The urban Chinese consumer has greater confidence that green products are better for the environment than their North American counterparts, according to the a new study from DuPont — its China Green Living Survey: Consumer Awareness and Adoption of Biobased Products.

Seventy percent were either very or somewhat confident that green products are better for the environment, while of North American consumers, 65% of Canadians and 60% of Americans held similar beliefs.

The findings have exponential potential for greening-up in the world’s largest consumer market with growing demands for China to meet its sustainability targets. “Greater adoption of biobased products in China could help the country reduce its energy intensity and carbon emissions and advance a new era of green manufacturing,” stated Jeremy Xu, VP, Global Sales and Applications, DuPont Industrial Biosciences.  

A majority of Chinese consumers are likely to purchase apparel, personal care, hygiene and household products made from biobased ingredients that offer environmental benefits. More than three quarters of respondents would definitely or likely buy such products in a range of categories including: Detergents 82%, Personal hygiene 81%, Clothing 78%, Personal Care Products 77%.Continue reading...

Epsilon’s new New Mover Report 2012 finds brand loyalty challenged when consumers move. The online survey of 999 U.S. respondents covered a range of categories of loyalty, including household services, electronic products, appliances and professional services.

Top line findings include: 

• moving is an incentive to change service providers (60% of respondents) or upgrade (42% of respondents).
• movers change brands, but are also two to three times more likely to purchase/acquire or upgrade their products and services as well.
• across all categories 20% or more of new movers change their current products and services and 20% or more upgrade their current products and services.

“We have known for a long time that new movers represent a highly lucrative category for marketers as the average household moves every five years and during each move a household spends approximately $9,000 on a broad array of goods and services,” said Don Hinman, SVP of Data Strategy at Epsilon. “When marketing to new movers, brands aren’t just up against their competitors for share of spend, they’re also competing against goods and services providers in other categories.”Continue reading...

China is the second largest economy in the world, and every significant brand's future is impacted by its growth (or collapse!); but who's got the time?! A weekly potpourri of ten reads that will make you look like a keen China observer during any conversation about China.

As China's trade growth slows (see WSJ.com video report above), read on for Bain's mainland shopper intel, a "wine city" for China's nouveau wine connoisseurs and more: Continue reading...

The 2012 American Customer Satisfaction Index (ACSI) is out and it demonstrates the kind of consistency that a fast food behemoth like McDonald's can't be too happy about. 

The ACSI's new ranking puts the burger-meister dead last in the "Limited-Service Restaurants" category, with a satisfaction rating of 73 percent. That puts McDonald's just below rival Burger King (75 percent), but considerably below Wendy's (78 percent). Pizza delivery company Papa John's was rated #1 in the limited service category with a satisfaction rating of 83 percent, an increase of 5.1 percent from the previous year. Interestingly, the company in this category with the largest drop in customer satisfaction from last year was Starbucks. Often touted for its customer service, the coffee house fell from 80 percent in 2011 to 76 percent in 2012. 

Unfortunately, the lowly ranking should come as no big surprise for McDonald's management; the company has ranked last in the ACSI since 1995. In fact, its current rating of 73 percent is a percent higher than last year, and 73 percent is the highest rating ever achieved by McDonald's on the ACSI.Continue reading...

China has had more than its share of alarming news around product safety and authenticity. Urine in milk powder. Poisonous protein boosting melamine in baby formula, and iconic milk-based sweets. Lead-tainted children's shoes. 

It's unknown how much of the luxury liquor brand Maotai on shelves is fake; one recent sampling found 30 percent, and that was well below other expectations. Meanwhile, the amount of fake high-end Bordeaux is threatening to choke the growth of an entire wine industry in China. Poisoned preserved fruit. Fake rice, made of plastic. Fake contraceptives. In March, even McDonald's had to apologize for selling expired meat. There has been glow in the dark pork and watermelons injected with artificial ingredients. Other watermelons just explode in the field due to overuse of growth chemicals. The overuse of unnatural growth ingredients has forced the Chinese Olympic team to from refrain from eating meat for fear of testing positive for illegal hormones. Literally every day brings the announcement of a new consumer scam. Oh, and here's a new one: "Dead crayfish."

In China, the greatest brand asset is authenticity. Simple enough, right? Wrong. Because how does a brand convince consumers of its authenticity when consumers don't believe the brands' messages thanks to a barrage of bad press like all of this?Continue reading...

It's the third year in a row that brand executives have worried about the "c" word — as in "confidence." Consumer confidence, to be exact.

In the wake of last week's tough U.S. jobs numbers for May, there's more discussion among brands whether the economy this year will follow the pattern of the last couple of years: a first-quarter strengthening followed by relative anemia in the following months.

Only this year, while the American economic recovery has at least seemed on track, brands are more worried about negative influences from abroad.

"The headwinds we face on both the top and bottom lines, such as austerity measures in Europe, higher commodity costs in the U.S., and slowing growth in Asia, do remain," Don Thompson, new CEO of McDonald's, told securities analysts last week, according to Nation's Restaurant News. "I'm confident in our ability to navigate these near-term headwinds, because we've faced these situations before."

Thompson told the analysts that McDonald's long-running Plan to Win best practices platform, established by his predecessor as CEO, Jim Skinner, will be up to the challenge of any softening in consumer confidence, using local innovations scaled across the company's entire global system, for instance.Continue reading...

As Microsoft released its new version of the Bing search engine today, it was another browser move that caused a flap. While potentially a win for Microsoft's brand, its consumer-first decision to embed 'Do Not Track' functionality in version 10 of its Internet Explorer browser in Windows 8 — with a default setting in the 'on' position — is "strongly" opposed by the Association of National Advertisers.Continue reading...

Looking for shopper insights? How about paying consumers for insights to share as they shop? That's the thinking of a startup called Quri, which is paying folks to take pics with their smartphones and gather small amounts of data as they hit the supermarket, drug store or other retail outlet.

Participation in the EasyShift network, as Quri calls their shopping mavens, is open to all and once a user signs-up, they immediately see assignments, a.k.a. literally working "Shifts,"in their neighborhood. The idea takes the notion of "mystery shoppers" to a whole new level, as the Quri mobile app makes it easy for shoppers to (for example) snap photos of shelf displays, measure stock levels, promotion presence and competitive positions within hours.Continue reading...