Fake, Real, Fake, Real. Repeat until fade
Real and knock-off 8800's from Chengdu's Tai Shen Lan Lu Market (photos taken late last year). A used original about 220 Yuan, a fake with Nokia logo about 900 Yuan, and a version with identical industrial design but no logo 50 Yuan. The power of the brand? Does the same apply to your brand?
Incidentally, my translator & guide for the day correctly guessed the real from the fake with her eyes (literally) shut by listening to the sound and feeling the sliding mechanism, but with her eyes open she considered the fake to be the real thing. Not exactly surprising considering that she'd not held one in her hands before. This is where I should probably write something about the need to eductate consumers. However, in what contexts does educating consumers on the value of the original drive up the value of the fake?
I've touched on fakes before, whether the fluidity of markets in Shanghai, watching fake covers being packaged up in a Delhi market, the real/fake fake/real battery buying options in Ulan Bataar, fake cigarettes in Xiamen, a prevalance of Ecko in Lhasa, how to fool consumers into thinking a non-waterproof watch is in fact waterproof in Kathmandu, and why Al Zawahri was probably wearing fake New Balance convolutedly via Cairo.
The backdrop to the photos? A backstreet Sichuan eatery. And yes, I'm still in Tokyo.
Writing from Tokyo | January 22, 2007 | Permalink
Cultures of Repair, Innovation
Update: a slightly more print friendly version of this post appears here and the slides of the presentation can be downloaded via here [4MB].
In an effort to understand the total user experience I've taken time out during recent field studies in emerging markets to explore local repair cultures. The journey has taken me to cities such as Chengdu, Delhi, Ulan Bataar, Ho Chi Minh and Lhasa with recent brief stopovers in Kampala and Soweto. They all contain clusters of shops and market stalls selling a mixture of used and new mobile phones, and whilst (in this instance) size does not necessarily matter, they often operate on a scale not seen in cities such as London or Tokyo. The mobile phone market around Chengdu's Tai Shen Lan Lu Market for example stretches across number of streets and shopping arcades and includes 100's of small shops and stalls. If you want a snapshot of urban mobile phone consumers in emerging markets this is a good place to start.
What sets these locations apart from cities in more 'emerged' markets? Aside from the scale of what's on sale there is a thriving market for device repair services ranging from swapping out components to re-soldering circuit boards to reflashing phones in a language of your choice , naturally. Repairs are often carried out with little more than a screwdriver, a toothbrush (for cleaning contact points) the right knowledge and a flat surface to work on. Repair manuals (which appear to be reverse engineered) are available, written in Hindi, English and Chinese and can even be subscribed to, but there is little evidence of them being actively used. Instead many of the repairers rely on informal social networks to share knowledge on common faults, and repair techniques. It's often easier to peer over the shoulder of a neighbour than open the manual itself. Delhi has the distinction of also offering a wide variety of mobile phone repair courses at training institutes such as Britco and Bridco turning out a steady flow of mobile phone repair engineers. To round off the ecosystem wholesalers' offer all the tools required to set up and run a repair business from individual components and circuit board schematics to screwdrivers and software installers.
How are mobile phone repair cultures different from the everyday repair shops for other mainstream electronics filled with televisions and video recorders? For a start consider the volumes of mobile phones in the marketplace compared to other electronics. Network effects soon kick in - it's easier to find a dead RAZR to cannabalise for spares than spares for a Sony DVD drive drive quite simply because there's more of them about. The physical size of the products to be repaired is also an factor - consider the space required to store and repair 200 mobile phones vs CRT televisions. As objects that many consider essential tools for everyday life mobile phones are carried, dropped, sat on, run over, submerged in a wide variety of situations leading to use cases outside the parameters of most phones. Finally, for many emerging market consumers the phone is considered an essential tool for conducting a successful business whether it's a boda-boda driver in Kampala (gentleman on moped in photo, below) or a midwife in Xiamen. If a person has the choice between repairing a television or a (shared) mobile phone which do you think he or she would choose first?
Each of the cities mentioned above offers more formal repair services, usually officially through customer care service centers, but the scale and sophistication of what is on offer informally is way beyond what many readers of Future Perfect will be familiar. And yes, many of the places mentioned already have networks to (from my observations) efficiently recycle, repair and re-use a wide variety objects including electronics . But in the spirit of the Future Perfect let's start with a very basic question - why do these informal repair cultures exist at all? What is so different between London and Lhasa or Helsinki and Ho Chi Minh?
The informal repair services that are offered are quite simply driven by necessity - highly price sensitive customers cannot afford to go through more expensive official customer care centers and even if they could their phones are unlikely to be covered by warrantee - having been bought through grey market channels, been sent as gifts from friends and relatives abroad, or were locally bought used, second or third+ ownership. In many cases these users cannot afford to be without their mobile phone, not in the social sense of being out of touch (which is valid enough), but in many instances because their livelihoods depend on it. On the supply side there is a ready pool of sufficiently skilled labour, ready access to tools, components and above all knowledge.
It's worth acknowledging that grey and black goods and services are also part of the mobile phone market ecosystem - whether it's passing faked goods off as originals or offering pirated software. Some markets also sell a wide variety of phones that copy the industrial designs of other products, examples are shown here and and example of how it can unfold here (these two links are unrelated). These are however, only a part of the whole market ecosystem and from my understanding are small in scale within the context of the physical markets' themselves, compared to the repair services on offer. And before you ask - no, I'm not arguing that piracy is a minor issue.
For consumers the informal repair culture is largely convenient, efficient, fast and cheap, reducing the total cost of ownership for people for whom a small drop in price may make the difference between having or not having a phone. The culture of repair also increases the lifetime of products lowering their environmental impact (though this could be offset by other factors such as inefficiency of using old batteries).
What can we learn from informal repair cultures? Aside from the benefits, what are the risks for consumers and for companies whose products are repaired, refurbished and resold? Given the benefit to (bottom of the pyramid) consumers are there elements of the repair ecosystem that can be exported to other cultures? Can the same skills be applied to other parts of the value chain? And, turning to my original interest in this topic and the work we do in the Mobile HCI Group, given the range of resources and skills available what would it take to turn cultures of repair into cultures of innovation?
I'm at Cape Town University today discussing qualitative research methods and Informal Repair Cultures. The slides of the presentation can be downloaded via here [4MB download] and related presentations here.
Writing from Cape Town | July 3, 2006 | Comments (4) | Permalink
Repair
This counter is located in Chengdu's Tai Shen Lan Lu Market which specialises in new and used mobile phones and has a well developed mobile phone repair culture. The sales assistant is filling a receipt for equipment to make a basic mobile phone repair kit.
For the companies that make the products that are repaired, what are the implications of what you see in this photo?
Writing from Tokyo | June 15, 2006 | Permalink
Consumer Options
Four batteries for sale in China.
Covering a gamut of real consumer options: official Nokia; fake Nokia; premium non-Nokia - costs just below the official Nokia price but doesn't pretend to be official; and generic no-brand. Getting what you pay for? Getting what you perceive you pay for? Quality assurance? Risks?
Writing from Tokyo | March 9, 2006 | Comments (3) | Permalink
Barriers to Market Entry
You buy and sell second hand phones. What steps do you need to take before deciding whether to purchase a second hand device? How easy is it to check that the device works? And given that, what is the minimum infrastructure you need be able to operate? What are the barriers to entering the market?
A sign, a display case, somewhere to sit and something to sell. Photo from the extensive mobile phone market around Chengdu's Tai Shen Lan Lu.
Writing from Tokyo | January 22, 2006 | Comments (0) | Permalink
Used Sales
Traders haggle over the price of a barely used, boxed mobile phone. One trader's stall in the foreground - buying and selling used phones, and a list of phone numbers for sale.
Photo taken last week in Chengdu.
Writing from Tokyo | December 23, 2005 | Permalink
Scale of Repair Cultures
Formal and highly organised mobile phone repair culture in Chengdu, above and more disorganised and smaller scale TV and other electronics repair in Lhasa below. What are the pre-requisites for informal repair cultures? What are the repair volumes for TVs vs mobile phones? Diversity of stocks? Size of components?
Writing from Tokyo | December 22, 2005 | Permalink
Premiums
Phone numbers for sale from one of the many street vendors in Chengdu. The plus numbers e.g. +10, +20 refer to the RMB premiums required to buy those numbers. The phone number 86823666 has a premium of +400 RMB (40 Euro). Prioritisation of user preferences can lead to charging premiums, or alternately giving discounts.
Writing from Tokyo | | Comments (0) | Permalink
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