US Internet companies' top 10 mistakes in China (1)

Our college textbooks are filled with the case studies of Ebay, Amazon, Yahoo, and Google. The few translated internet books displayed in the bookstore are also full of successful US websites stories about how user friendly their product is and how advance their technologies are. However, we see complete difference in reality: US websites are usually quite inadequate in their China development. They are generally unsuccessful. In the mean time, those successful Chinese competitors have never followed any US-style routines. As the matter of fact, they even often do business in the complete opposite way.   

 
Although China press world began to question the general failure of these US websites, their analysis are shallow, vague, and ineffective without touching the root cause. I have partied with many marketing people from top US internet companies. Based on my personal observation, they fail mainly because of the wrong concept of doing things. They have good strategies, smartest staffs, adequate cash, best product, and greatest technology. However, without changing their business concept, there is hardly any chance to create one single successful website in China.

1. Prefer elite user's penny despite general public's fortune v.s. sweep both white-collar's wealth and everyone's pennies
   
   It is a vital mistake from those US internet sharks which they haven't realized yet. All the executives are from HK or TW; all their employees are seating in the slick office building in Shanghai. Their visions are limited. White-collars and top 500 corporations are primary target customers of their product design, website style, and marketing promotions. They never consider general public nor small businesses.
   
   Their education, aptitudes and vision lead to the exclusion of the grass root at heart. They often ignore those kids in the internet cafes, nor those internet users from thousands of small towns (Note these two groups already account for more than half of China's internet population). Even the most generally beloved TV show, "Super Girls"(the Chinese remake of American Idols), is deeply contempt by them.
   
   They announce their elegant by knowing only gmail and msn, but not 163 nor QQ. From the bottom of their hearts, they would rather go out of business instead of making a no grade website meeting public demand.
   
   The hope of making a mainstream website will be doomed without meeting public demand.
2. Rather be forgotten instead of be hated v.s. be hated but never be forgotten
   
   The former one is the philosophy of US websites, while the latter one is what Mr. Ma, Yun(CEO of  Yahoo China) and Mr. Zhou, Hongyi (ex CEO of 3721.com and Yahoo China) believe.
   
   US sites are afraid of negative press news. However, Chinese sites only worry about not having negative news. They believe that the best promotion is to let thousands of people "hate" you.
   
   Getting 10 times higher salary than those Chinese rivals, the US website staffs fear losing their jobs. They'd rather have no performance instead of make mistakes. They take no risk and keep low key. They are timid, polite, and well educated, but not ready to fight. At the end, they are often bloody beaten by their energetic straightforward competitors.

(To be continued)