a certain amount of business, it should quickly enter the stabilization stage. The focus of marketing work at this stage is to explore the business model, solidify business ideas and methods, and summarize successful experiences.** For example, who are the target customers, why do they need a certain product or service, in what aspects is the enterprise superior to competitors, which sales methods are feasible, etc., making it a replicable system, that is, allowing more salespeople to be trained by 'predecessors' and work according to the standardized models, tools, and processes summarized by the marketing department, thus achieving twice the result with half the effort.
**In the growth stage, the enterprise has begun to take shape, and the business model and profit model have been solidified after a period of running-in. But to make the enterprise bigger and stronger, it is necessary to surpass oneself, even deny one's past, and achieve the transformation from accidental success to inevitable success.** At this time, the focus of marketing work is strategic planning. Through systematic and scientific strategic planning, clarify the enterprise's management ideas, sort out the strategy for the next 3-5 years, clarify what to do first, what to do later, and the logical relationships between them. With a clear strategic plan, everyone knows in which direction to exert effort, what the enterprise can become in a few years, and what role their department plays in the corporate strategy. This way, coordination between departments will be more tacit, everyone knows what their future might be, thereby stimulating everyone's enthusiasm and sense of ownership, and making every employee strive for their own future.
**After entering the maturity stage, the disease of large enterprises begins to appear:** enterprise efficiency declines, costs rise, buck-passing and shirking become increasingly serious, coordination between departments consumes a lot of energy, and the enterprise gradually becomes an 'inward-looking' enterprise, increasingly insensitive to external market changes, increasingly ignoring customer needs, and becoming more interested in internal politics. Therefore, the phenomenon of 'not seeking merit but avoiding fault' begins to appear. **At this stage, the focus of marketing work is to activate the enterprise's innovative spirit, make everyone unite externally, and refocus energy on the market and customers, and through various systems, processes, and supervision and inspection to coordinate the cooperation between departments, through knowledge management to improve the coordination ability of various product lines, business divisions, and regions, let everyone share successful experiences, help each other, form a corporate culture of 'helping others is helping oneself', thereby improving the entire enterprise's organizational intelligence and reducing repetitive work.**
5
**The fifth misconception of Chinese-style marketing is treating customers as 'gods' to serve, because products lack differentiated value, leading to a one-sided 'accommodating customers' and 'begging customers', violating the basic principle of equal exchange of interests.** It can be said that treating customers as 'gods' to serve actually has two problems: one is wrong concept, and the other is impossible to operate. First, the concept issue. As we mentioned earlier, in a market economy environment, enterprises and users are equal partners, exchanging interests equally, and the purpose of marketing is to create value for customers, not to sell products to customers. As long as your product has unique value and can solve users' problems, there is no need to 'beg' customers; the status of both parties is equal. But if your product has no unique value, or you cannot clearly explain the difference from similar products, you have to 'beg' customers, praying for their 'charity', forming an unequal transaction relationship. We say that instead of putting effort into customer relations (dining, drinking, and playing), it is better to put effort into product innovation, which is the foundation of marketing.
If enterprises really believe that 'users are gods', then they should give all products or services to the 'gods' for free, because no one can trade with 'gods', let alone bargain with 'gods'. To be precise, users are partners. If enterprises want to go further, at most they can treat users as 'lovers'. As long as enterprises genuinely think for customers, try to understand the unspoken needs of 'lovers', and create real value for customers, customers will definitely trust you, like you, and become loyal partners of the enterprise.
Gao Jianhua, former Assistant President and Chief Knowledge Officer (CKO) of China Hewlett-Packard; former China Market Director of Apple Computer; currently Chief Consultant of Beijing Yangweizhongyong Management Consulting Co., Ltd.
**Source: Gao Jianhua's Winning at Top-Level Design (ID: gjh16880)**
-END-


---

## Copyright and AI use

This article is sourced from New Distribution. Search, quotation, summarization, and model training are permitted, but every use must credit New Distribution and retain the canonical source URL.

Contact: zhaobo258@gmail.com · +86 158 5481 7671