CDE Reflective Journal Entry 2

Management Consultant Situation Presentation.

Hello. For the last two weeks we are doing our Management consultant situation on Chinese technology companies. The situation that a company is having good sales in China, but they would want to advance to the US market, what should we, as a consultation team, to come up with ideas to help them land themselves into the US.

If you want to achieve good sales, there's one undeniable fact about it- we must appeal to the US customers so that we can do well in the US.

However, how can our products appeal to the US customers? There comes the relation with the US cultures. How can we make changes to our company management to suit the US market? That is one good question. Well, we cannot deny that fact that in the US, there is some sort of inherent stereotypes against Chinese products or services. On the streets of America, Chinese products are not as common as the local brands like the US. So what should we do to revert the situation? 

I find the experience of being in a management consultant situation a very enriching one. Maybe I'm inexperienced in this field. But I think that in order to achieve good sales in the United States, we must get rid of the cultural implications of the products that we want to sell in the US.

Let us take an example of Lenovo, which is a pretty successful computer technology brand around the world. When Lenovo was making its way into the overseas market, the management board was changed, with the introduction of foreign personnel to manage the company, also the official language of Lenovo was changed into English instead of Chinese.  For one simple reason, people from other countries are not that willing to accept  Chinese culture into a piece of technology that they will use everyday.

So that the management consultant situation that Mingchuan(23), Sherwin(21), Yikun(24) and I are doing is Meizu. Why do we choose Meizu? Well, it is a hardware company. Like Lenovo, in order to success in the United States, we must eradicate the cultural implications, to make it acceptable into the United States market. As a hardware company, it will be most easy to remove the cultural implications. We can just delete the preinstalled apps in Meizu like Sina Weibo( China's Tweeter) and Wechat(China's whatsapp) and problem solved. With the addition of apps like Facebook and instagram installed, Meizu phones can make its way into the US market.

However, we want to make the products successful. To achieve good sales in the US, we must work with local telcos such as Verizon and AT&T. Because Meizu has a weak support base outside Mainland China, it is necessary to work with these telcos so that we can better integrate into the United States Market.Also, changes to the management board of the company need to be made. Americans must be employed, as to create new ideas for Meizu, the ideas that suits the needs or popular among the US people. American values is also required to be introduced into Meizu's US base. One example is to introduce the 20% rule to the Meizu work space in order to spark creativity. Also, Meizu also needs to update their devices frequently in order to keep up with the pace of evolution of technology in the US.

Also, we agree that Meizu should target a wide range of people, not just by the low price of its gadgets, but rather how can we re imagine the mobile operating system. I believe that phone makers like Samsung will not achieve long term success, simply because its phone run the Android operating system. I can't be sure of it, but I think that, in order to make way into the US market, we must have something special to impress them. Chinese software makers are very keen onto designs nowadays,
for example, the Xiaomi brand has launched its "moving desktop" which allowed anyone to create a theme for their phones to be customized, in any design, any types of animations they want. Also, I hope that Meizu can announce a tablet that emphasizes on drawings, for professional artists to use. Currently what we have is normal tablets with a beginner's application to drawing. But I hope to change that by introducing a tablet with multiple gestures and powerful applications installed, like the Adobe Illustrator. But the impression that illustrator gives us is that, it is too complicated and hard to use. Meizu can cooperate with Adobe to introduce a tablet-friendly version of Illustrator, which can help the artists to practice their art with ease.  I hope something like that will attract the attention of general American consumers.


OTHER GROUPS
When talking about other groups, they like to mention that they would want to retain the Chinese culture present in their technology companies when they go overseas. For example, the group doing Youku and Toudou(China's YouTube) stated that when Youku starts its business in the US, they must let the users in the US to upload their videos to Youku. So I want to ask them this question, what makes Youku different from Youtube? And why will the Americans favour Youku over youtube? Youtube has been a major part of their culture and always will be, but for youku, I'm pretty sure that many Internet users in the US didn't know about Youku at all? Right now, Youku has all the shows, TV dramas related to China, and those movies, including those Americans movies, can be streamed for free on Youku. In America, this is a complete infringement to copyright. It is due to the difference in culture, that I think Youku will not be widely accepted in United States, same for the Baidu search engine(China's Google).

Also, the group working on Lining(A sportswear brand) mentioned that they should follow the success story of the US brand Nike, to achieve its success in the US. I would like to ask them what can they do when Nike has dominated the world with its sportswear. Times have changed, Li Ning should not follow the success story of Nike, instead Li Ning should start its own path in the US market. Because Nike is a US brand itself, it is not applicable to the Li Ning context where Li Ning is actually based in China. While Li Ning is selling great in China, Li Ning should expand its market to nearby countries first, to achieve its globalized structure, maybe Lining can start a production line in Vietnam, assemble in China, then sale them in the US. It is a great way to reduce cost prices so that Lining can make its sportsware at low prices, which then can be more popular in the US.

In a nutshell, in order to achieve fast success in a foreign and (generally)high-class market like the United States, A China-based company must reduce of it's Chinese cultural implications, as it is not widely accepted in the US. But we must keep the products the same.In the beginning of the reflection, I have mentioned the Chinese culture must be eradicated. However, my friend convinced me that Not all Chinese values or ideas are 'bad' or not appealing to US people. For example XiaoMi (A Chinese Tech Company) has many different themes that the users can into. Many people actually like this idea. We should adapt their ideas and values and get rid of only some Chinese values. We should take in both the good things from China and US and combine them into a better vision. I am convinced by his point of view, and therefore I believed that   The company must localize in the US, and "convert" some traditions to the culture of the US. But we should not be just a replica of a US brand, we must start from zero, and develop an innovative and creative brand that is different from the rest, that is what stands our company out from the others.

I find this management consultant situation a very enriching one, I hope that we can learn CDE in a more enriching manner just like the management consultant situation. I know that we are not delivering a  professional piece of work, but at least we get to learn about the political situation which barred the Companies from reaching the US. Americans will also find it hard to buy devices from China technological companies.  I think personally, I have learnt a lot of the differences from different cultures. And with this Management consultant situation, I believe that we are really learning on Cultural differentiation Elective from the management situation as it involves two cultural changes, as the company leaves China, and enters the US.