The destination of the Stratos 2013 study
trip was Hong Kong – one of the most important centers of international
business in the world. Since the Brits left Hong Kong in 1997, Hong Kong has
continued thriving as an important hub for international commerce and banking.
This year the Stratos study trip included a
variety of activities, starting from interesting excursions to Finnish
companies and finishing with a boat ride along the shores of Hong Kong. Every day
was packed with things to do and we got so much done. We did interesting excursions
to Nokia sales office, Finpro, and the consulate of Finland and Macau - another
special administrative region in China. We also visited the traditional
horseraces at the Happy Valley horse track and cruised along the coastline of Hong
Kong island in a wooden boat. The trip was also filled with memorable smaller
things, such as trying out local Cantonese cuisine, admiring the Hong Kong
skyline lit up by night, sightseeing on Victoria Peak, and taking in the mere
atmosphere of an international metropolitan city.
Excursion to Nokia
. Our host at Nokia was Pauline Ang, the
head of Sales Operations in the Pan Asia region, as Nokia’s office in Hong Kong
is responsible for managing the sales of countries such as Singapore,
Philippines and Vietnam. In the beginning
Pauline gave us a very valuable orientation on Hong Kong - starting from
telling us exactly where we are located.
The first presentation was Chris Lee, who
works with Nokia’s direct retail partners in Hong Kong. He gave us a good
overview of the smart and mobile phone markets in Hong Kong, and of course told
us about Nokia’s current situation and objectives there. It was interesting to
learn that Hong Kong residents and especially young people consider smart
phones to be an important part of their image and want to keep up with mobile
trends. Most people own a smartphone, and are very aware of its features. It
was surprising for us to find out that consumers of smart phones switch brands
easily, and they trend-conscious consumers in Hong Kong change the old device
to a new one on average every 4-6 months! Another interesting fact was that Hong
Kong has no sales tax and no separate tax for luxury goods, so a lot of Chinese
consumers choose to shop in Hong Kong. A distinctive characteristic of the
smart phone market in Hong Kong is that 45 million mainland Chinese tourists
annually flock to shop electronics and luxury goods.
Simon Lau, the head of product management,
gave us a presentation about Nokia’s products’ success in Hong Kong. His
approach was a very informative timeline, beginning from 2011 until today. This
way the timeline covered the impacts of the shutdown of Symbian, the launch of
the iPhone 4 and the switch to Windows-based smart phones.
Sunny Tong then
held a presentation about Nokia’s marketing strategies in HK. She told us about
a new strategy that goes: “Blending in is out”. Social media and photo shop
applications were very important in this new strategy and also for the HK
smartphone users. We were shown a few Nokia commercial clips from Youtube to
illustrate the difference between marketing strategies in Hong Kong and the
‘overseas’ Nokia. The videos featured well-known hongkongese bloggers and celebrities.
Next it was Dennis Lam’s turn to tell us
about the practical activities of Nokia’s marketing in HK. The biggest activity
was the Nokia Roadshow, where people have a chance to test the Nokia phones and
Nokia’s salesmen can teach people how to use them, as people are not so
familiar with the Windows Phone operating system yet.
The final presentation at the excursion was
Choco Chan’s. She gave us an energetic presentation about how Nokia trains
their sales people, and told us about Nokia’s employee engagement programs. One
program was the “Switch” –program, which was actually won by Choco herself! She
had made an energetic video that illustrated how the new Nokia Lumia phone is
the best in the market at the moment.
All in all, we enjoyed our visit to Nokia
very much. Presentations were truly interesting, the people at Nokia in HK were
so nice to us, and we felt that we were very welcome there.
Excursion to consulate & Finpro:
Next excursion was made to the Finnish
consulate in Hong Kong. This was a combined excursion also to Finpro, as Eric
Cheng from Finpro was also there to give us a presentation about Finpro’s
activities in Hong Kong. Annikki Arponen, the consul-general of the consulate
general of Finland, was our host. Nina Pahlman, the general manager of the
Finnish chamber of commerce in Hong Kong, and Joakim Heino, the Chairman of the
Finnish Chamber of Commerce were also present.
First Annikki gave us a bigger presentation
about the basic things that the consulate does, which was very interesting. A
good illustration of what the purpose of the consulate is, was to compare it to
a fire station – they have to stay alert at all times and hope that nothing too
big happens, because usually that means that somebody is in trouble. Then everyone
presented themselves, held a brief presentation about who they were and told us
details about their work and Hong Kong.
After this the occasion was more
interactive, as we had many interesting discussions about the business
opportunities for Finnish companies in HK. We learned a lot through listening
and participating in the discussion, one key point was that HK is a gateway to
the market in China. “If you don’t make it in Hong Kong, you won’t make it in
China” – they told us. Hong Kong is in that sense a very good environment for
businesses that are willing to enter the Chinese market, to test their
capabilities first. We also learned that it is almost too easy to open up a
business in Hong Kong, making the business profitable is another thing and
takes a lot of hard work and effort. If the business won’t succeed in China,
it’s also quite hard to close up a business due to bureaucracy.
Help from companies like Finpro is
essential to avoid the pitfalls of entering the Hong Kong market, and the preparation
and analysis of the market beforehand is also crucial – it’s not all smooth
sailing. Still it sure seemed like HK can offer a lot of very good
opportunities for foreign companies to internationalize and expand their
business and also to test their wings before storming to the Chinese markets.
Trip to Macau:
One highlight of our study trip was to
visit the casino capital of the world by revenue – Macau.
Best way to travel to Macau from Hong Kong
is by ferry. It’s really fast and it only takes about an hour to get there.
Based on other peoples negative experiences we had read from the Internet, we
were quite worried that the fast boat trip would makes us a bit sea sick. But
luckily the seas were favorable that day and the ride was very smooth.
Macau had a lot to offer, it was a place
where you could notice a strong contrast between old colonial times and modern
capitalism. On one hand the unique history and the influence of Portugal was
easy to see, as a lot of the architecture and
even the tiles on the ground were designed in a typically Portuguese
fashion. This was in some places fascinatingly mixed with newer Chinese architecture
and atmosphere. On other hand the contrast between poor and huge richness was
quite obvious. Massive and sparkling casinos, built to serve the super rich
people coming from mainland China, beside old and worn out buildings created a
very special mix.
Our trip was roughly divided into two
sections. During the day we got to know the city’s architecture and culture by
walking around the streets in the older part of Macau. When the sun set, it was
time to hit the casinos and we did that by visiting the biggest casino in the
world; the Venetian, where we tried out the roulette and shopped in the many
stores. In a sense the day trip’s two sectioned programs sum up the contrast of
Macau.
As mentioned earlier, in addition to the
excursions, the trip included a lot of fun day trips and just having fun as a
group. Our spirits were high throughout the trip and the group stuck together
very firmly. We took time to visit some of the more famous attractions like The
Peak, Hotel Ritz Carlton’s world’s highest bar and on the last whole day left a
boat ride that was a truly memorable event for all of us. Thank you all, and (多謝) duo tse!
