Since 2007, when OATS first started activities in China, the nation's growth has been spectacular.
Beijing 2007 and the same area in 2016 - Image: OATS & Commons |
The urban landscape has been transformed. Infrastructure and buildings have appeared with extraordinary speed. But the growth is dysfunctional.
The roads, the arteries of any modern economy, are frequently clogged and short journeys routinely taking more than two hours. The much-famed planning process has failed; intersections are grid-locked. So, what is the industrial cost of so much wasted time?
Beijing’s Auto Show at the end of April welcomed exhibitors from all over the world, as Mercedes declared China is now its largest market. But, where are all these new cars going to go? At what stage does the continued expansion of the car population cease to be practical? So far few consultants are predicting the car market will stop growing any time soon. Something has to give.
Lubrizol reported at the London ICIS conference that new models of car ownership may transform society as people move to a different model of car ownership. In a city of 30 million people why own a car when movement is so difficult? Just use a car by the hour when you really have to drive. And use public transport (hence China's investment in the high speed trains and huge urban subway systems or just work from home!
Beijing hosted the world's largest internet conference in December 2015. While the physical arteries may be becoming blocked, the speed of adoption on the internet highway are accelerating.
Life in China is lived not through Facebook and Google (as in the West ) but by Baidu and Wechat. Despite recent concerns about "WeChat Fatigue", the app has clearly become the portal by which the new generation lives; communicating with friends, colleagues, buying goods, even finding out what engine oil to buy – and then buying it - all via a single mobile application.
For lubricants marketers, if lubricant recommendations or oil selectors are not accessible through WeChat, you are not in the market! If you don’t have a lubricant recommendation system at all, then you are even further behind an increasingly competitive curve. For the current Chinese generation, the always-connected/always-online society is their real world.
The challenge for the lubricants industry is to respond and keep up.
OATS has the market coverage and the cloud systems to deliver the solutions, at the speed required, to maintain the highest levels of communication with customers and consumers in this digital environment
To find out more, talk to us on WeChat, or by e-mail by contacting DShen@oats.co.uk. For global information on OATS products and services, you can reach us via e-mail or follow our updates on social media via Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn and Google+.
Sebastian Crawshaw
Chairman