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May 13, 2009
Wednesday
Authored by JM
We woke up around 8, but put our business casual clothes on for our visit to Aigo. Aigo is a native Chinese company that produces a variety of electronics. The building was only about 10 or 15 mins from our hotel and we all loaded up the bus around 9:30. The first thing we did was look at their product showcase. They had MP3 players, video playing device, and a cool map technology. The map technology worked with a special pen that when pressed to certain locations on the map would provide specific information about that site. After the product showcase, they provided us a presentation about the company, which went into more detail about their operation. However, the presentation was a little weak. Not only did their PowerPoint not work, but also the girl giving it seemed really nervous and rushed through things at the end. We returned to the product showcase and ended up getting kicked out because we started to play music a little too loud over their speaker system…. We don’t think everyone likes Single Ladies as much as us.
When we left Aigo, we walked out through the lobby where there was a BMW dealership. What was interesting about the dealership was that we could really see the price premium on the cars. The largest price difference was on the BMW X6. It is probably priced around 60,000 in the states and was 270,000 in China. Really crazy!
As a group, we walked down the street to a local pizza place. The pizza was surprisingly good and was a nice change from all of the Chinese food we usually have. Also, during lunch we talked to a few of the students that were there to escort our group. The main topic was really about Aigo and if they thought Aigo was a good company. Aigo occupies a middle ground between the internationals and the cheap locally produced electronics and we wanted to see if the students actually purchased their electronics. The explanation we got was that yes some students do purchase Aigo merchandise, but if they were going to buy anything it would either be a iPod or a Sony PSP, not anything made by Aigo.
We got back to the hotel around 1 and spent the afternoon working on the blog and relaxing. We intended on doing more, but I ended up not being able to make it through the afternoon. However, as a continuation of our group project, we all went over to Wal-Mart around 5. Wal-Mart China was a very unique experience. It was definitely a more western style store then most that we have been in, but had a lot of Chinese influence. They had the raw fish in the basement and the different meats as well, but they had more prepackaged food then we saw as Carrefour. Additionally, when we were walking through the electronics aisle, we spotted a lot of knock off iPods, including an iPod shuffle knock-off made by Aigo. Seeing the Aigo shuffle confirmed to us that Wal-Mart might not truly limit its vendors in China and Aigo does do some sketchy things. The Wal-Mart experience turned out to be very interesting, but the adaption of Wal-Mart to the Chinese culture was nothing compared to Carrefour.
We finished our Wal-Mart adventure around 7:30 and all went to dinner at the Bridge Café, which is in the basement of our hotel. The Bridge Café, as we may have mentioned before, serves western style food and it was the last night it was in operation. We all specially went to the Bridge for a little western food and to enjoy its last night. We also spent some time working on our project, which is a comparison between Wal-Mart and Aigo. We had to wake up early for our Great Wall trip, so Wednesday night ended up being an early night.
Posted by jfavorit at May 13, 2009 02:35 AM