Yin, who will be teaching a program, Strategies for Winning in China, at Cambridge next month, argues that this does not mean they are emotional.

"I think an example of emotional behavior would be Jewish people refusing to buy German products. You sometimes get this in China when trouble flares with Japan and people refuse to buy Japanese goods. There is nothing emotional, however, about trading up and wanting to buy premium brands. That is perfectly rational."

Mike Bastin, course leader of the MA in fashion marketing at the University of Southampton and a contributor to China Daily, says his recent research findings suggest Chinese consumers are driven less by a herd mentality.

"They are becoming more private about their consumer choices. Conspicuous consumption and 'gaining face', for so long key drivers of Chinese consumer behavior, appear to be less common. Consumers have matured and do not need to show off as much as they did before," he says.

Bastin, currently on a nine-city guest lecture tour across China, says where Chinese are making more individual choices in fashion they are moving toward upmarket Chinese brands like Shanghai Tang, the brand that has tried to capture the city's 1920s and 1930s chic.

"When consumers make individual choices this is what they now see as sophisticated, not always Western brands."

Whatever the idiosyncrasies of the Chinese market, attracting the attention of the Chinese middle class consumer is the holy grail in boardrooms across the world.

Zipser at McKinsey says the danger for many is over-intellectualizing the challenge.

"The biggest common mistake is trying to get it perfect and over-researching to predict trends in advance," he says.

"It is better to get in there with your product 90 percent right and see how the market responds. You might have to tweak what you are offering, change its positioning in the market or pull it altogether and try something else. You need to be as quick in your decision-making as the market itself is fast-moving."

andrewmoody@chinadaily.com.cn

 

 

 

 

( China Daily European Weekly 04/08/2016 page1)