Multicultural Marketing: Call for Action in the Malls

Remember a joke that a friend used to make in the past is, “As long as there are people at a place, there are Chinese people.”  We used to laugh at it, but we all know that it is the truth.  During the past fifteen years, there has been continuous increase of Chinese immigrants all over the world.   In the meantime, more and more companies have realized the importance of the Chinese communities both because of their size and the high purchasing power of them.

No need to say, every nationality is different in terms of their habits, life style and preferences.  One thing I have realized about Chinese people is that, Chinese people like to go to the malls a lot.  Even though their visit might not be directly for the purpose of buying things, it is still a common place for hanging out during their leisure.  This phenomenal generally happens in two groups of visitors.  One group is the regular visitors, which consist of the elders and nannies that take their children and play in resting areas of the malls.  It also consists of teenagers and young adults who like to go for window shopping, and their purpose is usually social or fashion related.  The second group of visitors is the tourists.  Eaton center specifically, it has been included in many Chinese traveling guide for gift shopping.  It is also the most visited mall in Canada throughout the years.

Although Chinese people do have high purchasing power, they have a different value set and ways of buying compare to the others.  With these facts, we would expect the malls to have more marketing strategies that directly target at the Chinese customers.  However, either my retail working experience in the past or when I was walking in the malls tells me very little about multicultural marketing that has been done for this aspect.  One example about how the stores at Paris engage the Chinese customers is that, they try to minimize the language barriers for Chinese at all the tourist shopping areas.  Every national brand at these places has at least two to three sales associates that are able to connect to the Chinese customers and sell in Chinese.  On the other hand, a large number of the stores at Eaton center have not effectively adopted multicultural marketing as a way of increasing their sales.

Many businesses are now realizing the importance of the Chinese market, yet many stops at the realizing stage.  The high volume of Chinese customers should not be kept at the window shopping stage.  It is a good time to get customers into the store and convert into sales figures.  If these businesses could moving forward and involve multicultural marketing, it will create a bridge for effectively approaching and engaging the Chinese customers for future sales.