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Business-to-business marketing practices in China
Business-to-business marketing practices in China
留学生市场营销管理专业作业定制The quest for the greatest untapped business-to-business market on earth remains difficult and fraught with challenges. While some have succeeded, many have also failed. Why? This issue seeks to answer this question. Written for academics, researchers and practitioners, I believe that the papers in this issue make valuable contributions toward, and provide substantive insights into successful business marketing practices in China.
The first article by Drs Al-Khatib, Vollmers and Liu examined the effects of Chinese executives’ preferred ethical ideologies and Machiavellianism on their views of negotiation tactics, within the context of a nation moving from a centrally planned economy to a market economy. The results of their study support the contention that idealism, which describes the degree to which individuals understand actions as right or wrong, influenced perceptions of false promises, traditional competitive bargaining, and criticising an opponents’ network. Machiavellianism, a personality trait in which individual believes it is appropriate to use any means to accomplish personal and organizational goals, influenced perceptions of traditional competitive bargaining and misrepresentation of information.
Drs Low and Johnston and Ms Wang also focus on the Chinese mindset in developing effective relationships, specifically the importance and approaches in securing an organization’s legitimacy from a “market-as-network perspective.” Through an inductive interpretative approach complemented by action-based research founded on inquiry and testing, they argue that the key to legitimacy success involves using legitimacy orientations to demonstrate commitment to the interests of constituents, acquiring legitimacy from them, but concurrently considering the central government’s influence on a firm’s legitimacy performance.
留学生市场营销管理专业作业定制If understanding the ethical Chinese mindset and securing network legitimacy are strategic business marketing imperatives in a transitional Chinese economy, Dr Pressey and Ms Qiu argued that greater freedom to build relationships with their partners of choice requires a meaningful examination of dysfunctional relationships and their dissolution. For instance, it is common for relationships to have a transferable “energy” after the dissolution of a relationship due to the guanxi that exists between individuals prior to dissolution. It is also common for dysfunctional relationships to “fade away” so as not to lose “face” for a business partner or damage any guanxi developed by abruptly ending relations. The involvement of a third-party often plays an active role in the dissolution of the relationship. #p#分页标题#e#
The impact of marketing-related variables on business performance of small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) in China was the topic of the study by Drs Tang, Wang and Zhang. Building on the rich findings of their pilot study, they developed a conceptual model, and constructed eight research hypotheses. Their study indicates that three factors are positively correlated with a small firm’s business performance, being: longterm differentiation marketing strategy; R&D as a percentage of sales; and years in business. Other factors such as their current product focus, government policy, quality and availability of services, conduct of regular market research, a firm’s registered capital and number of employees, supplying a few large firms, and having a few regular suppliers, were however not significantly associated with business performance.
Next, Gebauer, Wang, Beckenbauer and Krempl examine how Chinese culture affects business marketing strategies and service revenue in manufacturing companies. The genesis of their study was an investigation of 118 Swiss companies that generated an average of 21.2 percent of their total revenue in Europe, compared with 10.3 percent in China. Through a combination of interviews, longitudinal study and bi-polar case studies, their study highlighted the characteristics of Chinese culture as the main reason for the significant difference in service revenue, and offers a number of suggestions for managers seeking to increase service revenue in China.
The last article, a case study by Dr Low, identifies the challenges confronting Huawei Technologies, China’s biggest telecommunications equipment manufacturer, as it seeks to make the transition from an indigenous-owned business to a competitive global giant. His argument is that through internationalization, Chinese companies, like Huawei, have learned how to compete, by adjusting their mechanisms, learning instruments and focus. This proved that indigenous firms in a country late to internationalize like China can overcome their late mover position in entering advanced markets. However, Low also cautions against underestimating the role of government in helping to construct competitive indigenous firms that could compete internationally.
Finally, the idea for this special issue did not arise in a vacuum. I am grateful for the editorial guidance and advice of Professor Wesley Johnston. Carol Tan was essential in providing administrative support. Of course this special issue would not exist without the reviewers. I wish especially to thank the following reviewers: Drs Esther Li, Lingnan University, Hong Kong; Yiming Tang, Macquarie University; Catherine Sutton Brady, Sydney University; Felicitas Evangelista and Richard Fletcher, University of Western Sydney.
Brian Low
Senior Lecturer in Marketing at the University of Western Sydney, Australia. A practicing academic, Brian has spent 18 years in the automotive, computer and telecommunication sector, in senior marketing and research positions. He has consulted for a range of American, European and Chinese companies on marketing strategies #p#分页标题#e#留学生市场营销管理专业作业定制and regulatory policies in the telecommunication sector in Asia-Pacific. His current research interests are in the areas of business-to-business marketing, industrial networks, marketing in developing nations, and value-based marketing. He holds a DBA from the University of Western Sydney.
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