Billions: Selling to the New Chinese Consumer [Hardcover]

Tom Doctoroff (Author), Martin Sorrell (Foreword)

Book Description

Publication Date: December 22, 2005

This book cracks the supposedly indecipherable code of marketing to the New Chinese Consumer--all 1.3 billion of them. It distills what Tom Doctoroff has learned over the past eleven years in Greater China with JWT, one of the region's largest advertising agencies.

Marketers of some of the world’s leading brands come to China with mistaken ideas of how to apply Western thinking to the marketplace. But the same rules do not apply in China. Doctoroff delves into the psyches of contemporary Chinese consumers to explain the importance of culture in shaping buying decisions. He provides tools to help readers harness the power of insight into consumers' fundamental motivations and reveals the pitfalls into which many multinational competitors often fall. Anyone who plans to do business in China shouldn't get on the plane without this book.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Narrower than the title suggests, this book covers only the branding of consumer items through print and television campaigns. There's no discussion of marketing, pricing, distribution or product design, nor media other than print and television, nor niche or wholesale sales. Doctoroff, who worked in China for 11 years with JWT, one of the region's largest advertising firms, believes that "quantitative research... is incapable of unearthing... an epiphany that elucidates buying behavior" and that "data are coldly empirical" while "insights... are alive." Most of his book, therefore, consists of "insights": qualitative impressions of mass campaigns, mostly by multinational companies selling consumer goods. Doctoroff's analysis of these ad campaigns focuses not on their immediate sales benefit but on their contribution to a valuable brand image. Along the way, he dispenses anecdotes and advice on such topics as how to choose a name that works well in China and how to deal with government censors. This unfocused approach reduces the book's value as a how-to manual, but it does make it easy to read. This is a painless way to pick up the benefit of the author's long experience, along with many stimulating facts. (Jan.)
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

From Booklist

Doctoroff relates that his book covers three broad areas. The first deals with the importance of culture in shaping buying decisions. Doctoroff examines the psyches of contemporary Chinese consumers and the core "drivers" of behavior and preference across key market segments. The second offers data on forging what he calls a relevant brand vision, on creating a product portfolio that maximizes brand extensibility (the range of categories that can coexist under the same trademark), and on anticipating the peculiarities of the Chinese media scene. In the third, he analyzes the pitfalls that often cause multinational brands and their local competitors to fail, many of them a function of cultural ignorance or rigidity. Doctoroff, the Greater China CEO for JWT (an advertising agency), posits that the 1.3 billion Chinese consumers are the most striving, ambitious people on the planet and "that counts for a lot." George Cohen
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 240 pages
• Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan (December 22, 2005)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1403971692
• ISBN-13: 978-1403971692
• Product Dimensions: 9.2 x 6.1 x 1.2 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.9 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (13 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,047,287 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

7 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars The book understands us, January 7, 2006

By 

zhangmin "zhangmin" (Beijing, PRC) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Billions: Selling to the New Chinese Consumer (Hardcover)

I am a local Chinese living in Beijing and work in a Korean company that manufacturers and markets consumer electronics. Most foreigners don't understand us and think they are better than Chinese. That causes big mistakes! Remember the time Nike ads got banned??? :-) But the author really knows Chinese people (its scary) and even seems as to admire us. This book is very perceptive it's hard to believe a loawai wrote it.

5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars The New Frontier, January 12, 2006

By 

Millie Van Deusen (New York, NY) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Billions: Selling to the New Chinese Consumer (Hardcover)

The marketing universe described in Doctoroff's book seems both familiar to Americans (its size, scale and ambitiousness) and utterly foreign. Its Confucian view of the world is brought home with a series of insights that can be used to build a strong brand. One that I particularly liked described how American mothers want their babies to grow bigger, faster, taller. In a bit of marketing mumbo jumbo, Doctoroff calls this "transformational benefits." Chinese mothers, on the other hand, are more concerned about the dangers of the world and therefore seem immunity and other "protective" benefits. This is just one example and there are loads more.

Doctoroff's analyses of many "sub" markets -- youth, men, women -- are pretty fascinating and eye opening. Almost like a parallel universe. The middle section is probably the least accessible to non-marketing types but the rest of the book is surprisingly accessible and easy to understand.

A really good -- even fun -- read.

5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Fantastic Insights, January 7, 2006

By 

Allan Druston (Los Angeles, CA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Billions: Selling to the New Chinese Consumer (Hardcover)

Standing in the bookstore, the jacket of this book caught my eye, so I decided to thumb through it and then buy it. I have an interest in China, largely because I see the country as a very important part of all of our futures. Still, I know very little about China. So, I wondered whether "Billions" would be accessible to me. Boy, was it! To my great surprise, a book on consumer marketing opened my eyes to, and brought to life, an entire culture that, as Mr. Doctoroff describes it, is both utterly foreign and worthy of great respect. The book is sharply written. It is also quite lively. Looking through the prism of advertising, one through which all readers can gaze (given that we are exposed the medium on a daily basis), China comes alive. We see how its history, religion, values and psychology are all profoundly different than our own. The thing that comes across most clearly is that, while Chinese want to be modern and successful, they definitely don't want to be western. They value their own rich culture too much. Certainly, advertisers hawking their wares in China will be at a loss if they forget this lesson (or ignore this book). But, so too will politicians, diplomats and anyone else who endeavors to interact with or understand the Chinese. In writing this book, Mr. Doctoroff has provided truly a valuable service. Of course, he gives us a basic but far reaching tutorial on advertising, one that unlocks many of the profession's secrets. (The lessons Mr. Doctoroff has learned from his lengthy tenure as an advertising executive in China literally spew forth from the book's pages, albeit in a way that is quite digestable.) But in treating China as the next vital frontier, in allowing us to understand the mysteries of this distant but omnipresent land, Mr. Doctoroff allows us to better grapple with the challenges and opportunities ahead. I loved this book.