Chinese businesses have been in a state of digital transformation for the past two decades. Since the early 1990s, many enterprises owned by national or local governments have been privatized, and many of those realized that they could make information technology their key competency. However, traditional retail and manufacturing brands in China are very fragmented. The country lacks a local version of Wal-Mart or Macy’s — large organizations that dominate specific sectors.

The rise of Internet companies and their new business models is digitally disrupting already struggling traditional brands. Internet companies in China are using their strong capital resources to take center stage in many markets, creating new service delivery models, bringing online experiences offline, and making transactions through online marketplaces instead of in physical stores.

Most of the traditional brands that I spoke with in the course of the research for my most recent report were unable to react properly, as they were using immature digital intelligence to understand online users. But traditional brands have now realized the value of doing business online and intend to apply advanced digital analytics to understand customer behavior across the multitude of digital channels — web, social, and mobile. For instance, Chinese banks are starting to employ digital analytics to understand how people use Internet financing.One of the four largest Chinese banksis accustomed to analyzing transactional data but has limited experience in online user behavior analysis; to offset this, the bank recently announced a plan to implement web analytics tools to understand how customers interact with its website, search engine, and social platforms.

Brands in China primarily use digital analytics tools from Western vendors, but some advanced tools may not work well in China. If they’re hosted outside of the country, they have likely been affected by the Great Firewall and other regulatory impediments. With a broader range of offerings by local contenders, Chinese firms must undertake their vendor selection process based on line-of-business requests on digital. If you would like more details on vendor selection, please check out the report or feel free to let us know.

 

Related Forrester Research

Brief: The State Of Digital Analytics In China