CARPE DEAL

We were in the Wuxi home of a 32-year-old man and his family – wife, daughter, mother. It was a pretty good-sized apartment, 150 square meters, and it was simply overflowing with stuff. Su Liang had nurtured a Doraemon fetish since he fell ill as a teenager, and found solace in the grinning robot cat with the big teeth whose animated antics have entertained Asian children for more than four decades. There were key chains, plush toys, mugs, even a huge sticker on the lid of the toilet bowl. His two-year-old daughter’s stroller was, of course, Doraemon-themed. If Doraemon suddenly disappeared from earth, you could create a tribute museum just from this family’s possessions.

But the mania for accumulation didn’t end there. The family bought beer, cooking oil, orange juice, and potato chips all by the carton. Was this an inflation-busting strategy, I wondered aloud? Only partly, the mother replied. “You never know when something may not be available, so we stock up,” she said. I was tempted to look into their kitchen cabinet to find out if there was a Fukushima-rumor-induced stockpile of salt stashed away.

Shortage – it’s a deep fear harbored by many middle class Chinese. What if the good times don’t last, what if the merchandise runs out? Many 60-year-olds have lived through a whole era of deprivation. They queued up for essentials then, and don’t mind lining up for an hour or two today if there’s an RMB 10 discount to be had. Lives have been lost in the melee (at a Carrefour store that announced a discount on cooking oil a couple of years ago).

But for the young, this consumption ethic is determined by a heady mix of one-upmanship, deal-seeking and opportunism. No small wonder that the same fashion stores where footfalls run into a few hundred during non-sale periods suddenly swell to thousands during the sale season. Nothing like a ‘Last Day! 50% off everything!!!’ to draw in the crowds. Scuffles are common outside shiny Apple stores every time there’s a new product launch.

Just the other day, I read about a live competition that was played out on Sina Weibo. Apparently, on one predetermined night, groups of young people in different bars across the Chinese mainland decided to engage in a drinking match. The progressive consumption and state of inebriation were broadcast in real time in China’s buzzing cyberspace. In one nightclub alone 200 bottles of Scotch whiskey were consumed. Will we soon witness Scotch production being outpaced by consumption in China? Hard to tell right now, but one can be sure that the distilleries hadn’t quite anticipated these drinking bouts 18 years ago. (Please note, I didn’t say 12 years. In China, 12-year-old Scotch whiskey is for the upstarts). And one can be pretty sure that the counterfeiters will step in to fill the gap.

Consumer response to deals, or new offers, is getting difficult to predict. There was a traffic jam when bookings for a new apartment block opened across the street from where we live and police had to be called in to keep order. One year later, those who believed they had snagged a good deal protested when the building’s owners began offering discounts to fill up the homes that hadn’t been sold to new buyers. They couldn’t simply believe that the same logic that applied to fashion retail was now being applied to property. After all, property prices always went up, didn’t they?

Sometimes it is the buyers who win. Sometimes it is the sellers. In today’s China, just don’t take bets on who will win: often it is both. When Mercedes Benz offered an RMB 41,000 discount on 200 Smart cars on the condition that buyers banded together in groups of ten, all cars were sold in just three hours. For those who lingered over their decision, tomorrow was really too late.

— Kunal Sinha is the Chief Knowledge Officer at Ogilvy & Mather China, leading projects that uncover Asia’s dynamic cultural landscapes.