The mere fact that Wal-Mart has 430 stores in China might make this look like a success story. However, the reality is that for the longest time, China has presented significant challenges to the world’s largest retailer. Since the opening of its first store in Shenzhen in 1996, Wal-Mart struggled to gain a foothold in […]
This month at an event in Shijiazhuang, Hebei Province, China, 23 Samsung executives kneeled on stage in front of a room full of Chinese distributors. They had the best intentions of apologizing to their trusted Chinese partners for the recent Galaxy Note 7 disaster. However, immediately after the event the Chinese social media space blew up. It […]
In 2007, just before the global financial crisis hit, Campbell Soup Company, the world’s largest producer of ready-made soups, was getting all jazzed up about Russia. Market research had shown that Russians are huge consumers of soup. More than 200 servings of soup per person per year added up to more than 32 billion (yes, […]
Having just returned from a trip in China, where shots of “bai jiu” (literal translation “white wine/alcohol”) were forced down my throat in great volume over lunch (mind that I usually don’t drink alcohol!), I started to dig into a stack of articles I had saved for later reading.
Western multinationals have dominated the global economy for the longest time, but the past decade has brought some change. So-called emerging market multinationals have stepped onto the global scene. Except for a few notable exceptions, they have still gone unnoticed in core Western markets, but have had considerable success and visibility in other emerging markets. […]
Disney, or Di-Si-Ni as it is called in Chinese, might be up for another Disneyland Paris experience. At least, that is what Mr. Jianlin Wang seems to think. Last Sunday, Mr. Wang, who also happens to be China’s wealthiest businessman, gave an hour-long interview on CCTV, China’s state television. Criticizing Disney’s outdated intellectual property, the […]
In a recent article, Fortune magazine questions Uber’s approach to global markets. Apparently, Uber has recently announced that it is loosing more than $ 1 billion in China annually, which is not a small sum to loose even for a unicorn valued more than $60 billion. One could easily attribute the losses to the fact […]
American fast food holding company Yum Brands announced that it would restructure its China business. Normally, there’s nothing wrong with finding a better approach to deal with the local market environment (quite to the contrary, actually), but this case seems to be different. Yum’s major brands KFC and Pizza Hut have been struggling in the […]
Whad’ya know? Wal-Mart is not only the company that had failed internationally before – readers of this blog know about the retail giant’s epic blunders in Germany or South Korea – it is also a company that seems to be able to learn from experience after all. Wal-Mart had long eyed the Indian market as […]
Most of my inspiration for specific blog topics comes from current news items. And often, I discover those when traveling on long haul flights– one of the few times when my addiction to all things in print and some quiet downtime without interruptions intersect perfectly. June 17 was such an occasion. Two different papers ran […]
KFC has been in China for almost 30 years. The first of Yum Brands’ restaurants to move into China has reported sharp profit and revenue declines for their first quarter China business recently. Some media outlets such as the WSJ argue that, with competition increasing, the novelty character of brands such as KFC simply seems […]
