Pooling resources One of the ways businesses in China will adjust to slowing economic growth is to focus on efficiency, delivering strong productivity while reducing costs. Crowd-sourcing labour is one way to achieve this, and we expect to see this help fuel agile brands and businesses in the year ahead.
The competitive nature of the in-store environment means brands have had little choice but to use traditional sales and promoter businesses; in a tougher economic climate, the need to connect with stores and consumers is just as important, but the pressure on costs means brands are looking for new ways to achieve this. Crowd-sourced labour – something we’ve seen succeed in many mature markets – is something we expect to see more of in China’s retail industry in the year ahead, particularly in lower-tier cities where there is a hunger for market information but not necessarily the budgets to gather it in the traditional way. Deploying people whose work is paid for in ‘slices’ of time can help give brands a presence in remote places at a very reasonable cost.
This approach has, until now, been mainly used by start-ups trying to minimize their cash burn; this year, we expect crowd-sourced labour to be deployed by more mainstream brands as they work to reduce costs.
The Chinese New Year, known in china as spring festival, is the country’s most important holiday. The Chinese New Year is based on a calendar established about 4,700 years ago. Various legends explain the origin of the Chinese New Year. One describes how people dreaded the New Year because a fearsome beast named Nian annually terrorised the population and devoured children. Then one year a child appeared dressed in red. The beast, frightened by the colour, fled and never returned. That’s why the Chinese New Year traditionally features red lanterns and noisy firecrackers to ward off evil spirits.
The Chinese New Year is based on a calendar that calculates time using both lunar and solar events. Time passes in 12- year cycles, with each year represented by an animal of the Chinese zodiac. Traditionally, people prepare special foods and hope for a future of good luck. They attend many family dinners, starting with a New Year’s Eve feast. Travel home for the family reunion produces a mass migration. The New Year period culminates in the lantern festival, a joyful celebration around the first new moon in the lunar New Year.