Dyson China: localization makes it successful.

Today, we talk about a non-automotive brand, which is worthy to study as well. That is Dyson, a multinational technology company, that is famous for its household appliances.

Dyson Based: An Excellent Company that Mixes Invention and Marketing.

As usual, we can classify companies as invention-encouragement companies and sales-encouragement companies. Dyson is the former one because of its extraordinary product and design. However, the marketing of Dyson is also innovative and is ignored by the public due to the strong power of their product.

Dyson achieved a lot with a suitable and innovative marketing strategy.

In 2002, Dyson was launched in 50 American Best Buy stores in one sitting due to using national TV advertising. That was a classical marketing action for covering brand awareness widely.

Another prime example, in 2004, Dyson held an innovation launch event for DC12 model vacuum cleaners in Japan. Inspired by the internal construction of the DC12, the stage of this launch event was a huge transparent race track, simulating the strong centrifugal force of the DC12.

After the event, Dyson DC12 left a positive deep impression on audiences and occupied rapidly 20% shares of the Japanese market in 3 months.

Dyson China: A localization Strategy to Make it Successful.

As a global enterprise, Dyson entered China in 2012. After research, I found that the expanding period of Dyson is from 2016 to 2019. During this period, Dyson maintained double-figure income growth each year. In 2019, they gained nearly 10 billion incomes in China.

So, how's Dyson's China strategy? In my opinion, the key to success lies in using localized brand strategies, such as the high-end product strategy and consumer experience marketing strategy.

• localization Strategy 1: the High-End Product Strategy

On one hand, there were no high-end hair-dryer products in China and all hair-dryer product prices were below 200 yuan before the Dyson product launched in 2016. In other words, it was an entire blue ocean market for Dyson China because they had a professional hair-dryer product, Supersonic™.

Compared with other products, the price of Supersonic™ was rather expensive, above 15 times theirs. Although the price was high, the technologies of Supersonic™ were rich as well, such as Air Amplifier™, the 9th generation digital engine, intelligent warm controlling, etc. All technologies on Supersonic™ were innovative and people had never seen them before. It seems like a new iPhone appearance among Android automobiles.

• localization Strategy 2: the Consumer Experience Marketing Strategy

On the other hand, Dyson realized that owning an excellent product is not far enough to meet and even exceed the income growth without effective promotion and efficient sales-places.

For sales places, Dyson only cooperated with one dealer agency named JieCheng, while Dyson had no direct operation stores. That means Dyson has no advantages in selling Supersonic™offline. However, Dyson found that unless they had a perfect experience, customers didn’t purchase any Supersonic™ because of its high prices. The high prices mean long-term decision-making and perfect experience needs simultaneously.

Hence, Dyson focused on experience and used creative marketing to solve these issues.

First of all, a series of experience actions were happened by Dyson China.

They change the purpose of offline stores into prioritizing the consumer experience. Likewise, they held amounts of pop-up shows and road shows on different shopping malls for the target to try out products. As shown in some reports, there were about 3 hundred shows in a year at 60 million and these shows contributed directly to 1/3 of sales for online stores. More than anything, Dyson established enough confidence and accumulated word of mouth with consumers.

Furthermore, they make a cooperation with high-end salons, where haircutters could use and recommend Supersonic™ to their consumers. Based on self-experience, consumers felt benefits and impressed brand awareness deeply. According to a marketing report, Dyson China influenced above 70% of customers who purchased eventually through salon channels.

Secondly, Dyson China opened online stores on E-commerce platforms like T-MALL, JD, and so on. I think that is the most important change for them to gain success ultimately. Benefiting from the expansion of these platforms in China, Dyson’s online sales income grew rapidly and they avoided the disadvantage of lacking offline shop and dealer agencies. As a result, the online sales income of Dyson China was equal to the offline sales income in 2021.

Dyson Result: A high-end and unique brand in China.

As we know, brand is what people say about you when you’re not in the room. So, what do people think of Dyson today?

People on the internet say some comments:

“In short, Dyson is a high-end brand, whose products are famous for new design, advanced technology, and high quality.”

“Someone said in joke that, the Dyson hair-dryer product is as high level as the Hermes perfume. However, Dyson is Dyson because appearance is highly recognizable.”

Dyson inspiration: what can we learn from them?

Finally, I think Dyson is an excellent brand no matter on product, marketing, or something else. In my opinion, the application of localization strategies is also one of the factors that make Dyson successful in China.

As marketers, when we formulate a brand's localization strategy, we should focus on considering the local market environment and the breakthrough point of this product, so that we can have the opportunity to become the next brand like Dyson.