China suppliers are some of the most cost efficient suppliers in today’s market. These China suppliers are able to offer a host of products, even services, to buyers all around the world. China can offer these greatly reduced prices because of their plentiful supply of labor. This has turned the country into a veritable workshop of the world to buyers all across the planet. Finding items made in China is a pretty easy thing to do. Look up and down the rows of products sitting on the shelves of local stores. Undoubtedly you’ll see rows upon rows of items that are marked as having originated in China.

However, the great availability of products from China has led to the assumption that getting items from China suppliers is an easy thing to do. There is actually a complex supply chain that brings these products from the suppliers and back home. There are so many items offered by China for sale that it is often a difficult proposition to find exactly what you are looking for. Furthermore, depending on how distant you are from China and who you are interfacing with, barriers such as time, language and distance may prevent you from finding that exact trinket that would be great to market and sell back home.

An effective way of cutting through much of this difficulty relies on quick and rapid communication and verification of suppliers. Opening up channels with China suppliers doesn’t need to be so overly formal or technical. While international trade is usually regulated and compounded by governmental red tape, there are alternatives to communicating with China suppliers that don’t involve cold calls. The old methods of communication in the business world by telephone and fax is rapidly drying up because of more efficient ways of communicating business needs.

Conducting business via unofficial channels, whether in small personal meetings or at trade shows, can be more important than cold calling a prospective business partner. This removes much of the formality that often accompanies traditional means of business interaction. Online social networking offers a solution to many international business people. Online social networking websites dedicated to facilitating international trade do exist. These sites can open up lines of communication between China suppliers and the rest of the world. The main benefit of being on one of these websites is that membership is consensual. Every party online is doing so willingly.

Cultures have a very significant impact on the way to make business. Chinese culture is belonging to Asian cultures, which are very peculiar and totally different from Western cultures. Wilson (2004) in one of his articles has stated that “culture is a popular explanatory concept frequently used to describe a company, a rationale for people’s behaviour, a guideline for action, a cause for condemnation or praise, or a quality that makes a company ‘what it is’”.

If a company is oriented toward the Chinese market, of course, the influence of Chinese culture will be significant. For example, culture can play a dramatic role in positioning new products or brand-building, or it may have an impact on consumers, on their preferences where to shop. Currently international companies are concerned with methods of attracting and satisfying Chinese customers. Managers should always keep in mind that Chinese culture can either track closely or have a knock-on effect on business and negotiating process. That is the problem.

To find a good solution and a good approach to Chinese customers foreign business partners have to know that Chinese consumers are different from their own culture. Chinese people value order and believe in their collectivistic culture. Also they are faithful to the cultural tradition of Confucianism which has a significant impact on their behaviour. However, currently there is a great influence of modernization, globalization and industrialization which put in question traditional Confucian values of Chinese consumers. Hence, the situation is changing rapidly and it is quite difficult to control it. The only way out of this endless circle is to monitor and analyze not the Chinese market and Chinese economy, but to analyze Chinese consumer behaviour from the anthropological point of view.

The good advice for managers could be to study Chinese culture in comparison with up-to-date anthropological monitoring. It is necessary to understand that quantitative studies (statistical data) are not a good base for creating different strategies oriented toward business at the Chinese market. Strategies based on qualitative studies will be very useful and beneficial for newcomers to the Chinese market due to the fact that the research based on qualitative methods purports the analysis and understanding of people’s behaviour. Only then foreign managers can state that they know Chinese market and Chinese consumers very well.