Wine marketing in China-----a winding road

Many international wine dealers feel at a loss when it comes to China’s wine marketing. They often can’t figure out how to market in China’s unique market. It is justifiable to pay customs duty, transportation fee and other expenditures for exporting their products, but what confuses them is some hidden rules, making the exported wine price much more higher than what it should be. Among the rules retailers’ sale expenditure is on the top list, which is a kind of business bribery to retailers offered by wine dealers due to strong competition. Although the wine dealers complain about it, they can do nothing about it within a short time, because the rule is not framed for a few but for all. To some extent, some wine dealers are also responsible for the bribery. In order to promote their products in shops, they have to spend money ‘buying’ sales places, which makes the retailers greedier for more money from the wine dealers. For imported wine dealers, they are the outsiders of these hidden rules in China’ wine market, but for some famous imported wine agents, such as Jointek and Aussino, because they have known the rules, they have a good idea of when and how to spend the money on promotion.

As for some international wine dealers, they should try to get accustomed to China’s wine market and its rules in order to gain a share; otherwise they have to find out a new marketing model workable for China. Whatever these rules are, we expect a marketing model with consideration of both wine dealers’ and customers’ interests.