Flashy shopping streets to rival London, Paris and New York have long been a fascination with China’s consumers. Picking up on the insatiable desire for luxury trinkets and apparel, Presence, a mystery shopper company headquartered in France, conducted market research on some of the country’s most popular roads for spend-happy citizens. And Guangzhou’s Tianhe Lu came in dead last.
Organized to celebrate the company’s 40th anniversary, Presence examined 40 cities, assessing high-end stores as well as restaurants on a representative shopping street of each metropolis. Locations were judged based on appearance, ambiance and facilities, service quality and friendliness of locals – i.e., did they helpfully point the shopper in the direction of the Gucci store or just shove past, muttering sinisterly.
Surprisingly – or perhaps not for those who have come face to face with Shanghai’s snobbier denizens – Huaihai Lu came in at 26 in terms of helpful passersby, who gave only abrupt responses when asked simple queries, while Beijing’s Wangfujing fared much better at 5. Both China’s two cosmopolitan centers did fairly poorly when it came to overall beauty, ranking 26 and 14 respectively.
Topping the list was Nanping Jie in Kunming, Yunnan’s capital, which was highlighted for its friendly pedestrians, clean and green environment as well as plentiful places where shoppers could set down their bags for a spell. Up in the frozen northeast, Harbin’s most frequented shopping street came third in the attractiveness stakes (just behind Yangzhou in Jiangsu) while Dalian was praised for having the friendliest, most helpful, just-darn-tootin’-delightful-to-chat-to residents.
Tianhe Lu, on the other hand, pretty much bombed in every way, with the press release from Presence noting that it needs to “improve in all respects.” Ouch Guangzhou.
At least Shenzhen fared slightly better: the city was singled out as having the best service in all of China, with shop staff both attentive and warm – unlike in Chongqing and Hangzhou, both of which came in at the bottom in this particular criterion.
Overall, Presence’s market research concluded that though the primary shopping streets in China’s most modern cities tended to be more on top of their service game, they generally stumbled when it came to the beauty of the area and the grace of the citizens. Meanwhile, the northeast tended to do well in all regards, while Kunming is a diamond in the rough western regions of the country.
And Guangzhou is just… awful.
[Cover image via Wikipedia]
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