Don’t Toss Your Cookies
When I worked in Taiwan and Singapore, American colleagues had one mandatory assignment from their families when they traveled back to the United States: fill up your suitcase with Oreos for the kids! (It was peanut butter in Europe, but that’s another story.) The frenzy got worse when Kraft came out with double-stuffed Oreos. Despite the demand among expats, we rarely saw Oreos in local markets, though there were some suspicious lookalikes.
Will They Sell in Guilin?
Kraft introduced Oreos to China about 1995, but the cookie immediately crumbled – far too sweet for Chinese tastes. According to an article this weekend in the South China Morning Post (subscription required), Kraft kept tossing Oreos at the Great Wall until 2005, when it decided that something had to change. First, Kraft made a less-sweet version (sacrilege to an American). Then, the following year, they put out a Chinese Oreo that no Westerner would recognize. It had four layers, each a thin wafer with vanilla cream in the innermost layer, chocolate cream between the outside layers, and the whole thing coated in chocolate (a cardiologist’s nightmare). Still another made-for-China Oreo is a tubular wafer filled with vanilla cream and marketed to be served with a glass of milk. The new Oreos were accompanied by intensive marketing: huge store displays, bicycle-mounted “Oreo Ambassadors” handing out free cookies, and smaller packages to attract lower-income customers. The upshot is that Kraft suddenly has 22.4% of the Chinese cookie market, with the next brand selling at 8.3%.
There are several lessons here. One is that even a major company can take decades to figure out how to sell consumer products in China. Unless you are lucky, your product will need to be modified to Chinese tastes, which can take deep pockets and infinite patience – not to mention creativity. Another more hopeful lesson is that even a product that was initially disliked can eventually be sold in China given product modifications and marketing suited to the Chinese consumer.
Perhaps my readers can answer a question for me: Have you tried the Chinese Oreos? Do expats still have to bring back suitcases of the traditional U.S. Oreos?
December 8th, 2009 at 4:18 pm
To your question: I don’t think they will sell well in Guilin. You can buy Oreos in most small supermarkets here (Hao you duo, etc…) but I rarely see Chinese people buy them. I eat them periodically but don’t especially like the taste.
…and I’ve never heard of any Expat here bringing “suitcases of the traditional U.S. Oreos” over. Most of them need the space for more important things like duty free booze or other foodstuffs that it is really difficult to get.