The men’s beauty market in China looks to be more promising than in many other parts of the world, according to new research from Kantar Worldpanel.

The new study, analyzing the behavior and attitudes of 22,000 men across eight countries, finds that globally, 32% of men say that it’s important to keep up with the latest fashion. This rises to 45% among Chinese men, who are also more interested in trying to look and stay young than average.

They are less willing to spend time on themselves, with only 8% saying they do so, far behind the global average of 29%.

Ashley Kang, Beauty sector Head for Asia at Kantar, said: “Chinese men have the interest but haven’t yet developed the habit of pampering themselves nor the knowledge of how to.”

Kantar Worldpanel’s usage care panel data shows that the products used by the most consumers in China are hygiene products like shampoo (used by 99% of men), toothpaste (100%), shower gel (74%), and razors (both manual and electric) 88%.

Ashley continues: “For the average Chinese man, grooming is strongly linked to staying clean and looking at his best in his natural state. This indicates there is an opportunity for growth through education and endorsement of various products. For example, products like fragrances or pre-shave treatments which are used respectively by 26% and 38% of men globally, are all below 5% in usage in China, almost non-existent.”

However, there is a group of Chinese men who have adopted more sophisticated grooming habits. This is particularly evident in facial care, with more Chinese men using facial moisturizer than in any other country (64% compared with a 10% global average) and face wash (63% compared with 25% globally).

Chinese men are showing greater concern around uneven skin coloring and sagging skin than the global men on average,” Ashley continues. “Given this tendency, we expect to see new products coming to market which meets functional needs such as anti-aging or whitening.

Brands should start with hygienic products and focus more on facial care than hair or body to win Chinese men. Products which are more functional tend to be unisex than male-specific, indicating that there is a growing market for this more sophisticated group which has not been fully catered to”.

Promising global picture

The number of men who say they like to spend lots on beauty products has risen worldwide from 17% in 2015 to 21% today. In addition, heavily involved men – defined as the 20% most engaged users of personal care products – are 4 percentage points more likely to say that they do whatever they can to look young, 3 percentage points more likely to spend lots on beauty products and 3 percentage points more likely to buy the latest brands and products.

Ashley continues: “Globally, it’s a promising picture for beauty brands and manufacturers. Men are increasingly comfortable buying, using and enjoying grooming and care products and they’re developing a better knowledge of what’s on the shelves.

“In China, there are two distinct groups, those who are very involved and interested in pampering themselves and willing to invest their money and time and others who just are not convinced of the need for personal care products in their lives. Brands need to decide which target consumer to address. It’s not possible to meet everyone’s needs – the gap between the two is too great.”

“If you choose to go with the unconvinced group, ensure simplicity and convenience is there. Don’t make them think twice and try to build your brand into their daily habits. Should you choose to address the more sophisticated consumers, beware that the ‘macho’ aesthetic will not resonate in Asia. We’re seeing a more ‘genderless’ version of masculinity in the media and even in our everyday lives.”

Looking across the countries included in the study, the research shows Brazilian men leading the charge when it comes to grooming, being 87% more likely than the global average to experiment with facial hair, 61% more likely to buy the latest brands and products, and 36% more likely to say that their looks are important to them.

This correlates with a more self-critical approach to personal beauty, with Brazilian men reporting far higher levels of concern around conditions like acne and greasy skin than average.

The search for eternal youth

There’s a recognizable disparity in how much men around the world care about aging, with British men the least concerned. Less than a quarter (23%) say they are bothered about looking young, in comparison to 58% of Chinese men and half of the Italian men.

Ashley explains: “In China, looking young is an indicator of a balanced and healthy life. Chinese people firmly believe that beauty comes from within and that unless you have well-balanced health, it is difficult to achieve a good look on the surface.”

While German men rank among the bottom four when it comes to the importance of looks and having a youthful appearance, they are considerably more likely to be found splurging on their personal care routines – 68% say they like to spend lots on beauty products versus a global average of 21%.

And, despite being known for their cultures of personal care, American and French men are the least likely to want to splurge, with only 10% and 11% of men pointing to a high level of personal care spending – suggesting they view personal care, not as a necessary expenditure rather than a nice-to-have.

Download: Men Beauty Report China 2019

Originally published on Kantar.com

China’s effort to expand garbage sorting into more cities will have a far-reaching impact on consumers’ shopping behavior and their attitudes towards brands.

Since July 1, 2019, Shanghai has enacted its household-garbage sorting management regulation, which stipulates that all garbage must be sorted into four categories: recyclable waste, hazardous waste, household food waste and residual waste.

Any individual who mixed hazardous waste and household food waste with other garbage could be fine up to 200 yuan. To ensure everyone will follow this new rule, the city government “recommended” residential complexes to implement a “designated time and location for garbage throwing”, which ends up people being allowed to throw away trash ONLY at two two-hour time windows every day (eg. 6:30 – 8:30, 18:00 – 20:00).

These efforts have ushered in new buzzwords on Chinese social media, such as “trash-throwing freedom” (which means 996 workers (9 am till 9 pm, six days a week) don’t have time to throw away their trash during designated time), and a new greeting line for Shanghai people when they meet in front of the trash bins: “what kind of rubbish are you?”

Jokes aside, garbage sorting will not stop at megacities like Shanghai: China is expanding this practice to all big cities. By the end of 2020, 46 big cities, mostly with populations of more than 2 million people, will have established their “basic garbage sorting systems”. By 2025, all prefecture and above level cities should have done so.

For Chinese consumers, very soon when they make purchasing decisions, they will have to think about the eventual cost of throwing away the garbage. Some more environmentally sophisticated consumers will also consider whether the brand they’re buying from has minimized its impact on the environment through its production, operation, and distribution.

This trend has turned sustainability into a new growth opportunity for brands in China – it is no longer just a corporate social responsibility initiative, it is a concrete business consideration. Kantar’s researches have found that sustainability-aware brands will win more Chinese consumers as this trend gets stronger.

Do Chinese consumers care about sustainability?

Now 93% of Chinese consumers think FMCG manufacturers did not do enough to reduce plastic waste; 54% of Chinese consumers care about sustainability and have taken actions.

• Eco Actives care about sustainability, and have taken multiple actions to reduce waste;
• Eco Believers care about sustainability, and have taken one or two actions to reduce waste;
• Eco Considers care about sustainability, but have not taken actions.

Kantar Worldpanel data showed that nearly half of Eco Actives live in tier-1 or tier-2 cities, and they are more likely to be high-income family. This means that sustainability-aware consumers have stronger buying power. By better serving this segment, brands can not only contribute to protecting the Earth but also find long-term growth for themselves.

In fact, even without China’s garbage-sorting efforts, Chinese consumers’ attention on environmental protection has been growing organically.

Global Monitor, another survey by Kantar, has found that the proportion of Chinese consumers agreeing “I feel that I can make a difference to the world around me through the choices I make and the actions I take” jumped to 63% in 2019 from 51% in 2017.

Also, 71% of surveyed consumers are willing to “pay more money for products that are better for the environment”, 16 percentage points higher than the global average. Of all surveyed consumers, 84% said “it’s important to me that the brands I buy from are committed to making our society better” – 18 percentage points higher than the global average.

Success cases

In China, many brands have launched and implemented their sustainability strategies, and make them known by consumers. Kantar Worldpanel’s research has found that consumers can identify some brands that have taken efforts to reduce waste, such as KFC, McDonald’s and Starbucks.

Many frequently mentioned brands are fast-food retailers, instead of FMCG brands. This is partly because fast-food brands have been quite active in protecting the environment in the past year.

Act now

“Sustainability” is no longer an optional box to tick: it’s a compulsory question that all brands will be required to answer. This is also not a homework only for brand’s marketing department – it’s for every business unit and for every step in a brand’s operation. Kantar suggests brands to develop and implement their sustainability strategy from the following dimensions.

• Consumer understanding
  • Consumer’s need to buy sustainable brands
  • Trigger and barrier to recycling/reuse product/package
  • Motivation to purchase
  • Loyalty towards sustainable brands
• R&D
  • Ingredient innovation
  • Material selection
  • New technology
• Package innovation
  • Modulization design
  • Possibility to be reused/recycled/degraded
  • Communicate sustainable messages via package
• Communication language
  • Establish a brand mission on sustainability
  • Encourage consumers to live a green lifestyle
  • Educate consumers on how to use sustainable products/packages
• Supply chain
  • Upstream – zero waste production
  • Midstream – high efficiency distribution/logistics
  • Downstream – recycle waste & educate consumers
• Collaboration
  • Collaborate with tech companies to develop the product, upgrade production line, re-design service
  • Collaborate with sustainability organization/charity to better communicate brand image

Join third-party sustainability initiative or alliance, even working with competitors, such as the Loop initiative supported by Unilever, P&G, Colgate and many other FMCG brands in the United States.

Vlog trending in China

This article was originally published on Kantar.com

A new service will help Alibaba double the number of foreign brands on Tmall Global to 40,000 in three years.

Alibaba has taken another giant leap forward towards its ambition of becoming the world’s fifth-largest economy by 2023, becoming a truly global titan of commerce. A crucial element of realizing this is attracting more global brands, large and small, to its platform.

This has just become much easier with the new English-language portal on Tmall Global. Introduced in 2014, international brands on Tmall Global cover more than 4,000 categories and originate from 77 countries and regions. Tmall Global now plans to launch other foreign-language sites, including Spanish, Japanese and Korean.

Global eCommerce expansion ramps up with the launch of English Tmall portal

This new service will certainly help Alibaba double the number of foreign brands on Tmall Global to 40,000 in three years, with a goal of generating more than half of the company’s revenue from outside China by 2025.

New growth engines are also essential given a cooling economy in China, an ongoing trade war with the US and increasingly aggressive competitors including JD.com and Pinduoduo. Efforts are well underway in this regard, with Alibaba having made inroads into Southeast Asia through the acquisition of Lazada, but it now aims to broaden its reach even further.

Attracting more international brands across key categories will provide a strong fillip to growth. Alibaba is already increasing investments to unlock growth from China’s lower-tier cities and rural areas, which currently account for only 20% of total orders for the company. This means plenty of room to grow for the business and cements the huge opportunities to go after for international brands.

Streamlining the Gateways to China

The new portal allows English-speaking merchants to fill in details online about their products, which are then vetted by Alibaba based on category and quality. If they fit the bill, Alibaba contacts them within 72 hours to gauge if their products are a fit for the Chinese consumer and Tmall.

The portal provides a hands-on guide to overseas merchants on how to open a store on the platform and make use of tools such as Tmall Overseas Fulfilment, which provides a low-cost way to set up their business in China before they start selling to domestic consumers. Tmall Global will also advise merchants on optimizing operations after they’ve established a strong presence on the platform.

Prior to the site, joining Tmall Global was only possible through personal introduction, or by signing up at trade fairs. With a huge emphasis on leveraging technology, namely artificial intelligence, to automate processes, a self-service portal and onboarding system makes sense. Especially if Alibaba wants to hit its ambitious target.

China is a fast moving, dynamic, highly nuanced, highly competitive, market. Understanding the drivers and influencers of growth, and how to unlock them is a scary prospect and often too daunting for smaller non-native brands.

The provision of Tmall Global’s portal will help brands understand the vast, diverse and digital-facing Chinese market – while at the same time providing Alibaba with what it strives for, operational efficiency through the efficient and effective use of data.

Removing friction and pain-points from the entire process of attracting, onboarding and helping to succeed, this new portal will certainly appeal to smaller brands. However, brands will need a good understanding of how to tailor products, messaging and marketing strategies to truly grow in China.

The need to deal with real-time data and industry benchmarks will become imperative. This will remain a challenge for smaller brands and will be essential capabilities if they’re to fully realize the opportunity in China and the potential of selling through Tmall Global.

Brands will still need to truly understand the landscape, and the ever-evolving shopper-retailer-brand relationships if they’re to establish credibility within the organization, and externally with key partners. Demonstrating the potential of Alibaba’s ecosystem and platforms in prioritizing investment for maximum ROI, is only one piece of the jigsaw.

eBook: Tmall Global Guide

This article was originally published on Kantar.com

Consensus, offer, performance and ecosystem are four hurdles towards the take-off of pure EVs. China has ticked the first two and making great progress on the third.

When I worked in China a few years ago, I was fascinated by the power, scale, and speed of the changes in China’s auto market. Since moving to a global role and back to Europe, I still travel to China frequently to keep my finger on the pulse of the Chinese market.

From my recent observations and conversations with clients in China, I have a strong impression that China has entered the “Electric Vehicle for All” era, which is not yet a reality in other markets.

Whatever needs you to have for a vehicle, you can relatively easily find an EV model for it: premium, mainstream or entry models from JV and domestic brands; sedan, SUV, mini/compact cars, you name it.

This brings us to a framework to understand the four key hurdles on the path to an EV future.

Four hurdles to overcome for EV to take off

1. Consensus

It means all or most people understand that to achieve a better environment for human beings, such as cleaner air, EV plays an important role. Conceptually in China, most people have agreed that to improve the environment, the transition towards an EV future is an important part of the solution.

2. Offer

We need enough availability of car models for the majority of car buyers/users. Because if we want to attract enough supporters of an EV future, we need to ensure a large enough size of buyers/users can find an EV version of their ideal car model.

For a French man with four kids like me, I need a large enough MPV to drive my family around. But it’s not easy to find such an EV or hybrid model. The only full EV model available now in Europe that fits my functional need is the Tesla model X, a great model but the price tag is a little beyond my budget.

3. Performance

EV brands from China and other parts of the world are making promises. But to really take off, they need to deliver and meet consumers’ expectations on many aspects, such as range, power of engine, access and convenience of charging, etc. Many brands I saw at the Shanghai Auto Show were claiming their EV can run at least 400 kilometers.

This is a decent mileage to make people seriously consider buying a pure EV car because even if you are driving a gasoline car, you’ll have to stop anyway to rest or for some model stop to fill up every 400 kilometers.

To address the burden of long hours needed to reload fully an EV battery pack, I very much like NIO’s battery swapping station approach. If such battery stations can be built along highways and, it’s big AND, it’s built to fit with every brand not just for a single brand, then people will be even more assured of their EV’s range reliability.

4. Ecosystem

It’s similar to the battery swapping station network topic. For an EV future to materialize, many stakeholders need to join forces in the same direction and align for a common future. These stakeholders include auto brands, component suppliers, IT companies, electricity and power companies, research companies and institutes, government agencies, etc.

A great example is the Movin’On Lab ecosystem that brings together many actors of mobility, to explore the trends, innovate and influence the future of mobility.

Recently, I just shared some preview snapshots of our Mobility Futures report during Movin’On Lab summit in Montreal. Surveying 20,000 people across 31 cities, the study uncovered the political, economic, ecological, technological and socio-cultural factors that are profoundly changing mobility decisions in the major cities around the world.

In addition to identifying today’s patterns of mobility behavior, the project also evaluated acceptance towards new products, services, and interventions to project a 10-year vision of the urban mobility market, including city-level forecasting and scenario planning.

Likewise in China, China Mobile has already established China 5G Autonomous Driving Alliance, which has attracted Chinese automakers, universities, and research institutes, IT companies to join forces. It will be a powerful platform to boost the development of autonomous driving.

I am also aware that China Electric Vehicle Charging Infrastructure Promotion Alliance (under the leadership of China National Energy Administration) is working as a platform to push forward the access and convenience of charging EVs around China.

Various levels of governments are playing important roles in nurturing the ecosystem. Their regulations and incentives can effectively enforce alignment to push the deployment of EV cars. Take Norway as an example, where since 1990s government and private firms facilitated the import, the sell and the use of EV. Even though Norway is a small country compared to many others, it is now the third largest market for EV sales, right after China and the US.

To summarize, I think China has passed the first major hurdles and is making significant progress on others. We can expect the ecosystem to gradually take shape and accelerate the EV development in China.

Implications for auto brands

Given the status quo of EV cars in China, I think auto brands need to focus on the No.2 and No.3 hurdles mentioned here: offer and performances.

For consumers, it is good to have so many EV offers to wait to be chosen, but for EV brands, they are in a highly competitive and increasingly congested market segment. They really need to understand what consumers are looking for in an EV so they can come up with a differentiated and unique offer to win.

Auto brands also need to evaluate experiences and pain points of current EV customers/users to develop a better performing EV which can retain and win new customers in the future.

Also read: 80% of Chinese consumers’ unplanned shopping comes from social e-commerce

Author: Guillaume Saint, Global Automotive Lead, Kantar

This article was originally published on Kantar.com