Chinese Puzzle: Consumer Data
Thirsty Chinese tossed back some 23 billion liters of soft drinks last year, according to a study from the research house Euromonitor International -- or maybe it was 39 billion liters, as Coca-Cola Co., which conducts its own market research, contends.
Whatever the true figure, the discrepancy of 16 billion liters (the equivalent of 4.16 billion gallons) illustrates the black hole companies face when trying to decipher the contours of China's fast-growing consumer market. Accurate data are difficult -- sometimes impossible -- to come by on everything from the total amount of shampoo sold to the growth rate of beer consumption, frustrating the efforts of companies that have spent heavily to tap the country's market of 1.3 billion consumers.
"One of the key challenges for major multinational corporations is that you can never get the total China picture," says Clare Chui, director of business and consumer insights at Coke. "Everything comes in pieces."
French cosmetics firm L'Oreal SA, which had $107 million in sales in China last year, complains that the limitations of reports it gets from research firms complicate efforts to figure out the size of the total market or what its own precise market share might be. To compensate, it makes estimates based on different sources.
While this hasn't damped the enthusiasm of the world's consumer-goods giants for China -- L'Oreal's sales there grew 63% last year -- it adds uncertainty to the way they chart their expansion and market their goods. For example, television-ratings agency CSM, a joint venture between the Central Viewer Survey & Consulting Center and the Taylor Nelson Sofres Group, estimates that the TV-advertising market is about $2.8 billion a year, citing state sources. However, Nielsen Media Research, a unit of VNU NV of the Netherlands, puts it at $7.5 billion.
Those who have to make decisions about where to place millions of ad dollars are left guessing. "We don't have sufficient data," concedes Roy Kong, an account manager at media-buying firm Starcom MediaVest, part of Publicis Groupe SA.
Mr. Kong places ads for companies such as Procter & Gamble Co. He notes that CSM, the leading TV-ratings provider in China, has ratings panels in only 15 of the country's 32 provinces. Though major cities and some of the more affluent provinces are well covered, many local channels simply don't register.
To reach some areas, Mr. Kong has to buy ads without any clear sense of who might be watching, something that would be unthinkable in other markets. "In Guangdong province, we buy for P&G on a local city channel that just doesn't show up [in the ratings]," he says.
Starcom, like other media-buying firms, has developed ways to tackle the knowledge gap. "If we think the economic-development level in one city is similar to another one and the dialect is similar, we use one city to benchmark the other. But that's just a guesstimation," says Mr. Kong. Sometimes, large clients such as P&G will sponsor their own studies in certain areas, but Mr. Kong says that is "very time-consuming and cost-consuming."
Sometimes, poor data cloud marketing decisions and product launches. George Singleton, now the regional strategy director for ad agency Publicis, also part of Publicis Groupe, recalls overseeing the launch of Bacardi rum, a brand of Britain's Bacardi-Martini Ltd., in China several years ago for another ad agency. The data the agency received was spotty and inconsistent. If it believed one set of data, Bacardi's best bet was to enter the market as a hard liquor to compete directly with whiskey and scotch. The other set indicated Bacardi should launch premixed bottles to appeal to beer drinkers.
"We had enormous ranges of who might actually be our target market," recalls Mr. Singleton. In the end, it adopted the premix approach. While it's difficult to determine what would constitute the success of that approach, one positive gauge is the continuing -- and expanding -- presence of Bacardi in China.
China began to allow foreign companies to collect consumer data in 1989. Before that, Beijing considered market research, such as interviewing shoppers, a mild form of spying. But even after 1989, the government has moved to restrict the field, such as requiring questions used in opinion polls to be screened by authorities first. Questions about politics and sex are still often a no-go zone.
While many foreign consumer-goods companies now feel that the market data they receive in major cities are accurate and up-to-date, the companies have been under pressure to push into provinces and the countryside in search of growth.
"We're confident looking at data from city levels, but when you go further than that you've got to take that with a higher standard of error," says Glen Murphy, managing director of VNU's ACNielsen China. A margin of error of 3%-5% in major cities, considered acceptable, widens to double digits in the countryside. As to the resulting data, Mr. Murphy says, "we would caution our clients not to use it."
难解之谜：中国消费者数据
研究机构Euromonitor International的一项研究结果显示，去年饥渴的中国人喝掉了大约230亿公升软饮料。但根据可口可乐公司(Coca-Cola Co.)自己的市场调查，这个数字可能是390亿公升。
不管真正的数字是多少，二者之间多达160亿公升(相当于41.6亿加仑)的差距暴露出企业在试图了解中国快速增长的消费市场时所面对的一个巨大黑洞。从洗发水的销售总额到啤酒的消费增长率，准确的数据总是很难甚至根本无法获得，这使那些不吝巨资来这个13亿人口的庞大市场淘金的公司倍感沮丧。
可口可乐负责企业及客户的主管Clare Chui说，"大型跨国公司所面临的一个主要挑战，就是他们无法窥见中国市场的全貌，所有的信息都是支离破碎的。"
法国化妆品公司欧莱雅(L'Oreal SA)抱怨说，从市场调查公司那里获得的报告存在各种限制，增加了欧莱雅精确测算中国整体市场规模及该公司市场占有率的难度。为弥补这种缺憾，该公司从不同来源提取资料，在此基础上再做出估测。欧莱雅去年在中国的销售额为1.07亿美元，增长了63%。
虽然这没有打消这家世界消费品巨头对中国的热情，但它增添了这些公司在中国扩展业务及销售产品的变数。举例来说，收视率调研机构CSM援引官方数据估计，中国电视广告市场每年的整体收入约为28亿美元。CSM是央视调查咨询中心(Central Viewer Survey & Consulting Centre)和Taylor Nelson Sofres Group的合资企业。但荷兰VNU NV的子公司Nielsen Media Research的估计数字却是75亿美元。
那些手里有上百万美元等著投资的人就只能去猜测了。Publicis Groupe SA旗下媒体收购公司Starcom MediaVest的会计经理Roy Kong说，"我们没有足够的数据"。
Kong先生为宝洁(Procter & Gamble Co.)等公司代理广告业务。他说，CMS是中国最大的收视率调查服务供应商，但它只在全国32个省份中的15个省有工作组。虽然调查覆盖了各大城市及一些比较富庶的地区，但很多地方频道根本就没有登记。
为了使一些地区的观众收看到他的广告，Kong先生不得不在不甚了解广告受众资料的情况下买下广告时间，这在其他市场简直是匪夷所思。"我们在广东省一个地方城市频道为宝洁购买了广告时段，但这个频道并不在CMS的收视调查范围内"，他说。
像其他媒体收购企业一样，Starcom也研究出一套办法解决这个问题。"如果我们觉得两个城市的经济发展水平差不多，且方言近似，我们就会将一个城市作为另一个城市的参照基准。但这也只能是个估计值"，Kong先生说。有的时候，像宝洁公司这样的大客户可能会愿意自己出钱在某些地区进行市场调查研究。但他说，这样做不仅耗时而且成本也很高。
信度低劣的数据有时会对公司的营销决定和产品面市造成不利影响。广告代理机构Publicis的地区策略主管乔治?辛格顿(George Singleton)回忆说，几年前曾在中国为另一家广告机构做百加得朗姆酒(Bacardi rum)的市场调研。这种酒是英国Bacardi-Martini Ltd.的一个品牌。他们当时获得的数据零散且缺乏连续性。其中一组数据显示，Bacardi最好的选择是以烈性酒的形象进入中国，与威士忌等烈性酒直接对垒。但另一组数据则暗示Bacardi不宜走烈酒路线，而应出售预先混合式酒类产品，迎合中国嗜饮啤酒的消费者。 辛格顿说，当时数据显示的潜在目标消费者覆盖范围太大，最后该公司选择了后一种产品推广方案。虽然很难衡量这种方案的成败，但一个可能适用的指标显示出正面的迹象：Bacardi在中国市场的占有率在持续不断地扩大。
中国从1989年开始允许外国公司搜集消费者数据。在此之前，中国政府将采访购物者等市场调研方法视为轻度刺探。即便在1989年之后，政府对该领域还是做出很多限制，如调查问卷中的问题要先经过有关部门的审查。与政治和性相关的问题仍然还是禁区。
尽管很多外国消费品公司现在觉得他们所获得的大城市市场数据准确及时，但为了追求增长，他们还是需要到其他省份或乡村去拓展业务。
"单从城市数据看，我们对数据质量还是有信心的，但如果调查范围进一步扩大，误差就很大了"，VNU旗下ACNielsen China的董事总经理格兰?莫菲(Glen Murphy)说，大城市的误差幅度是3%-5%，乡村的误差幅度就是两位数了。他说，"我们会警告客户谨慎对待最后的数据"。
