DAIDOU Can A Complex Story Be Told Without Words? JIANI ZHENG DAIGOU: CAN A COMPLEX STORY BE TOLD WITHOUT WORDS Thesis Presented by Jiani Zheng to The Department of Art + Design In Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Master of Fine Arts Northeastern University Boston, Massachusetts April, 2017 2 3 DAIGOU “BUYING ON BEHALF ” ABSTRACT A new figure in the luxury market is called Daigou. Through Daigou, customers can enjoy a wider range of product choices and purchase foreign goods at a lower price and higher quality than domestic goods. Therefore, the first question arises when Daigou changes the traditional retailing model of the business market. The market adds another stakeholder into the transaction process. The thesis question is: can a complex market be told through icons? The thesis analyzes the market of Daigou. Base on my research, the study exposes the process of the market system. The experiments are trying to answer the thesis questions. 4 5 ACKNOWLEDGMENTS I would first like to thank my thesis advisor, Professor Nathan Felde,, Information Design and Visualization, Northeastern University. Professor Nathan Felde was always helping whenever I ran into a trouble spot or had a question about my research or writing. He consistently allowed this paper to be my work, but steered me in the right direction whenever he thought I needed it. I would also like to thank a reader who was involved in guiding the research project, Professor Miso Kim. Without her passionate participation and input, the study could not have been successfully conducted. Finally, I must express my very profound gratitude to my parents and my work experience for providing me with unfailing support and continuous encouragement throughout my years of study and the process of researching and writing this thesis. My accomplishment would not have been possible with- out them. Thank you. Jiani Zheng 6 7 CONTENT Abstract Acknowledgments Contents CHAPTER 1 Introduction 1.1 What is Daigou? 13 1.2 What is the Problem? 15 CHAPTER 2 State of The Art 2.1 Reveal Deception and Corruption 21 2.2 Existing Visualization of Daigou 23 2.3 What Builds Trust ? 25 2.4 Personal Experience 31 2.5 Study of Icons/Wordless 35 2.6 The wordless workshop 41 CHAPTER 3 Conceptual Framing 3.1 Concept 63 CHAPTER 4 Initial Experiment 4.1 What is the System of Gray Market? 65 4.2 System Graph of Daigou 67 4.3 Daigou behavior 71 CHAPTER 5 Second Experiment 5.1 Business Model 75 5.2 Creating Application 79 5.3 Visual Lexicon 91 CHAPTER 6 conclusion 95 8 9 Daigou can make items deliverable to a client’s country through the international post, express mail, or other means. I was introduced to the term when I worked at Saks Fifth Avenue as a member of the retail staff. The company warned all sales staff of Daigou, that is, people who were not the final consumers but who participated in a transaction as a third party. The manager emphasized that these individuals would come individually and purchase large amounts of CHAPTER ONE luxury goods such as handbags repetitively. Introduction While working at Saks Fifth Avenue, I developed a personal interest in understanding this “grey market,” a “loud” secret in the Chinese culture. According to my observation, Daigou is an insecure market system to both buy and sell luxury goods. 10 11 WHAT DAIGOU CAN DO 1.1 WHAT IS DAIGOU? In the past, a Chinese traveler would often buy a few extra items abroad for friends or family. However, the massive demand in China and the price discounts for buying certain items abroad have begun to encourage certain individuals to focus on Daigou as a business where they buy abroad and import directly. Although potentially questionable, this business model may work because the shoppers are using their personal allowance to bring in goods duty-free. As international students travel more frequently, many now buy goods on behalf of customers from home when they return for school holiday; these students Daigous Consumers have Daigous can deliver net large commissions on each purchase. Because can do currency no language the acquired foreign they are international students, language translation is exchange. problem as product world wide. typically not a problem for them. Daigous’ can translate the Most of the Daigous use social media platforms like foreign language. Weibo and WeChat to sell to their extended networks. Because the market does not have any specifications and regulations, Daigou can be a very insecure way to buy the luxury goods. 12 13 EVOLUTION OF NUMBER OF DAIGOUS Each represents a 1000 of Daigou in China. An indication of the demand for Daigou. 2009 1.2 WHAT IS THE PROBLEM? 2010 The gray market is entirely based on trust. This thesis has the goal of revealing to customers, especially Chinese buyers, how the Daigou system 2011 works using information design. Information design can detail the planning of complex information that is to be provided to a particular audience to meet specific objectives. One of the main characteristics of 2012 information design is that it translates complex systems and processes into simple and visual models that would help any audience understand the complexity of the gray market. 2013 Over 20,000 Daigou are operating from Hong Kong, and China is still the largest consumer of luxury goods in the world. But the country’s high import 2014 taxes on foreign luxury goods means these products can be anywhere from 30 to 60 percent more expensive in Shanghai or Beijing than in global fashion capitals like New York, London, and Paris. 2015 Of the more than $80 billion in purchases of personal luxury goods by Chinese consumers last year, two-thirds were made outside China. According to the China Research Center, the Daigou market was worth ¥74.4 billion (about $12 billion) in 2013 and is forecasted to exceed $18 billion in 20141. Refrence1: Gil, Luciana A., Denni Arli, and Fandy Tjiptono. “Does A Religion Make Consum- ers Less Materialistic? An Empirical Investigation On Consumers’ Pespective Toward Material- ism And Luxury Goods.” Global Fashion Management Conference 3.2 (2015): 325. Web. 14 15 There are thought to be over 20,000 Daigous retail market. It makes people’s shopping more existing in the US and China, with an annual diverse because Daigou can solve problems revenue of $15 billion. concerning an area, policy, language, The main audience of this thesis is Chinese which and so on. are a language barrier and a trend-sensitive young population who prefers visual information over According to an estimation from The Wall Street verbal information. By having experimented of Journal, Daigou is a gray market of retail goods “Can a complex story be told with only symbols?” importation whose market scale has reached 75 billion RMB. The article available at WN.com uses data to Daigou offers a more competitive price because reveal the huge share of Daigou in the retail market it does not have high tariffs and costs for physical in China. The data is from The Wall Street Journal, a stores. Furthermore, it is universally agreed it does famous and authoritative newspaper, so the data are not pay China’s cost that products from the original very reliable and persuasive. It also helps to discuss source offer higher quality than those produced or the advantages of Daigou in China’s retail market. partially manufactured in the home country. In this The article might have been better with data from case, domestic buyers prefer buying overseas goods traditional retail to form a contrast for a more natural through Daigous rather than imported products transition to the next part of the paper. sold in stores. Daigou brings considerable economic benefits but In “The Influence of Daigou on Economy and also a heavy strike to China’s domestic traditional Trade in China” by Hou Zefeng in City Economy retail market. In 2013, the luxury trade volume in Magazine, he discussed the three characteristics of China reached $116 billion. However, the share of Daigou and gave an analysis of the reason Daigou physical stores only occupied $28 billion, with a 3 has those three characteristics. The paper is an percent growth rate. More importantly, that same year, excellent introduction to the concept of Daigou Daigou’s volume of luxury sales grew at a rate of 30 and explains indirectly why this character is so percent (Figure 1). popular in China. According to Zefeng, Daigou has These facts show the following aspects: significant influence on China’s economy, especially the retail market. In recent years, Daigou has been •The first is the strengthening of information rapidly growing with the development of electronic symmetry, which means the mask of expensive business. It is walking in the gray belt of policies, domestic goods being much cheaper than foreign but the vast market space from luxury items to daily ones was revealed. necessities such as milk powder makes it a •The second one is the failure of “hunger marketing.” significant force people cannot ignore in China’s •The third one is that the lower price of Daigou 16 17 2013 VOLUME OF TRADE OF makes people prefer taking the long process than the LUXURY GOODS IN CHINA short one. TOTALS $116 BILLION DOLLARS In the article “The Influences of ‘Daigou’ on Luxury Retail in China” written by Cheng Siyao, a doctor at Peking University, the author describes Daigou’s influences on specific aspects and illuminates statistics GROWTH 30% to reveal contrasts of growth between Daigou and the domestic traditional retail industry. In this essay, the author mainly analyzes the contrast of an academic method with favorable data to argue that the boosting of Daigou brings a great rush to the domestic retail market.