ＱＡ:為什么中國市場如此艱難，競爭如此激烈，連亞馬遜也無法活下來？

Abrar Shaikh, E-Commerce & Online Marketing Consultant
What does Amazon manufacture? Nothing.
What does Amazon offer? A platform to sell products.
This is only a good setup where people are not frugal or are brand conscious. China already has few of the largest marketplaces, including aliexpress, alibaba, baidu. Than there are the local website that we don’t know about as they are in Chinese. The number of orders per day simply exceeds amazon’s capability. Alibaba and Aliexpress is just one site that get hits from all over the world and is able to sustain the load. Unlike amazon who has a different domain for each region with a different server hosting the site. Amazon simply doesn't have the bandwidth to handle such load without choking. That is why they bowed out of China.

亞馬遜能生產(chǎn)什么？沒有。
亞馬遜能提供什么？一個銷售產(chǎn)品的平臺。
這只對不節(jié)儉的人或有品牌意識的地區(qū)是一個很好的設(shè)定。但中國市場已經(jīng)有幾個大玩家，包括阿里速賣通、阿里巴巴、百度等。還有更多我們不知道的地方網(wǎng)站，因為它們是中文的。中國每天的訂單數(shù)量簡直超過了亞馬遜的處理能力，阿里巴巴和阿里速賣通是僅有的一個受到全球點擊并能夠承受負(fù)載的網(wǎng)站。與亞馬遜不同，亞馬遜的每個區(qū)域都有一個不同的網(wǎng)站，由不同的服務(wù)器托管站點。亞馬遜根本沒有足夠的帶寬來處理這樣的負(fù)載，這就是他們退出中國的原因。

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Corey Tournet, works at The Laundry Alternative
Amazon’s business model depends on them making the rules and calling the shots. That works well in the USA, but in China the government has the final say. So quite a few policies would be banned causing them to lose some market share. They are also not going to let some foreign company take over most of the retail sales in the entire country. I wouldn’t say they lost China, but they just realized sooner than other companies it was a game they couldn’t win. If you don’t think they are tough and competitive you don’t really understand their company culture, that is not an issue.

亞馬遜的商業(yè)模式取決于他們能否制定規(guī)則和擁有決定權(quán)，這在美國很管用。但在中國，政府有最終決定權(quán)。因此，亞馬遜的很多的規(guī)則都將被禁止，這導(dǎo)致他們會失去一些市場份額。他們也不會讓一些外國公司接管全國大部分的零售業(yè)務(wù)。我不認(rèn)為他們在中國輸了，但他們比其他公司更早意識到這是一場他們贏不了的比賽。如果你認(rèn)為他們不夠強(qiáng)，不具有競爭力，那說明你沒有真正理解他們的公司文化。
原創(chuàng)翻譯：龍騰網(wǎng) http://mintwatchbillionaireclub.com 轉(zhuǎn)載請注明出處

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O Cynthia
China has a lot of great companies now.
I think they know their market and have nicer softwares.
The Chinese are too competitive.
Tough for Amazon to go in too late, and they dont have the supply chain to be competitive. The brand Amazon dont help there, not even Samsung now.

中國現(xiàn)在有很多大公司。
我想他們更懂他們的市場，也有更好的軟性條件。
中國人太有競爭力了。
亞馬遜進(jìn)入太晚了，而且他們在供應(yīng)鏈上沒有競爭力。此外，亞馬遜這個品牌在這方面也幫不上忙，現(xiàn)在就連三星的牌子也好使。

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Andrew Winter, former Armored Reconnaisance Specialist, (Aka Cav. Scout) (1985-1989)
“The China Market” is an exercise in “smoke and mirrors”. In a com...st economy there is no such thing as a true “private sector”. In other words, in the China Market there is no real competition. Your success or failure depends entirely on how thoroughly you suck up to the government of China. Yes there is a LOT of money to be had, from sucking up to the Chinese government, but in the end it isn’t really worth the effort.

笑死我了。
在中國市場上沒有真正的競爭。你的成敗完全取決于你對中國的"奉承"程度。是的，討好中國需要花很多錢，但最終你會發(fā)現(xiàn)不值得花這么多錢。

Patrick Koh
The size is no smoke. 12 billion parcels a year. I once had 100 items in my shopping cart. I think the competition there is quite cut throat as well, with small margins. Private biz 2 x of state SOE now. SOE serves many purposes, one of which is for social stability. I think e-retail is a boom there.

胡扯，中國每年有120億件包裹。我曾經(jīng)在購物車?yán)锓帕?00件東西，我認(rèn)為那里的競爭也相當(dāng)激烈，利潤很低。中國的私營企業(yè)的數(shù)量現(xiàn)在是國有企業(yè)的2倍。設(shè)立國有企業(yè)是出于很多目的，其中之一就是為了社會穩(wěn)定。我認(rèn)為電子商務(wù)在那里很繁榮。

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Sam Zhang, lives in China (1997-present)
let us make it easy.
It's a shopping web .
so it's for shopping.
As we know, most goods of the world are from China.
so it makes sense.

讓我們輕松一點。
這只是一個購物網(wǎng)站。
所以是用來購物的。
眾所周知，世界上大部分商品都來自中國。
所以它退出中國市場是有道理的。

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William Oates, former One Who Drinks and Knows Things
American companies tend to do well internationally in states that were European colonies. Western culture and thinking supports western business in a more natural way. That doesn’t fully explain Amazon’s withdrawal and there are exceptions, but I think it’s true that some Western core assumptions simply don’t apply / don’t work in mainland China.
Repatriating profit from China is complicated and tortuous…
Competitors with home field advantage are going to push hard…
Do you have intellectual property? No, you don’t. Not in China, anyway…

在前歐洲殖民地國家，美國公司往往在國際上表現(xiàn)良好。西方文化和思維以更自然的方式支持著西方的商業(yè)。這并不能完全解釋亞馬遜的退出，因為這里也存在例外，但我認(rèn)為，一些西方的核心假設(shè)（core assumptions）在中國大陸根本不適用/不起作用，因為：
從中國匯回利潤既復(fù)雜又曲折…
擁有主場優(yōu)勢的競爭對手將使出渾身解數(shù)…
你能保有知識產(chǎn)權(quán)嗎？不，你不能。反正在中國不行…

This doesn’t necessarily apply to Amazon, but it illustrates what I’m talking about: Everywhere Walmart tried to open a brick & mortar in China, a “Wu Mart” went up next door or across the street. The local competition was able to passively benefit from Walmart’s market analysis and its scale and political leverage advantages back home just didn’t mean shit in China.
What’s so tough about the Chinese market? Well, it’s not necessarily any different from an immigrant from Hong Kong trying to open a restaurant in downtown Vidor in the 1960’s.

這不一定適用于亞馬遜，但它說明了我所說的：沃爾瑪試圖在中國開設(shè)實體店的任何地方，隔壁或街對面都有一家“物美”。當(dāng)?shù)氐母偁帉κ帜軌虮粍拥貜奈譅柆數(shù)氖袌龇治鲋蝎@益，而沃爾瑪在美國國內(nèi)的規(guī)模和政治杠桿優(yōu)勢在中國并不意味著什么。
中國市場何以如此艱難？嗯，這與 1960 年代香港移民試圖在 Vidor 市中心開一家餐廳并沒有什么不同。

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Carolyn Patton, former Retired teacher , economics World History US Hist at Detroit Public Schools (1984-2009)
I was wondering about that move too, but Amazon in sub Sahara Africa has a bigger market an entire continent and less bureaucratic bull to deal with. aAmazon in Central America and South America is close to home in America with the entire population of the Americas to sell to. one country is too small for Jeff Bezos The whole continent of America and Africa awaits.

我也很想知道他們離開的原因，但亞馬遜在撒哈拉以南的非洲有一個更大的市場，而且需要處理的官僚主義較少。中美洲和南美洲離美國本土很近，它可以面向整個美洲人口進(jìn)行銷售。對于杰夫·貝佐斯來說，一個國家太小了，整個美洲和非洲大陸都在等待著它。

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Ker Zheng, Marketing & Partnerships @ Azoya
It’s hard because Chinese companies are more willing to lose money for longer periods of time than American companies are. It’s a war of attrition and intense price wars are fairly common in China. American companies would be held hostage by their shareholders and boards if this happened. This is also why Uber left China and conceded to Didi.
I would also argue that Chinese companies customize their interfaces and products for Chinese consumers. The front page of Tmall/Taobao looks drastically different from Amazon’s, which tends to emphasize simple, white background pictures and products rather than brands. As a global platform, it is difficult for Amazon to customize its platform for the Chinese consumer. This goes for many other multinational companies who are struggling in China. They are simply not flexible enough and can’t move as quickly.

這很難，因為中國公司比美國公司更愿意長時間虧損。這是一場消耗戰(zhàn)，激烈的價格戰(zhàn)在中國相當(dāng)普遍。如果發(fā)生這種情況，美國公司將被其股東和董事會罵死。這也是優(yōu)步離開中國，讓步給滴滴的原因。
我還覺得中國公司為中國消費(fèi)者定制了自己的界面和產(chǎn)品也是原因之一，天貓/淘寶的首頁看起來與亞馬遜截然不同，后者往往強(qiáng)調(diào)簡單的白色背景圖片和產(chǎn)品，而不是品牌。作為一個全球平臺，亞馬遜很難為中國消費(fèi)者定制自己的平臺。許多其他在中國苦苦掙扎的跨國公司也是如此。他們根本不夠靈活，無法快速響應(yīng)。

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Wu Hao
Upvoted by Pavel Fomitchov, Sr. Technical Program Manager at Amazon (2018-present) and Joel Pinto, Software Developer at Amazon (2016-present)
At Davos 2018, Kai-fu Li, the former President of Google China expressed four major barriers that prevented American tech companies to succeed in China:
Kai-fu Lee: Why American Companies Struggle in China
I saw four major problems of American tech companies:

在2018年達(dá)沃斯論壇上，谷歌中國前總裁李開復(fù)表達(dá)了阻礙美國科技公司在中國成功的四大障礙：
李開復(fù)：美國公司為何在中國掙扎（鏈接）
我看到了美國科技公司存在的四大問題：

American companies intend to enter China with an existing platform, without offering any flexibility for localization nor autonomy for local teams. They mainly regard their China operation as a marketing project.
Chinese companies have already surpassed the US in product capability. WeChat is technologically superior to Facebook, the Taobao model is more sustainable than eBay and there are new models and products in China, such as Meituan, Toutiao and sharing bikes. Chinese technology is also catching up with the US, such as in computer vision, face recognition and speech recognition. In China, American companies have no obvious technological or product competitiveness.
The heads (general managers or CEOs) of American companies in China are always foreigners who barely know anything about the country. They usually start their jobs in smaller countries, get promoted to general manager of China general and return to headquarters for their next promotion. But their main skill is sales, and they neither know nor care about product technology.
They don’t understand Chinese, don’t speak Chinese and have no long-term commitment to China. And they are mainly responsible for the headquarters index, and their biggest wish is to protect their job. They only report good news and ignore the bad. These people are vulnerable to the fighters who head up domestic Chinese companies.
China’s top talent, from undergraduates to professional managers, used to think that foreign companies were the best jobs. Most now see China’s big companies – such as Baidu, Alibaba and Tencent – medium-sized companies – such as Meituan, Didi and Xiaomi – and startups such as VipKid and Face++ – as better options. Without the best talent, the development prospects of foreign companies in China is not optimistic.
From my perspective, these four points are still very true.

美國公司打算通過現(xiàn)有的平臺進(jìn)入中國，但不會為本地化提供任何靈活性，也不會為本地團(tuán)隊提供自主權(quán)。他們主要將中國業(yè)務(wù)視為營銷項目。
中國企業(yè)在產(chǎn)品能力上已經(jīng)超越美國。微信在技術(shù)上優(yōu)于Facebook，淘寶的模式比eBay更具可持續(xù)性。中國還有新的模式和新的產(chǎn)品，例如美團(tuán)、今日頭條和共享單車等。中國在技術(shù)，例如在計算機(jī)視覺、人臉識別和語音識別方面也在追趕美國。在中國，美國公司沒有明顯的技術(shù)或產(chǎn)品競爭力。
美國在華公司的負(fù)責(zé)人（總經(jīng)理或CEO）總是外國人，他們對這個國家?guī)缀跻粺o所知。他們通常在較小的國家開始工作，然后晉升為中國區(qū)總經(jīng)理，然后返回總部進(jìn)行下一次晉升。但他們的主要技能是銷售，他們既不了解也不關(guān)心產(chǎn)品技術(shù)。他們不懂中文，也不會說中文，對中國沒有長期的了解。他們主要負(fù)責(zé)總部的指標(biāo)，他們最大的心愿就是保住自己的工作。他們只報道好消息而忽略壞消息，這些人很容易被領(lǐng)導(dǎo)中國國內(nèi)公司的競爭者擊敗。
中國的頂尖人才，從本科生到職業(yè)經(jīng)理人，過去都認(rèn)為外國公司是最好的工作地?，F(xiàn)在大多數(shù)人認(rèn)為中國的大公司如百度、阿里巴巴和騰訊，中型公司如美團(tuán)、滴滴和小米，以及初創(chuàng)公司如VipKid和Face++，是更好的選擇。沒有最優(yōu)秀的人才，外企在華發(fā)展前景不容樂觀。
在我看來，這四點仍然是非常正確的。
原創(chuàng)翻譯：龍騰網(wǎng) http://mintwatchbillionaireclub.com 轉(zhuǎn)載請注明出處

Freddie Wu
One of my colleagues once worked for a famous foreign brand’s Chinese marketing team. She shared with me an anedote a few year ago, and I could forsee the Amazon exit one day back then.
Se was trying to start an online promotional campaign for their brand, which had already been a respected household name in China. So her team approached all the leading online platforms in China, including Amazon and JD.com. At a late stage of the project, they realized that the online presentation of their promotional page need some major revamp
(layout/wording/promotional terms/etc.). So her team sat down with Amazon and JD.com correspondents, trying to implement the required changes before the deadline. The result? JD.com’s team took away with their change request and turned over within 10 hours or so. The Amazon team? They were still trying to get in contact to seek approval from their “upper management” in another continent.
What can they do to win over the market?

我的一位同事曾經(jīng)為一家著名外國品牌的中國營銷團(tuán)隊工作。幾年前，她和我分享了一個故事，那時我就預(yù)見了亞馬遜的退出。
她正試圖為他們的品牌發(fā)起一場在線促銷活動，這個品牌在中國已經(jīng)家喻戶曉。因此，她的團(tuán)隊接觸了中國所有領(lǐng)先的在線平臺，包括亞馬遜和京東。在項目后期，他們意識到他們的在線展示的促銷頁面需要一些重大的改進(jìn)（布局/措辭/促銷條款等）。因此，她的團(tuán)隊與亞馬遜和京東的人坐下來，試圖在截止日期前實施所需的更改。結(jié)果如何？京東的團(tuán)隊帶走了他們的變更請求，并在10小時左右的時間內(nèi)完成了移交。亞馬遜團(tuán)隊？他們?nèi)栽谂β?lián)系，尋求另一個大陸“高層管理層”的批準(zhǔn)。
那他們拿什么來贏得市場？

Roger Shepard
No Western enterprise is capable of meeting the requirement of the demand of the lower middle and middle class Chinese consumer. The challenge is greater than the capability of the Western enterprise.
As I have written here elsewhere, the intra-country business competition between Chinese companies is too tough for any Western enterprise either.
And I repeat, by the time an indigenous Chinese enterprise, born in China, has grown up in the competitive environment in China, and has survived to become a “going concern”, a successful business. It has faced and successfully survived a level of competition that exists nowhere else on this planet.

沒有一家西方企業(yè)能夠滿足中國中低階層消費(fèi)者的需求，挑戰(zhàn)大于西方企業(yè)的能力。
正如我在其他地方所寫的，中國企業(yè)之間的國內(nèi)商業(yè)競爭對任何西方企業(yè)來說都太激烈了。
我再說一遍，當(dāng)一家誕生在中國的本土的中國企業(yè)在中國的競爭環(huán)境中成長，并幸存下來成為一家“持續(xù)經(jīng)營”的成功企業(yè)時，它已經(jīng)面對并成功地經(jīng)受住了地球上其他任何地方都不存在的競爭。

Steven McQuinn
I always thought that the attitude of American companies wanting to break into the China market is blatantly colonial. There is the erroneous presumption that the Chinese consumer adores anything American, desires American products as a statement of defiance against a despotic regime, and is a backwards rube. This colonial snobbery persists despite the fact that most American brands source at least their parts from China.

我一直認(rèn)為美國公司想要進(jìn)入中國市場的態(tài)度是明顯的殖民主義。美國人有一種錯誤的假設(shè)，認(rèn)為中國消費(fèi)者會崇拜任何美國產(chǎn)品，他們渴望美國產(chǎn)品是對專制政權(quán)的蔑視，這是一種自欺欺人。

Suyog Chandak
“American companies intend to enter China with an existing platform, without offering any flexibility for localization nor autonomy for local teams.”
I disagree with this.
Amazon India has adapted well to the Indian ecosystem. Companies have enough brain power to realize a rigid system can not work everywhere.
The simple reason why Silicon Valley Companies fail in China is because it is com...st. Unfair practices and corruption run rampant for successful Chinese Companies.

“美國公司打算利用現(xiàn)有的平臺進(jìn)入中國，而不為本地化提供任何靈活性，也不為本地團(tuán)隊提供自主性?！?br /> 我不同意這一點。
亞馬遜印度已經(jīng)很好地適應(yīng)了印度的生態(tài)系統(tǒng)，它們公司有足夠的人才去認(rèn)識到一個僵化的系統(tǒng)不可能無處不在。
硅谷公司在中國失敗的原因很簡單，因為....對于成功的中國公司來說，他們非常擅長xx公平的做法。

Kevin Zhang
As a Chinese i can say something about Amazon. The app/website of Amazon is very difficult when using. The US and China have huge culture difference. Amazon just move their service to China and don’t take some changes that are more suitable to Chinese. As for com...st party, why Apple and Microsoft can work well in China. This is just my common user’s experience.

作為一個中國人，我可以說一些關(guān)于亞馬遜的事情。亞馬遜的應(yīng)用程序/網(wǎng)站在使用時非常困難，美國人和中國人有著巨大的文化差異，亞馬遜只是將他們的服務(wù)轉(zhuǎn)移到了中國，但沒有做出一些更適合中國人的變更。...為什么蘋果和微軟能在中國運(yùn)作良好呢？以上只是我的一個普通用戶的體驗。