Image source @ Visual China
Text | Trade all over the world, author | Tenwu Ted
After research, trade companies have found that Chinese entrepreneurs in Thailand are often prone to stepping on these three pits:
Use time machine theory to look at Thailand, use Chinese thinking to understand Thailand, and use the Internet to export Thailand.
Be careful to use the time machine theory to look at Thailand
SoftBank founder Son's "time machine theory" has probably heard of friends who are interested in going overseas and cross-border e-commerce business. At the heart of the theory is the idea that entrepreneurs can take advantage of the imbalance in the development of different countries and industries. Start with developed markets such as the United States, then enter Japan when the time comes, then into China, then into Southeast Asia, etc. It's like riding in a time and space machine, traveling through the past and the future.
The premise of the "time machine theory" to work is that high-dimensional plays low-dimensional, and advanced plays backward. Why do you say that you should be cautious about using the time machine theory to look at Thailand?
Because of its strengths and weaknesses, in many ways, Thailand is not necessarily backward or even more advanced than China.
1. Thailand embraces social e-commerce and live streaming e-commerce, no later than China.
Around 2013, micro-businesses began to haunt our circle of friends. In 2015, Pinduoduo's predecessor, Pinhao, was officially launched.
At about the same time, Thai people began to use Facebook, Line and other social media to do business, and even formed their own unique business culture.
The authoritative magazine Business APAC has pointed out that Thailand can rank in the top five in the world in terms of using social media to do business. According to ecommerceIQ's report, Thailand was the world's largest social commerce market in 2017.
It is precisely because of the Thai people's familiarity with social e-commerce that it is logical to rise to sell goods through Facebook live broadcast. In the impression of veteran Thai logistics expert Lao Hu, he has noticed this phenomenon since at least 2019. This year, China's live streaming e-commerce has officially entered an explosive period. Of course, it is undeniable that many of these trendy people are Chinese sellers.
Lazada has also vigorously promoted the "entertainment consumption strategy" in Thailand since 2019, closely combining shopping and entertainment through live broadcasts, games and other special functions.
"Compared with our live broadcast e-commerce, Thai anchors are more entertainment, and Chinese anchors are more professional in bringing goods." Old Hu thought about it.
(Lazada has launched a major art and creativity exhibition in Thailand, "Unpredictable Boxes.") Immerse young people in check-in)
In 2021, TikTok e-commerce, which is from the same origin as Douyin e-commerce, set off a boom in live streaming e-commerce around the world, causing a number of European and American bigwigs such as Facebook to hurry up to follow. As everyone knows, in a corner of the world, Facebook is also the leader of live broadcast e-commerce.
When on August 4, the author heard that Facebook issued an announcement that from October 1 this year, its live streaming function will stop serving, and I couldn't help but be dumbfounded.
(Facebook pause live streaming feature announcement)
At present, in the field of live broadcast e-commerce, as Wang Bufan, the future head of live broadcasting, observed, China is better at forming a perfect ecology, and in Thailand it is still an era of personal sales. However, compared with China, Thailand has more relaxed live broadcast regulations. Blind boxes, lotteries and other domestic prohibited gameplay are common ways on Thai live streaming e-commerce. Thais can naturally accept live streaming e-commerce without rejection.
2. Thailand was actually rich earlier than China, and offline retail was very developed.
Compared with the mainland in 1979, which just carried out reform and opening up and developed an export-oriented economy, Thailand has been smoothly carrying out global trade, and formed a certain industrial economic foundation in the 1950s. In the 1980s and 1990s, it was known as one of the four Asian tigers.
That's right, Thailand was once wider than the mainland. Taking offline retail as an example, Bangkok has long been regarded as a shopping paradise, and a well-known travel magazine in the United States has listed Bangkok as the world's No. 1 shopping destination. 7 eleven, the whole family, the shopping mall, and the characteristic market are all in Gongwei the unique shopping charm of this "blocked city and slow valley".
Living in Thailand, the affluent and middle-class have long been cultivated brand awareness and are well versed in global trends. At the same time, in countries such as Laos and Cambodia around Thailand, wealthy people also regard Bangkok as their shopping mall. Located in the heart of the Indochina Peninsula, Bangkok's status is very similar to that of Chengdu in the southwest, but one is a regional consumption center and the other is a global consumption center.
The reason why many seller friends have always felt that Thai consumers attach great importance to price and do not care about timeliness and brand, which may just be a "survivor bias".
In the view of Lai Jinpeng, founder of Taixiang Overseas Warehouse, Thailand has a serious gap between the rich and the poor, which is a typical multi-level consumer market. For example, if he goes to a shopping mall in Thailand to buy a sweeper, the shopping guide of the mall will list the products produced in China, Japan, the United States and other countries at the same time, and people with different spending power will buy their own suitable products, and they will not despise each other.
At the beginning of the rise of e-commerce in Thailand, the poor delivery experience, complex payment methods, unstable product quality, and offline developed and convenient retail, Thailand's middle-class and above people with purchasing power naturally stay away from e-commerce. At that time, more people with limited spending power were attracted by low-priced goods and became the first people to eat crabs.
With the improvement of Thailand's e-commerce infrastructure, coupled with the assistance of the epidemic, more people with spending power have joined the online shopping army, and the price space and requirements of Thai e-commerce are constantly increasing. So we often hear sellers give different judgments on Thai e-commerce consumption, but the essence may be to see what grade of goods the seller is selling.
The correct understanding of the Thai market may be that this is not a material-scarce market, it is a diversified and rich market, a miniature version of the global market. High and low, noble or cheap.
Don't understand Thailand with Chinese thinking
Often referred to as the crossroads of Eastern and Western civilizations, Southeast Asia is located in the heart of Southeast Asia, and Thailand is a hub for the exciting integration of Eastern and Western civilizations. If you look at Thais with Chinese eyes, you will often find many different and contradictory places.
1. Advocating the Western concept of consumption that emphasizes the process.
The IT Times once mentioned the entrepreneurial story of an entrepreneur named Uncle Li in Vietnam. What impressed the author was that once, Uncle Li sent a variety of socks with good quality and high cost performance to the Vietnamese selection team, and the other party replied: "Vietnamese people don't wear socks."
There is no harm without contrast, Thailand is geographically close and has a similar climate completely different. "Thais wear slippers with socks and long pants", as a Guangzhou man who is keen on wearing slippers barefoot, Lao Hu was a little difficult to understand at first.
After staying in Thailand for a long time, Lao Hu found that Thais are very particular about appearance. On formal occasions, even in the summer heat, Thais wear collared clothes and wearing shorts barefoot is considered disrespectful. When you get to the office, change out of your slippers, and Thais go straight to work in socks.
School uniforms are very important to Thais. From kindergarten to undergraduate graduation, Thai students are required to wear a uniform. School uniforms have become a symbol of Thai youth, and many Thai fashion bloggers are often explaining how to wear school uniforms out of fashion.
The emphasis on clothing and grooming has made Thai consumers very willing to spend money on clothing, beauty, and sunscreen products.
At the same time, Thais are also very hygienic. It is basic etiquette to take off your shoes before entering the house, even when you go to the bathroom. The premise of daring to walk around the building in socks must be extremely clean in the house.
In stark contrast to Shang's neatness, Thais are very fond of cooking on fire. Packing food on the streets and carrying large and small plastic with them is the norm in Thai people's daily life.
Not only do they not like to cook, but Thais are also very keen on spending ahead of time and traveling overseas. "Once, I found out that my Thai friend was buying a down jacket. When I asked, I realized that they often go to Japan and South Korea for skiing vacations. Su Changrong, head of Alibaba International Station Thailand, found that the Thai friends around him could not save money at all, liked to go abroad for vacations, and liked to buy famous brands.
Even the most amazing thing for him was that a friend earned only 30,000 baht a month, and would spend 5,000 baht on a salary to go to a five-star hotel for a weekend. Su Changrong later summed up the rule, Thai friends usually pay salaries in the first half of the month and wave everywhere, and in the second half of the month, they will honestly squat at home, and so on.
Reflected in the e-commerce data, because Thailand usually pays wages on the 25th of each month or the last working day of each month, resulting in the peak period of online shopping in Thailand being concentrated from the 25th of each month to the 5th of the following month, the first ten days.
In addition, Thais are absolutely willing to spend money on beloved "useless" things. For beautiful things, for creative things, for cute things, generally speaking, Thais are not immune to them.
In the exchange, many friends think that don't look at the Thai people have an Asian face, the bones are all Western consumption concepts, but the purse is not as drumming as European and American consumers.
In the words of Liu Zhaoning, founder & CEO of Qianzhihe Going Global, it is the process of Thai consumers paying more attention to life. From the perspective of e-commerce practitioners, this is a good thing.
2. "Buddha nature" Thailand needs to talk more about emotional peace.
The Thai people not only believe in the Western concept of consumption, but also have a deep imprint of Western business civilization.
Thailand has perfect rule of law, and Thais are also known for their strong spirit of contract. Taking investment attraction as an example, the Thai Investment Promotion Council (BOI), which is directly under the jurisdiction of the Thai Prime Minister's Office, uniformly formulates investment promotion policies across the country, including industrial parks, and determines the preferential rights and interests of investment by product and industry type and production process.
"The spirit of the contract is actually very anti-oriental." Liu Zhaoning told "Trade Everywhere" that Eastern culture is usually more repulsive to strangers socializing and trading, and the spirit of contract is essentially born to facilitate stranger transactions.
Friends who often travel to Thailand may also pay attention to a detail, that is, many Thais do not like others to bargain, even if they accept the counteroffer, the range is very small, or even the counteroffer is more, which will cause dissatisfaction among Thais.
Because the counteroffer will make Thais feel that their labor is not respected, and it will hurt Thais with a strong sense of service. As mentioned earlier, this awareness is also strongly reflected in the fact that Thais attach great importance to dress and grooming for formal occasions, and even the use of social media for business activities has formed a certain business etiquette.
Take sanitation as an example, you can do all the toilet hygiene, so that people can wear socks in and out, and it is not the ultimate nation that cannot do it.
But why do Chinese people talk about Thailand and have the subjective impression of laziness and procrastination? In Lao Hu's view, Thai people are not lazy, but are more accustomed to doing only one thing in a period of time than the domestic accustomed to multi-threaded work under high pressure. If only Thais can focus on doing one thing, Thais are actually quite meticulous.
I believe that many Chinese who have just arrived in Thailand have fallen behind because they use Chinese thinking to deal with Thais. Hu made the same mistake, encouraging Thai employees to do their jobs at first, and then following him up with promotions and raises. However, Thai employees who are not good at rejection, you say yours, I do mine, or the old god is there, slowly and leisurely working.
"The key is whether the other party recognizes you or not." Lao Hu reflected, Chinese most anxious is the solidification of class, he is inferior, or his children lose at the starting line. Many Thais, on the other hand, do not have much desire to change their fate in their minds, and will be more satisfied with their current situation and want to live a good life at the moment.
Saying NO to overtime, resigning immediately if you are not happy, the Thai people's thoughts are similar to those of China's post-95 and post-00 generations. Instead of stressing struggle and changing destiny with Thai employees, it is better to talk more about feelings and gain recognition. At this time, the oriental thinking side of "Buddha-nature" Thailand will be revealed again. It's good to build a bond of acquaintances.
It's a country where you walk on the road and meet strangers, they smile at you, fold your hands together, and say a word to sawatdeeka or sawadee krub. Please be peaceful.
Don't use the Internet to export to Thailand
A friend laughed with me that the Internet should not like a market like Thailand.
1. Thailand has formed a very mature business network, and it is difficult for China's Internet to quickly burn money for scale before the game, and it is easy to touch the complex interest pattern.
According to the media, the reason why Central Group (Central Group) frequently rumored to stop cooperation with JD.com is that Central Group, as a retail giant in Thailand, has its own huge online and offline retail channels, and more hopes that the joint venture JD Central can bring profits. JD.com, on the other hand, hopes to open up the situation through a large amount of investment. There is a difficult reconciling between the business objectives of both parties.
It is understood that Thailand has not fully liberalized Thailand's retail and wholesale industry to foreign investment. In order for foreign capital to enter the field, it must apply for a foreigner business license from the Ministry of Commerce of Thailand, and prove that the products they operate are their own brands, or they have obtained the exclusive agent of the brand. Another way is that foreign-funded enterprises with a registered capital of not less than 100 million baht (equivalent to 20 million yuan) do not need to apply.
From the actual situation, most brands entering the Thai market will choose to cooperate with local Thai enterprises. Many of Thailand's retail giants have exclusive agents in Thailand for a large number of international brands. When Chinese sellers land in Thailand, many will also choose to set up joint ventures with local people, and the proportion of shares held by local people is not less than 51%, in order to comply with Thai law.
A friend directly pointed out that for overseas enterprises and sellers, it is not to say that they should choose Thailand to go to sea, but they should first analyze whether they have familiar contacts in Thailand.
Liu Zhaoning also introduced that the correct opening posture for cooperation with Thai partners is to first introduce acquaintances and then negotiate contracts. It's very Thai.
2. The Thai market does not have the world of large-scale replication.
A person in charge of the live broadcast e-commerce industry said that the reason why he chose to launch Thailand at the beginning was to see that the market concentration in Bangkok, the capital of Thailand, was very high. Opening up in Bangkok means gaining a foothold in Thailand.
From the perspective of the concentration of market consumption power, this play is undoubtedly correct. But the problem is that Thailand outside of Bangkok is actually very different from Bangkok. Mr. Liu's feeling is that other places are clearly culturally conservative in terms of culture and concept.
In addition, there is still a big gap between logistics and payment infrastructure outside Bangkok and Bangkok. According to Lao Hu, Bangkok can now achieve the freight of more than ten plants in the same city (equivalent to about three to four yuan per order), while other regions have not been able to completely free shipping.
Not only is it difficult to replicate on a large scale in Thailand, but Thailand's successful model is also difficult to export to other Southeast Asian regions. The national conditions and e-commerce market of each Southeast Asian country are very different and cannot be generalized.
In addition, as mentioned above, Thailand is a multi-tier consumer market, with clear divisions between each tier. With the way of throwing money, it is difficult to penetrate all levels. A more effective way may be to vote for different consumer groups based on their portraits.
Having written so much, the greatest value of the "Buddha-nature" Thai market for "wolf-nature" Chinese cross-border e-commerce and overseas enterprises may lie in the fact that it is a low-cost trial and error, ecological diversity place for dialogue and cooperation with the world.
You see, Thailand is close to us, and there are familiar Eastern thinking and Western imprints in communication;
It is not only a multi-level mature market, but also an emerging place for e-commerce, especially live streaming e-commerce;
It pays attention to privacy, the rule of law is perfect, and the people love beauty and innovation, open and peaceful.
It is believed that Chinese enterprises with certain resources going overseas to Thailand will pass through this crossroads faster and go to the world.
By the way, the Rayong Industrial Park in Thailand, established in 2006, now has more than 200 Chinese companies settled in, but these enterprises only put the production link in Thailand, and the focus of trade is still on the country.
(Environmental map of Thailand-China Rayong Industrial Park)
Su Changrong, head of Alibaba International Station Thailand, told "Trade Travels Around the World" that this year's international station is to promote the integration of these Chinese factories into the Thai supply chain and local business network. This is another new way of meeting Chinese manufacturing and Chinese trade overseas.
When we Chinese finally have the opportunity to raise the sails and embrace our era of great exploration and business discovery, we must first truly understand the destination we will enter at sea, so that we can resonate with the local community, build trust and promote cooperation.
Chinese experience has strengths and weaknesses, do not use a high-dimensional to play low-dimensional "time machine" mentality to look at other corners of the world, this is a kind of arrogance and prejudice, truly pragmatic entrepreneurs must be down-to-earth and adapt to local conditions.
Chinese thinking and struggle have an enterprising side and a strong sense of oppression, and in different regions, it is still necessary to respect the national conditions and laws and policies of the host country to achieve value, emotional resonance and interests with stakeholders.
China-style Internet play, leaving China, the only market in the world, which is convenient for large-scale replication and galloping, may be other markets, are relatively limited in scale, the interest pattern is complex, and it is more necessary to sink down, to integrate into local business civilization, to build brands, and to promote continuous repurchase.