By Suzanne McGee, MSN MoneyWhen a Beijing resident buys a new home, he or she ends up with a concrete shell: nothing but a front door, windows and four walls. "There are no floors -- just concrete," says Shawn Gray, vice president of operations for Wal-Mart China. "There are no light fixtures; there is no toilet; there are no kitchen counters."
Consequently, Sam's Club outlets in cities like Beijing carry a wide array of home appliances -- from luxurious Western-style refrigerators to water heaters. The stores' upmarket customers can sort through a variety of brands, styles and features to pick exactly the models that suit them.
But therein lies the problem -- because evaluating options and making smart choices are tasks for which many Chinese are ill-equipped. Chinese citizens in their 30s can still remember using ration coupons to purchase basic food staples, before the advent of supermarkets and malls; those in their 40s and 50s vividly recall the era of anti-fashion, when nearly all Chinese wore standard blue cotton jackets and pants and cropped their hair. Almost none has what is fast becoming a key survival skill: savvy shopping. 
Video: What are they buying?
"Choice, for those of us who remember those days, is tough," says Hung Huang, a media entrepreneur who moved to New York with her mother and stepfather
in the 1970s and encountered the problem there.
"The big choice for me in Beijing -- and for everyone else who was just like me, and everyone was alike, whether they were the premier's daughter or Mr. Zhao the worker's son -- was whether to buy the vanilla ice cream for five fen or the red bean ice cream for three fen," Hung says. "Then you'd see these Italian ice carts on the streets of New York and you'd faint. Or Baskin-Robbins …"
These days, the arrays of consumer choices available to the Chinese consumer can make a foray to Baskin-Robbins look straightforward.
"In China, everyone is buying things for the first time -- it is the first time anyone in their family has bought a car, ever, or renovated a home, ever," says Tom Melcher, co-founder of Beijing Bamboo Ventures.
Melcher plans to launch a series of Web sites devoted to helping Chinese consumers make major decisions -- from planning a wedding to choosing an overseas college to renovating a home. "Consumers have gone from having no options and no information to being overloaded with both -- it's like being put on steroids," Melcher says. Video: Advertising overload
In the United States, a buyer for Home Depot might
pre-select for the store's customers an assortment of the best faucets for kitchen and bathroom taps. In the Chinese version of a Home Depot, "You get all 300 that are available … and no one to guide you to the one that's right for you," Melcher explains.
That's why Melcher recruited Huang Ying, a Chinese returning from Canada to live in Beijing. Huang will oversee the content of Beijing Bamboo's second new venture, ChinaDeco.com, a Web store now under construction. One of the more interesting parts of the site is Huang's first-person saga about her own home renovation.
"I had a lot of problems," she says, laughing at the memory.
Huang hadn't expected her project would be quite that tough; after all, unlike some of her friends, she had a clear vision of what she wanted. "But the material market is so huge, you don't know where to start," she says. "If you go to look at flooring, you see 10 different kinds of a similar color and you can't tell the difference. Some salespeople won't tell you the truth; you don't know who you can trust." Video: Nobody trusts the media
The need for basic consumer education creates a special set of challenges for companies trying to
introduce new products in China, says Tom Doctoroff, head of greater China for ad agency JWT.
"Every new brand represents progress," Doctoroff says. "But which option is best?"
Doctoroff suggests that, because consumers are still figuring out what their needs are, it's up to the manufacturer to spell out, in simple but not condescending terms, the specific need that the product might fill in the Chinese consumer's life, rather than leaving it up to the consumer to deduce.
He says that a lot of ideas commonplace in the West remain alien in China -- such as the notion that driving can be fun. "That's why there is no concept of a sports car here," he adds. "And despite the inroads made by high-end cosmetics, I don't think there is a real understanding of the difference between repair and anti-aging skin treatments."
Although manufacturers might prefer the efficiency of narrowly targeted promotions, the need to reach out to the vast number of consumers favors broad-based efforts, so mass media campaigns remain the bedrock of a product launch in China.
"I can't think of a brand in China that has succeeded without a broad-scale media launch," Doctoroff says.
And there are plenty of glossy magazines happy to carry the ads. Newsstands in Beijing and Shanghai look much like their counterparts in New York and Los Angeles, offering local editions of Marie Claire, Vogue and Cosmopolitan for China's fashion-minded women.
Men can pick up the Chinese edition of Men's Health to study the list of consumer "must haves" for 2007: 100 items that range from cars (the Audi Q7 or BMW M5) and camping gear to a Steelcase executive chair, a high-end kayak, an Adidas Polaris Watch and a bottle of 1998 Dom Perignon champagne. Slide show: See the magazines
Publishers of these magazines rarely need to worry about government interference -- their content promotes consumption, and convincing China's emerging middle classes to spend rather than hoard their yuan is a key component of domestic policy.
Yan Jingping, the managing editor of a magazine called Life Style, believes that Chinese consumers have come a long way. "Our readers now all know about Gucci or Louis Vuitton," explains Yan. "They are familiar with the brands and their characteristics, but they are in search of information about where they can get the best value for their money on these items."
In some areas, though, her readers are still learning.
The consumption of experiences, rather than tangible objects like designer handbags or laptop computers, is still new to the Chinese. Only in the last year or two has it become relatively easy to obtain a passport and travel outside the country. So Yan's publication now devotes more space to travel.
Ahead of the Christmas holiday, she published a series of features about places to spend Christmas. The first, appearing in mid-November, focused on overseas destinations. Then came a series on off-the-beaten-track destinations within China -- but still require boarding a plane. The final chapter, published in mid-December, identified four places within a two-hour drive of Beijing where the city's trendsetters could find a Christmassy ambience, a big party, a gourmet dinner or a bonfire.
Now, every Monday and Thursday, some 300,000 Beijing citizens scramble to get a copy of local magazine Life Style, seeking tips on vacation destinations, the best department store sales, the latest fitness clubs and the best manicures. Chart: Disposable income growth
And the questions are only likely to get harder. Which travel company offers the best tour to Europe? Which U.S. college is the right "fit" for overseas study? Which
fitness club has the best combination of equipment, trainers and classes?
And, more basically: How do I even begin to decide?
"Answering those questions is the business that I believe will keep me here in China," says Melcher. Chart: Chinese stocks to watch
Produced by Anh Ly
Graphics by Joe Farro and Hakan Isik
Published June 29, 2007
