China’s e-commerce market generated $250 million in the third quarter of 2009, up 9.6% compared to the third quarter last year, and up 23.9% year-on-year, according to a recent iResearch report. The market share of Alibaba.com, which is China’s leading e-commerce site, grew by 1.1% during the six months between the first and third quarters, to a 59.2% share.

Source: The China Perspective

The results of our global survey on Marketing Strategies in the recession are just one of the areas covered in our latest newsletter, see link

In this, our summer 2009 issue, you can also read all about:

·          The recent trends we’ve been seeing in different industry sectors, and the changes we’ve noticed in clients’ market research and intelligence requirements.

·          All the latest B2B International news and offerings…and much more besides.

We hope you enjoy reading our latest newsletter. 

http://www.b2binternational.com/~webuser/newsletter/Newsletter.pdf

Here you can download our B2B 2009 summer newsletter. Click on the link to view the PDF version, or right-click and ’save as’ to download it.

In the final installment of Alaric Fairbanks’ Asia Research interview, the General Manager of B2B International in China discusses the company’s short-term goals and offers some sound advice to anyone wanting to set up a business in China:  

What are your goals?

At a high level these include doubling our Beijing operation and opening a second office in Shanghai within the next two years.  Perhaps equally high on our list of priorities is that it is important that the whole team, including myself, finds work and life interesting, stimulating and enjoyable.

What advice would you give to someone wanting to set up a market research company in China today?

Be different, and be good at it.  Despite being a relatively emergent market, there is plenty of competition, much of it competing on price.  Anyone considering setting up must be aware of this and be able to offer something different.  Linked to this, do not be afraid of challenging orthodoxies or perceptions, particularly regarding methodologies, and be prepared to try new approaches.

In the second of our three-part blog series, Alaric Fairbanks tells Asia Research about the successes and challenges B2B International has encountered over the past couple of years in China:

How have you managed to create your business?

I think our success so far comes from close attention to our two major stake-holder groups: clients and staff. To some extent we had an advantage in that we had already been conducting projects in China for about 5 years, and some of our clients from our home markets were interested in further research in China. Like many emerging markets, a lot of the companies driving research early on were foreign, and although market research in China has a history of over 20 years, b2b research is relatively new.  We were able to leverage our position, client base and reputation outside China to assist in building the business here. This was a help, but a priority was still to generate business ourselves from both outside and within China; indeed we have seen a movement in less than two years from foreign companies commissioning work from outside China, to local offices of foreign companies, and increasingly to domestic enterprises.  The team that we have built in China has also been crucial in developing the business and we have been fortunate in attracting and retaining a highly motivated team.

What are your main challenges today?

Right now my immediate concern is finding new premises, as we have outgrown our current office in Beijing.  This practical issue aside, the challenges focus on maintaining our momentum in potentially challenging times.  Also, China continues to develop and change rapidly and differently, and this potentially has huge opportunities for the way we work – for example we are currently looking to develop our use of web 2.0 methodologies in b2b research.  Here, we have already tried IM and SN applications for both recruitment and interviewing, and we are keen to explore and develop these applications, particularly for in-depth qualitative data collection.

The final installment of the interview will be our next blog post, so check back in to read it soon. 

In the latest issue of Asia Research, Alaric Fairbanks, General Manager of B2B International in Beijing, talks about setting up and running a market research company in China.  Over the next three blog posts, we will serialize his interview:

Tell me about B2B International

As the name implies, we work in b2b markets and are international.  We are a specialist business-to-business market research company, with our group headquarters in the United Kingdom and subsidiaries in New York and, of course, Beijing.  Our focus is exclusively b2b, and although we cover all b2b markets, we have particular strengths in chemicals, pharmaceuticals, engineering, construction and financial services.  In terms of services, our main focus is on full service research, covering market assessment, segmentation, customer satisfaction, new product development, competitor analysis and pricing studies, and our major clients are multi-national firms engaged in b2b markets.  In Asia we also complement our full service work with data collection.

What were the main challenges when you first set up the business?

We set up permanently here in 2006 and in many ways the challenges we faced when setting up in China were similar to those that many foreign-invested businesses in China, including some of our clients, face.  These include recruiting staff, adapting and integrating systems and working styles into the local conditions, and on a practical level finding reliable partners or suppliers, particularly in areas such as IT and financial services.  I regard these as important challenges to deal with, but the primary issue from day one was, and remains, generating business and delivering quality work.

Look out for Part 2 of the interview in our next blog post.

Jason Zhang was a little surprised when the five shirts his friend had bought for him arrived in the mail; he had been expecting to receive long-sleeved shirts and yet found his new garments had short sleeves. Although he thought he had been clear in his request, Jason discovered to his detriment that effective communication is not always as easy as you think…

Last summer, during my visit to Tianjin, I bought a couple of long-sleeved shirts in a department store. These shirts fit me very well and I really love this particular brand. Unfortunately, they’re not available in Beijing, where I live.

A week ago, I rang my friend who lives in Tianjin and asked her to buy five shirts on my behalf. During our conversation, I briefed her in detail on the particular brand name, the size, my favored style and color, and certainly what was an affordable price for me. I thought that was all the information she needed to make the purchase. However, I was wrong as I didn’t communicate to her one of the key pieces of information – long sleeves! In the meantime, she didn’t check this information with me either as she took for granted that short sleeves would fine with me. This is understandable, as Beijing is pretty hot in summer – with daytime temperatures as high as 38 degrees centigrade. Most people on the street have short-sleeved shirts, but my preference is long sleeves.

This is a real example to illustrate the importance of effective communication in our life and our workplace. Basically, in the workplace, at any given time, we all have to communicate in some way with our internal or external clients. As an effective communicator, you can bring real concrete benefits to your work and your organization. At the very least, you avoid having to do things twice, as you get it right in the first instance.  

In our capacity as professional consultants, perfect communication – both internal and external – is a crucial factor in building our sustainable competitive strengths, like efficiency, productivity, and a comfortable working environment.

As a business-to-business market research agency, our typical clients are marketing and business development professionals from national and international organizations. They come to us for help in making difficult and expensive decisions. At every point in the process, these clients’ expectations for effective communications from their suppliers are very high.

You would agree with me that the foundation to effective communications is precise information via an appropriate medium at the right time. At each contact point with clients in our work, effective communications are vitally important, from taking enquires, RFQ/RFP (request for quote/proposal), briefing, commissioning meeting, project design, through to the final reporting. It is our company’s normal practice to deliver an interim presentation, to ensure all the parties involved in the project have the same level of understanding of the exact project deliverables. 

Within the marketing research and consulting business sector, to ensure client liaison in an effective and efficient way, your essentials skills are listening, plus market insight, to understand a client’s particular business and needs.

In any communication, trying to use easy-to-understand expressions rather than special terminology or abbreviations, is a good idea. Let me give you an example. Last year, we conducted a market assessment study for a leading American industrial valve maker, to help them penetrate Asia’s pharmaceutical markets. For this market entry study, we used PEST (Political, Economic, Social and Technological) analysis to review the attractiveness of the opportunity and the barriers to entry to each individual market in Asia. When our project team leader and myself co-delivered the final presentation to the Client, we kept talking about PEST and IPR (Intelligence Property Right) issues in China. When we approached the end of presentation in the Q&A session, one of the audience asked the question, “What do you mean by PEST and IPR?” I then realized we should have clarified the abbreviations we had used.

It is quite normal in all walks of life and in all ways of communication to expect the audience to have the same level knowledge as we do. However, on many occasions, this is not the case. This is the reason why our project team always has detailed briefings, commissioning meetings and interim presentations with our Client. With these efforts, we can ensure both sides have the same level of knowledge and expectation from the marketing research and consulting project.

The other day, I got an email enquiry forwarded by our New York office. There were merely two sentences in the email: “We’re from Brazil looking to acquire a Chinese company. What is the cost and time frame for you to research this target company?”

How do you find the communication of this email enquiry? If you were sending out an enquiry for this sort of buying and acquisition study, what information do you think you need to provide to your agency?

B2B International, specialist business-to-business market research agency, is 10 years old.

Founder Nick Hague has found it an exciting decade. “Planned and sustainable growth has been key to our success. It’s interesting to look back at some highlights - becoming a global agency with the opening of an office in Beijing in 2007 and one in New York this month; managing over 1,000 market research projects per and recently welcoming our 1000th employee!”