
94% of Americans Cannot Name One Chinese Brand. Can you? - dsugarman
https://www.hdtradeservices.com/blog/Ninety+Four+Percent+of+American+Consumers+Cannot+Name+One+Chinese+Brand
======
jff
> _293 of 500 respondents (59%) were unable to name a Japanese brand._

> _37 of 500 respondents (7%) were able to name 5 Japanese brands._

I guarantee that most of those respondents have a Honda car, or a Panasonic
TV, or a Sony Playstation, or a Yamaha motorcycle, whatever. I think this
survey largely shows that people don't know where companies are based, because
honestly, does it matter that much? The local Volkswagon dealer is right next
to the Honda, Ford, and Jaguar dealers. If I go to the electronics store, I
get Samsung or NEC televisions on the same shelf.

~~~
patio11
"59% of Americans couldn't identify Toyota as Japanese" would motivate a few
professional peers of mine in Nagoya to break out the good whiskey and toast
their success. Memories are long and they don't want to be the "yellow menace"
( _again_ ) the next time the US economy tanks and Detroit wants covering fire
from their congresscritters. (Though many folks locally would say that this
strategy worked much better prior to the GM bailout, after which the US
federal government suddenly remembered who was the home team and then accused
the away team of, literally, murder, in a slanderous fashion.)

------
guard-of-terra
"Poor US Market Strategy and Execution" Is it really an example of a poor
marketing?

If you are a chinese brand, do you win by positioning you as chinese? Really,
do you? Do you want to be associated with walmart, chinese hackers and mao ze
dung?

I think if you are a chinese brand, your best marketing strategy is to focus
on quality and affordability of your wares, not on your chineseness.

~~~
richardjordan
Right. I was thinking this same thing. It's an example of very solid branding.

At certain points in time some nations have some branding benefit because of a
perceived cool-factor. In some fields some nations have a long-term perceived
history of product quality. Mostly however if your product is perceived as
being foreign you are placing yourself at a disadvantage in markets, like the
US, where there's a high degree of casual xenophobia.

Your optimum strategy in those markets is to blur lines between brands and
countries of origin such that people don't think of your product being from
"other".

Walmart might be more accurately branded as China-Direct :-) ...but it would
probably face slightly more resistance in certain parts of the US if that were
so.

~~~
penny100
What, because American don't buy products "Made in China" or "Made in Taiwan",
now? They don't purchase Samsung or Sony products? You're claiming that
Americans are "casually" racists with zero proof?

Please.

------
minopret
Besides Lenovo? I had seen Alibaba.com come up in my searches for electronic
knick knacks. It's impressively huge. Baidu Baike comes up in discussions of
what could compare to Wikipedia, although I'll admit I wasn't able to spell it
without searching for it. I'm aware that there are additional Chinese sites in
the top 10 on Alexa, but I couldn't name them without looking.

So I imagine that, like me, a lot of Hacker News users can think of a couple
of Chinese brands.

~~~
networked
Xiaomi should also be an obvious one to people who work with Android.

As for companies with more mainstream recognition, Foxconn, though it's for
less than cheerful reasons.

Edit: although their largest factory [1] is in Shenzhen, China, Foxconn is
actually a Taiwanese company.

[1] The (in)famous "Foxconn City" that makes most iStuff, employs over 200000
people and has its own TV station.

~~~
kyllo
Foxconn is a manufacturer, not a brand. They win contracts to manufacture
products for other brands. You cannot buy a Foxconn-branded product, because
they don't exist (yet).

~~~
shrughes
You can buy a Foxconn-branded product. See
[http://www.newegg.com/Product/ProductList.aspx?Submit=ENE...](http://www.newegg.com/Product/ProductList.aspx?Submit=ENE&Manufactory=2136&N=50002136&IsNodeId=1&SpeTabStoreType=0)

I have a barebones PC that's branded Foxconn.

------
ddinh
I'm not sure these statistics are completely accurate. The study was done
through Survata, which presents surveys as a free method to access paywalled
content[1]. People who encounter such things have no incentive to be truthful
or careful when filling it out, and might in fact just be clicking "next" to
see the content.

The data does provide some information (e.g. visibility of Japanese vs.
Chinese companies) but I'd take the 94% figure with a grain of salt.

[1]: <http://survata.com/home/how-it-works/>

------
richardjordan
So the accuracy and value of this survey has already been questioned by many
comments, and I concur with much of that so I won't rehash.

However I think the bigger question is that it has been a long term strategic
mistake for Americans to believe it's the brand-name that matters most. Over
time the name part of many brands has commanded less and less of the profit
margin of a product. US branding has often become a thin veneer over foreign
made product. Product quality has become the de facto brand of the underlying
manufacturers. It's arrogant of us to assume that we have a monopoly on brand
smarts and can therefore ignore the underlying production aspect of things. In
the long run the production will command more and more of the pie, and the
brand-name may remain American where there's some marginal value in giving up
some profit margin for that, but often it won't as there'll be little value
for the manufacturer there and they will go with their own branding - folks
may not recognize Lenovo as Chinese in big numbers but that is no detriment to
Lenovo.

I do worry when I hear statements that assume outsourcing cheap manufacturing
jobs to China is fine because we keep the high value branding, design and
innovation and top of the food chain stuff to ourselves, as though we have a
long term monopoly on those skills absent manufacturing expertise. It's a
dangerous and borderline racist assumption that increasingly puts US industry
at risk.

------
nhebb
The point the article misses is that Chinese companies often make sub-
components, or they manufacture goods that are sold under US and European
brands. They also manufacture a lot of low end goods where the brand doesn't
matter, e.g. the coffee cup I'm drinking out of.

> 37 of 500 respondents (7%) were able to name 5 Japanese brands.

I can only conclude that most of the respondents were idiots.

------
rikacomet
I'm surprised to see this on front page :(

I don't know a single Kiwi, Australian, Mexican, Brazilian brand. So what? Its
not as if, 94% of Americans were interviewed :/

we have some serious war mongers here people!

~~~
miahi
Never heard of Corona? It's a Mexican brand.

~~~
minopret
Good point. I heard of Tsingtao a long time ago, possibly before any other
Chinese brand.

------
bbuffone
When you are not open about letting people into your market; it is not easy to
get out of that market either. i have lived in china for 3 years so i would be
cheating to answer this question.

In general, i find the chinese web applications to be a viable alternative to
many non-chinese web apps (weibo.com, games...) my new favorite is wechat.com
made by tencent.com. it is the best mobile communicator that has been
developed.

------
rdl
The only ones which immediately come to mind for me are: Lenovo, Huawei,
COSCO, CNOOC, CNPC/PetroChina, ZTE, China Unicom, China Airlines (although I
always get them confused with Air China, the Taiwanese version), Haier,
pplive, Baidu, Weibo, BYD (due to Warren B).

There are a lot of Taiwanese and Hong Kong companies I associate strongly with
China, though.

------
unix-dude
Pretty sad, considering quite a few popular smartphones are re-branded ZTE and
Huawei phones.

~~~
dsugarman
You are very right. A lot of consumer products in general are developed by the
manufacturers and they find brands that want to use them for 'OEM'. It is sad
that they don't get the brand recognition or margins..

------
Mahn
Baidu, QQ, Tencent, Alibaba... I'm not American though :-)

I would argue this isn't a big deal. Sure, many Chinese companies would be
very happy to have more brand awareness, but overall it's still working out
very nicely for them.

------
mediascreen
How about Volvo Cars, does that count? Sold to Chinese Geely in 2010.

------
guiomie
Dont click on the chinese characters on the website. I cant revert back to
english now!

~~~
dsugarman
Strange error, now if you go to the Chinese version the English button is
back!

------
stuaxo
I like how their link to "the four fatal mistakes of trade show blah" goes to
a 404..

~~~
dsugarman
thanks for pointing this out. Fixed!

------
dtwhitney
I can't be the only one who immediately thought tsingtao?

------
johnward
because other companies utilize china's manufacturer capabilities and market
the products with their own brand

------
catheryn
AMC theaters is now a Chinese brand!

------
gregf
That is easy, Made in China.

------
tokenadult
From the article: "Using Survata, a web-based market research service"

Well, that's the problem that caused the crazy results that most comments here
are mentioning. That's a voluntary response survey, which means that it almost
surely doesn't represent the general population. (By the way, my first answer
to a question like that would be "Huawei," but then I could think of plenty
more, including brands that are only sold in China, which I have visited.)

Here's a FAQ about the junk data from voluntary response surveys: As I
commented previously when we had a poll on the ages of HNers, the data can't
be relied on to make such an inference. That's because the data are not from a
random sample of the relevant population. One professor of statistics, who is
a co-author of a highly regarded AP statistics textbook, has tried to
popularize the phrase that "voluntary response data are worthless" to go along
with the phrase "correlation does not imply causation." Other statistics
teachers are gradually picking up this phrase.

\-----Original Message----- From: Paul Velleman [SMTPfv2@cornell.edu] Sent:
Wednesday, January 14, 1998 5:10 PM To: apstat-l@etc.bc.ca; Kim Robinson Cc:
mmbalach@mtu.edu Subject: Re: qualtiative study

Sorry Kim, but it just aint so. Voluntary response data are worthless. One
excellent example is the books by Shere Hite. She collected many responses
from biased lists with voluntary response and drew conclusions that are
roundly contradicted by all responsible studies. She claimed to be doing only
qualitative work, but what she got was just plain garbage. Another famous
example is the Literary Digest "poll". All you learn from voluntary response
is what is said by those who choose to respond. Unless the respondents are a
substantially large fraction of the population, they are very likely to be a
biased -- possibly a very biased -- subset. Anecdotes tell you nothing at all
about the state of the world. They can't be "used only as a description"
because they describe nothing but themselves.

[http://mathforum.org/kb/thread.jspa?threadID=194473&tsta...](http://mathforum.org/kb/thread.jspa?threadID=194473&tstart=36420)

For more on the distinction between statistics and mathematics, see "Advice to
Mathematics Teachers on Evaluating Introductory Statistics Textbooks"

<http://statland.org/MyPapers/MAAFIXED.PDF>

and "The Introductory Statistics Course: A Ptolemaic Curriculum?"

<http://escholarship.org/uc/item/6hb3k0nz>

I think Professor Velleman promotes "Voluntary response data are worthless" as
a slogan for the same reason an earlier generation of statisticians taught
their students the slogan "correlation does not imply causation." That's
because common human cognitive errors run strongly in one direction on each
issue, so the slogan has to take the cognitive error head-on. Of course, a
distinct pattern in voluntary responses tells us SOMETHING (maybe about what
kind of people come forward to respond), just as a correlation tells us
SOMETHING (maybe about a lurking variable correlated with both things we
observe), but it doesn't tell us enough to warrant a firm conclusion about
facts of the world. The Literary Digest poll

<http://historymatters.gmu.edu/d/5168/>

<http://www.math.uah.edu/stat/data/LiteraryDigest.pdf>

is a spectacular historical example of a voluntary response poll with a HUGE
sample size and high response rate that didn't give a correct picture of
reality at all.

When I have brought up this issue before, some other HNers have replied that
there are some statistical tools for correcting for response-bias effects, IF
one can obtain a simple random sample of the population of interest and
evaluate what kinds of people respond. But we can't do that here on HN.

Another reply I frequently see when I bring up this issue is that the public
relies on voluntary response data all the time to make conclusions about
reality. To that I refer careful readers to what Professor Velleman is quoted
as saying above (the general public often believes statements that are
baloney) and to what Google's director of research, Peter Norvig, says about
research conducted with better data,

<http://norvig.com/experiment-design.html>

that even good data (and Norvig would not generally characterize voluntary
response data as good data) can lead to wrong conclusions if there isn't
careful thinking behind a study design. Again, human beings have strong
predilections to believe certain kinds of wrong data and wrong conclusions. We
are not neutral evaluators of data and conclusions, but have predispositions
(cognitive illusions) that lead to making mistakes without careful training
and thought.

Another frequently seen reply is that sometimes a "convenience sample" (this
is a common term among statisticians for a sample that can't be counted on to
be a random sample) of a population offers just that, convenience, and should
not be rejected on that basis alone. But the most thoughtful version of that
frequent reply I have previously seen in online discussion did correctly point
out that if we know from the get-go that the sample was not done statistically
correctly, then even if we are confident (enough) that HN participants are
young, we wouldn't want to extrapolate from that to conclude that the users of
any technology site are young, or that users of the Internet as a whole are
young.

On my part, I wildly guess that most HNers are younger than I am in part
because this kind of poll recurs often on HN. Other preoccupations of younger
rather than older people make up frequent topics on HN, and I've tried looking
for signs that there are large hidden numbers of old participants here without
finding many.

~~~
dsugarman
Thanks for your response. To account for this, we also asked the same question
about Japanese companies. The results, as you can see, were very different and
show clearly that there is low Chinese brand recognition in the US.

I invite you to ask your friends & family. Before running this survey we
casually polled acquaintances. The results we found were lower than 1 in 20.

------
smooradian
Cathay Pacific, Air China

~~~
rayiner
Cathay is the shit.

------
Aloha
Huawei, Lenovo, Wouxun.

------
jrockway
Apple, Nike, ...

------
tbirdz
Lemote

------
ismiseted
Apple?

------
13b9f227ecf0
Are Taiwanese companies Chinese or not?

~~~
loudmax
That is a controversial subject that the article doesn't even address. I think
for the purpose of this discussion we can treat Taiwan as separate.

~~~
minopret
Taiwan includes Foxconn. I for one was not sufficiently inquisitive to learn
that until now.

