外企用電子商務叩中國市場大門
On November 11, Todd Fryhover, president of the Washington Apple Commission, joined China’s Singles Day celebration for the first time, hoping to sell 1.2m apples from Washington State in 24 hours.
11月11日，華盛頓州蘋果委員會(Washington Apple Commission)主席託德弗萊霍弗(Todd Fryhover)頭一次參加中國雙十一“光棍節”活動，希望能在24小時之內賣掉120萬個來自華盛頓州的蘋果。
To help him out was the marketing juggernaut of Alibaba, the Chinese ecommerce company, where Washington apples are sold through branded website Tmall, one of a number of foreign food brands that are finding a ready market in China amid health scares over domestic produce.
幫他排憂解難的是營銷巨頭阿里巴巴(Alibaba)。華盛頓州的蘋果在這家中國電商公司旗下的“天貓”(Tmall)網站銷售。在中國消費者對國內農產品存在健康擔憂的情況下，許多外國食品品牌找到了現成的市場，華盛頓的蘋果正是其中之一。
Singles Day, which began as a student celebration of singledom in the early 1990s, was reinvented by Alibaba in 2009 as a mass festival of conspicuous consumption, and more and more foreign companies are joining, hoping to use the holiday as a marketing exercise to get their brands out to the Chinese public.
“光棍節”起源於上世紀90年代初學生們慶祝單身的活動，2009年被阿里巴巴重新定義爲瘋狂消費的大衆節日。越來越多的外國公司開始加入這一盛事，希望利用該節日進行市場推廣，向中國公衆推介自己的品牌。
Mr Fryhover wants everyone in China to have “a repeatable, wonderful experience on Washington apples”. China is number six on the list of 60 countries that import apples from Washington’s 450 growers, but he thinks it will be number one by next year.
弗萊霍弗希望每個中國人都對“華盛頓州的蘋果有可重複的、奇妙的體驗”。在華盛頓州450家種植園所種蘋果的60個出口國名單中，中國位列第六，但弗萊霍弗認爲明年中國將躍升至第一位。
He may be right. By midnight, as a video billboard in Alibaba’s Beijing auditorium showed, $14.3bn of merchandise had been bought via Alibaba’s platforms in 24 hours.
或許他是對的。午夜時分，阿里巴巴北京禮堂的大屏幕顯示，24小時內通過阿里巴巴各平臺售出的商品總值達到143億美元。
Western companies are increasingly turning to online commerce, a cheaper and faster way to get to market than setting up store chains or penetrating the opaque retail market in China.
爲了進入中國市場，越來越多的西方企業正在轉向電子商務，這是比開設連鎖店或者落戶中國難以把握的零售市場更快、更廉價的方式。
To do this they are learning to love China’s internet conglomerates, informally known as BAT — Baidu, the search company, Alibaba and Tencent, the social media and gaming company. The three have begun to dominate economic life in China with amazing speed, doing everything from retail to finance to transportation, and moving into healthcare and even agriculture.
爲了實現這一點，它們正學着愛上中國互聯網三巨頭——人稱BAT的阿里巴巴、互聯網搜索公司百度(Baidu)、以及社交媒體及遊戲公司騰訊(Tencent)。它們已經開始以令人驚歎的速度主導中國的經濟生活，提供從零售、金融到運輸等各種服務，並且正在進入醫療保健甚至農業。
In just a few years, the BAT conglomerates has been able to monopolise every aspect of daily life that could conceivably be put on the web and sold to the public. “They all want to own the customer, they want to be with them every second of the day, when they watch a video, chat to their friends, buy groceries, or go to a restaurant” says Chris DeAngelis from the Beijing-based Alliance Development Group.
短短几年間，三巨頭成功地壟斷了日常生活中所有可以被放到web上、面向公衆銷售的方面。“它們都想佔有這些客戶，時時刻刻與他們在一起，無論客戶是在看視頻、與朋友聊天、買菜、還是去餐廳吃飯，”北京安聯思商務顧問公司(Alliance Development Group)的克里斯迪安傑利斯(Chris DeAngelis)稱。
China’s internet giants are becoming what analyst Anne Stevenson-Yang of J Capital Research calls “tech Keiretsu”, referring to the national champions that dominated the Japanese economy in the 20th century with interests in multiple industries. “When companies are this big in China, the difference between public and private is not that important,” she says. “For all intents and purposes these companies have become the ministry of the internet.”
中國的互聯網巨頭正逐漸發展爲美奇金投資諮詢公司(J Capital Research)的分析師楊思安(Anne Stevenson-Yang)所稱的“科技系列企業”(tech Keiretsu)。這類企業是指20世紀主導日本經濟、插足多個行業的國家冠軍企業。“當企業在中國發展到如此大的規模時，公私差別不再那麼重要，”她稱，“在現實意義上，這些企業成了互聯網部。”
But fierce competition means foreign sellers have many options for courting Chinese middle class buyers who are looking to buy imported goods abroad due to concerns about home-made counterfeit goods.
但是，激烈的競爭意味着，外國商家在招攬中國中產階層買家時有很多選擇。由於擔心國產假貨，這些消費者熱衷於購買進口商品。
Alibaba offers a number of options for sellers, including the free eBay-like platform Taobao, which is basically an online flea market. Most big brands set up on Tmall, which resembles an Amazon market place, a platform where big brands can set up stores and have more control over their sales and supply chains. Tmall’s first store from a fortune 500 company was Procter & Gamble, launched in 2008, which has grown 100 times since then, according to P&G vice-president Jasmine Xu.
阿里巴巴爲賣方提供了很多選擇，其中包括與eBay類似的免費平臺淘寶(Taobao)——基本上就是一個網上跳蚤市場。多數大品牌的店都開在類似於亞馬遜(Amazon)的天貓上，讓這些品牌更好地控制其銷售和供應鏈。寶潔(Procter & Gamble)是首家進駐天貓的財富500強公司。據寶潔副總裁Jasmine Xu稱，自2008年進駐天貓以來，該公司在該平臺上的銷售額增長了100倍。
This year on Singles Day Ms Xu says that P&G made its first Rmb100m ($16m) in six minutes, compared with eight hours last year. “[Tmall] is a key platform to drive brand building in addition to sales,” she says.
Xu稱，在今年的雙十一“光棍節”，寶潔在6分鐘內就完成了1億元人民幣（合1600萬美元）的銷售額，而去年用了8小時才達到這一銷售額。“除了加大銷售外，（天貓）還是推動品牌建設的關鍵平臺，”她稱。
Some merchants have been loath to list on Alibaba, however. It gets vast online traffic, but the pressure to discount and the prevalence of fakes means it is “hard to protect a brand on Tmall,” says one consultant.
然而，也有一些商家不願意進駐阿里巴巴。阿里巴巴帶來了龐大的在線客流量，但一名諮詢顧問稱，打折的壓力以及氾濫的假貨意味着“很難在天貓上保護品牌”。
But there are plenty of alternatives. , Alibaba’s rival, which is increasing its market share, has attracted a number of brands to its online store.
不過，它們還有其他很多選擇。京東()——阿里巴巴的競爭對手，其市場份額正日益擴大——吸引了衆多品牌進駐。
Meanwhile, waiting in the wings is Tencent’s social media app WeChat, which has more than 500m users and is growing rapidly. Fearful of flooding the app with advertising and products, Tencent has been holding back on “monetising” WeChat.
與此同時，騰訊的社交媒體app微信(WeChat)正伺機而動。微信擁有逾5億用戶，發展迅速。由於擔心廣告和產品氾濫引起用戶反感，騰訊迄今擱置這款app的“貨幣化”進程。
But advertising on WeChat is just one way of getting attention, and many companies have found they can win huge marketing success simply by using WeChat for word-of-mouth marketing.
但是，在微信上做廣告只是吸引注意力的方式之一。很多企業發現，單單利用微信進行口碑營銷就可以獲得巨大的市場推廣成功。
Fans of English country living, for example, can join a WeChat group devoted to Aga cookers, the iconic English oven brand, watch videos about cooking on an Aga, swap messages about it, and, thanks to the software which embeds the store in the chatroom, even buy one on impulse.
例如，熱衷英國鄉村生活的粉絲可以加入英式烤箱標誌性品牌AGA的微信羣，觀看使用AGA烹飪的視頻，交換有關產品的信息，甚至一時衝動買下一臺烤箱——藉助在聊天室嵌入商鋪的軟件。
“WeChat is unusually versatile; its better than Facebook, better than WhatsApp for marketing,” says Jim James, head of EastWest Public Relations in Beijing, which designed the Aga WeChat group.
“微信的用途異常廣泛；就市場營銷而言，它比Facebook更好，也比WhatsApp更好，”北京易思聞思公共關係諮詢公司(Eastwest Public Relations)董事長金寶(Jim James)稱。該公司設計了AGA的微信羣。
“China in many ways is more switched on to the internet than other countries which have had it for longer.”
“相比其他一些接觸互聯網時間更長的國家，中國在很多方面更加融入網絡。”
