Reflection 2

Reflective Journal 2

My first project on CDE is about a management consultant scenario. In the scenario, we are to give a company renowned in China but not widely known in USA some advice on how to step into the USA market effectively using the knowledge we have learnt in our first few lessons of CDE. I was able to use successful examples such as Lenovo and Apple to see why they have succeeded . In our project, we are helping a company called Xtep (特步）, a mainly footwear company,  to expand.

It is actually very hard to choose a company to research on. As Newbies, our group have no experience in how to decide on the kind of advice to give, thus we need to choose a company with great potential yet have adequate foundation to prevent making things seem too impossible. This excluded many choices of companies we are quite familiar with such as 360 safe and Xiaomi. In fact, this made us to think more in-depth and analyse more than what we are actually supposed to do. Despite being daunting, this process helped us to understand the job ethic of  a market agent, which may in fact become a choice of career for us in the future. We chose Xtep eventually as they have inadequate English information on the internet yet they have some publicity in Europe as they signed a deal with Vilarreal C.F. from La Liga. They are also backed by CCTV, which creates a good foundation in China, allowing the brand to have adequate money and time to establish itself in USA.

I realised that it is in fact very difficult to expand  a company especially to overseas, as according to research, there are also many companies which are famous in China yet failed to proper when they try to start the business overseas. Moreover, the task becomes more challenging as the Americans have the mindset that the China-made products are very fragile and not durable at all. They are also fixed to buying American brands like Nike and Adidas, thus Xtep will suffer the lack of customers. However, I learn to solve situations like this, and one way to minimise customer loss is by doing something more creative and more futuristic than other brands such as Nike. I am sure that even though the American customers trust their brand  more, if we understood the advantages of our product, they will choose our products. This project also helped me to understand more about how the economy works through advanced research on the various markets in the world and comparing them thoroughly.

Overall, I feel that this project has benefitted me in many different ways. Firstly, it allows me to have a more in-depth view of  the international markets. It also helps me to understand how to do business  efficiently and what to consider, when to expand, etc. I also learned a lot from my freinds on how the do their research work. This experience is very important and fruitful in my opinion.