How to manage a brand in China?

To manage European brands in China the article mentions two approaches:

The first one says you should copy every element of the brand from the European market to the Chinese market and only change the original text in Chinese characters. But because cultural differences influence this type of branding, this approach is not much used.

The second one mentions you have to change everything to the local culture. Unfortunately this approach is very expensive so a better way would be the middle way: keep the possible things and change what’s necessary.
But how do you know what to change en what to keep?

Here is the example given for Finnish products. Professor Zhenyi Li studied what would be the right approach to brand these products. He found out that the approaches above-mentioned are not what the Chinese people expect. They want to see the original brand image so they can associate the product with the country-of-origin.

Although the Chinese market has cultural differences with the European market, it’s not that every product should be adapted to their culture.

Thaïsa Van Haesebroeck

https://jyx.jyu.fi/dspace/handle/123456789/13223