Reflective Journal 2: Management Consultant Project Reflections

During our CDE lessons for weeks 3 and 4, we were supposed to present a group project presentation on a management consultant scenario. My group consisted of myself, Gao Yang, Ming Chuan and Yi Kun. After much deliberation, we decided to help a company called Meizu. Meizu is 1 of the top 10 smartphone manufacturers in China and expanded into the smartphone market in 2008. Meizu has set up HK branch in 2011 to explore potential global marketing.

After analysis, we realised that Meizu not trusted and known by the US consumers. US consumers have a sort of stereotyping concept that China products are of low quality. They would rather support the Home team which mainly are the competitors of Meizu e.g. Apple. Apple and Google are constantly improving themselves to suit customers’ needs, gaining their trust. Furthermore, Meizu has lack of support outside China. We also came up with some solutions to the problems.

• Meizu should set up a headquarters in the US. 
• Meizu should work with the telcos in the US to make their phones more popular through advertising and campaigning,. e.g. AT&T, Verizon. 
• Meizu should hire people in the US and have better working benefits like Google. 
• Meizu should be unique (e.g. own operating system). 

As a presenter, I felt that we were one of the better groups who had really did our best. We had indeed spent a lot of time and effort into the presentation, trying to express our knowledge and thoughts. However, the audience was not really attentive and quite restless. Some people were focusing more on their electronic devices, most probably doing last minute work. I felt sad that most of the people were not listening to our presentation. Isn't it basic respect or courtesy to give the people who were presenting your fullest attention? After the presentation, we had room for improvement such as the solutions were not detailed enough and the target audience.

As part of the audience, I thought that some of the presentations are very well prepared and the presenters were enthusiastic about the presentations too. I must also admit that the sometimes the presentations are quite boring too as they were either too wordy or too long. Group 1 presented on Youku Tudou. They had analysed all 4 companies including YouTube which is Youku Tudou's main competitor if it expanded to the US market. However, their group mentioned only brief details of their suggestions. Group 2 presented on WeChat. Their presentation was short and sweet and had really good in-depth analysis on the company. However, I would like to point out one of their suggestions was flawed. They mentioned that they should hire the employees from rivals in China, but isn't that poaching? Group 3 presented on Li Ning. I felt that their presentation had also a good analysis of the company. Their suggestions were quite brief. Their 'Great Plan' was very good plan and estimated the problems and challenges that Li Ning might face and also come up with predictions as to when it would break into the US market, etc. Group 4 presented on Geely. Their group was the last group to present therefore it was rather plain except for the fact that they handled the Q & A session very well and all my doubts were answered. Group 5 did on Qihoo. I liked the design of their slides. The unique part was when they had a demonstration of the company's product and showed us through. Their way of engaging the audience was better than the rest of the groups. Group 7 did on XTEP. Their presentation was quite unclear and I had to ask them some questions after their presentation. They did not mention how to improve the design and what they define by creative if there was a test for it. Group 8 did on Baidu. I was already very familiar with Baidu thus the group did fine. They did not address the publicity issue.

In conclusion, I feel that I have indeed benefited from the presentations a lot and learnt more about the different Chinese companies that I have heard from. I feel that Chinese companies would find it difficult to expand to the US market mainly because of this 'China Firewall'. The government does not really approve of the companies' expansion as they feel that China is already the best and also did not want influence from the West, therefore resulting in a very conservative Chinese market. However, the US market is much more free and easy. Overall, I feel that the presentations were also quite good however it would be better if the audience gave more respect to the speakers. In the future, I hope to have more of such activities but with a better environment.