🇨🇳 Starbucks vs Luckin Coffee in China, success is a question of Noon Nopi
I really started to drink coffee when I lived in China. Visited many Starbucks including the awesome “Reserve Roastery brewery” in Shanghai. Starbucks made me like to drink coffee.
A picture of the Starbucks reserve roastery in Shanghai, I took back in 2018.
When I left China, Luckin coffee was coming up, I remember the first time I visited their tiny shop. Everything could or needed to be done via mobile. Ordering, take out, etc.
Recently when I was in Shanghai, I tried luckin coffee again, at a very busy hub in a shopping mall. Not only was it super easy to order via mobile, it also indicated directly at my mobile, the time the coffee could be picked up and there was an overwhelming choice of tastes including the famous Moutai liquor coffee, which I tried and tasted pretty good (after a few zips) 😛
So it does not surprise me, that Starbucks has a difficult time in China.
As Professor Dae Ryun Chang would probably say, Starbucks in China is “below Noon Nopi”, below eye level: This means that the marketing efforts are too basic or simplistic, failing to challenge or engage the audience. This can happen when a company underestimates the knowledge or sophistication of its customers, leading to communications that feel patronizing or irrelevant.
Read all about it in this Wall Street Journal article: https://www.wsj.com/business/hospitality/how-starbucks-lost-the-top-spot-in-chinas-coffee-race-b6b36353 (paywall)
Or the free version on archive.is: https://archive.is/pgzZr
📖Report: 2024 outlook on e-commerce
It’s that time of the year again. Dozens of trend reports will come out.
If their trends come through, you never know, but these reports always come in handy as some kind of inspiration or guidance.
This is a direct link to the report from “Activate” and they summarize it as follows:
Here's our annual Activate Tech & Media Outlook which forecasts the key trends and presents the most important insights in the technology and media industries in the year ahead.
In the report, it is only mentioned briefly: “social video”. I call it “video commerce”. That’s already very normal in China in both B2B and B2C and fully integrated in many marketplaces and platforms so it goes way beyond just TikTok.
💻Run your own local ChatGPT
Running your own local ChatGPT/LLM model is now very easy and free! I just tested it on my Windows laptop. It takes some resources but it works pretty smoothly!
A screenshot from my windows machine with LMstudio running on it
These quick steps get you to test it:
The tool is called: Lmstudio and is free to download.
The next step is to select a LLM model, there are plenty of them available from within the console.
Then it is simply a matter of pressing the “start server button”, going to the chat window and chat.
It is also possible to create a local host and serve your model to an API.
Now why is this cool?
This is much more privacy-friendly. The data does not leave your machine.
You can use it without any internet connection
There are no usage limits, the system shows tokens, but as you are the owner it’s just you and the computing power that decide the limits.
It is quite a bit faster than using an online LLM model
It’s fun to experiment and try. There is a lot to learn and things change rapidly.
Give it a try, it’s fun!
🇭🇰Product management: how a “map app” gets gaming features
Asia loves superapps. And for me who likes product management, my heart beats a little faster when I read this article. (paywall) or without via archive.is
This story is about Amap, the Chinese version of Google Maps that has lots of different features than its Western counterparts. One of them is the “group function” and exactly that function is has now created a fun game in one of my favorite cities, Hong Kong.
As the author of this great article writes:
All of them then join a group on Amap, a Chinese Google Maps alternative, and share their live location. Among the participants, 90% are designated as “mice” and have five minutes to run and hide. Then the rest, who are “cats,” will go out and hunt down each mouse with the help of the location sharing, as well as a neon wristband that visually separates them from nonparticipants. Once caught, the mice switch teams and join the cats, so the game gets harder and harder for the remaining mice.
And now Amaps has included special features in their app to help organize these games. Now that’s adaptive and user-centric.
Since September, the app has introduced a few features that cater to players’ needs. Now, users can specifically choose to start a “cat-and-mouse game group” right in the app and create groups over the typical 100-person limit; it can even randomly assign the roles of mice and cats.
Interesting to read how an app transforms and even starts a business model because nowadays there is even a fee to participate in the game.
Read more here
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