The purpose of any profit making enterprise is to expand to the point where its operations would start to go beyond the borders of the country that it was initially founded in, and the biggest prize for any American company right now happens to be China. With all of that having been said and now out of the way, it is important to note that China has been a notoriously difficult nut for American companies to crack, and countless companies have already tried and failed to maintain a foothold in the Chinese market.
The most recent example of this is Yahoo which exited the country in November of 2021 after having spent over 22 years there after first setting shop in September of 1999. Yahoo is also the American company with the longest tenure of operating in China. Amazon’s fifteen year stint between 2004 and 2019 is the second longest, and no other American company has managed to maintain their presence for nearly as long a period of time.
One of the biggest reasons why American companies often can’t capture the Chinese market is because of things like cultural differences, although a lack of competitive pricing could also be to blame. Both Best Buy and Home Depot failed due to a combination of these two. Consumers didn’t feel the need to pay extra for branded products at Best Buy when there were much cheaper options at local stores, and as for Home Depot the low cost of labor made it so that most Chinese buyers felt that hiring someone for a job made more sense than doing it yourself.
China also has a lot of local competition that most companies fail to be able to pit themselves against. This can be seen in the example of Uber, with local app DiDi not letting it get all that much success despite billions of dollars in subsidies from Uber in an attempt to make its rides cheaper. Yahoo is the latest in a long line of American companies that have experienced quite a bit of failure in China, and there is clearly a lot that needs to be done before they can start finding success.
Take a look at below infographic from Visualcapitalist to learn more about American companies that failed in China.
Read next: New Study Reveals 86 Percent of Consumers Will Abandon Brands After Two Negative Experiences
The most recent example of this is Yahoo which exited the country in November of 2021 after having spent over 22 years there after first setting shop in September of 1999. Yahoo is also the American company with the longest tenure of operating in China. Amazon’s fifteen year stint between 2004 and 2019 is the second longest, and no other American company has managed to maintain their presence for nearly as long a period of time.
One of the biggest reasons why American companies often can’t capture the Chinese market is because of things like cultural differences, although a lack of competitive pricing could also be to blame. Both Best Buy and Home Depot failed due to a combination of these two. Consumers didn’t feel the need to pay extra for branded products at Best Buy when there were much cheaper options at local stores, and as for Home Depot the low cost of labor made it so that most Chinese buyers felt that hiring someone for a job made more sense than doing it yourself.
China also has a lot of local competition that most companies fail to be able to pit themselves against. This can be seen in the example of Uber, with local app DiDi not letting it get all that much success despite billions of dollars in subsidies from Uber in an attempt to make its rides cheaper. Yahoo is the latest in a long line of American companies that have experienced quite a bit of failure in China, and there is clearly a lot that needs to be done before they can start finding success.
Take a look at below infographic from Visualcapitalist to learn more about American companies that failed in China.
Read next: New Study Reveals 86 Percent of Consumers Will Abandon Brands After Two Negative Experiences