It's the year 2003. A small city amidst southern China's beautiful karst landscape is only just starting to develop. When a foreign entrepreneur visits the city on his way through to the industrial hotspot Guangdong, he is intrigued by the lack of Western-style restaurants that are so ubiquitous in the big cities on the coast. Asking around, he quickly discovers that the city was craving for pizza, with many inhabitants listing it as one of their favourite foods. He decides to stay and opens up a great little restaurant - genuine, thin-crusted pizza with all the fresh ingredients. It was sure to become a hit.

Four months later the restaurant closed down and the entrepreneur moved on. The local Chinese were not interested in his pizzas and the few expatriates that would visit were not enough to sustain his business. Proper consumer research would have saved this man a big investment: in high school, young Chinese people learn to talk about pizza in English class. When asked about food they liked to eat, they simply answered using what little english they knew. At that time, most of the local inhabitants had probably never tasted pizza before.

At CNMI, we'd like to help you avoid such mistakes. Whether you're coming here to sell pizza or semiconductors, we can help you identify your target customers and find out what they want. That means we'll go out there and talk to them. We will be there, questionnaire in hand, to find out what makes them tick and how this information is relevant to you, our client. Our strong knowledge and long experience in China helps us interpret this information and iron out otherwise unexplicable data - such as the non-existant demand for pizza in southern China's provincial towns.


Online Research Proposal

The introduction and sales of products in China is a highly competitive and risky business. Before you know it, you're stuck with the lowest profit margins in the market and a lack of product innovation that further encumbers sales. CNMI provides consumer research services on a highly customized scale, but chances are that your demands are actually quite straightforward - you have a product, you'd like to sell it in China, and you'd like to know if that is a good idea by understanding your potential customers' demands. If that is the case, then we won't be the ones to further complicate things.

We have designed a fully online consumer research proposal that starts with an online question form which provides us with the information we need on your product(s) or service(s) to research basic consumer demands. You can review the contents of our research here.


Offline Research Proposal

Of course, new entrants to the Chinese market are only one part of the story. Ongoing business in China requires that you stay fully aware of the latest consumer trends and demands in your product sector. You may be searching for product innovations or adaptations that will be suitable for release on the Chinese market. Whatever your consumer marketing research demands may be, CNMI has the knowledge, experience, and skills to help you out.

Please see our customized research page for an overview of our research procedures. The Why CNMI? page will help you understand the benefits and advantages of working with us for your China research projects.