Baidu's Steep Analysis

Case Study 1: Baidu – China’s Google
Baidu is China’s largest and most popular search engine. We can see its social and demographic factor of STEEP analysis for Baidu, is mostly based in Chinese market. Baidu’s strategy is to focus on the searches in Chinese. Its target market is China and it’s doing quite well in being local, and having the ability to think like a local in China.
Looking at the economical aspect, although Baidu’s target is mostly China, it has tremendous opportunity to capture global market share due to two factors. One is that, China has one of the largest populations and second factor would be the Chinese economy is up there in the global scale also. The world in general is becoming more and more dependent on the web and China is not an exception.
Third factor is the environmental factor, although more and more competitors are entering Chinese market, such as Google and Yahoo, Baidu isn’t really affected by them since Baidu is so good at meeting the needs of the locals’, these competitors have hard time even surviving in the market.
Looking at the technological side, Baidu’s technology is mainly focused in providing the Chinese people. The service Baidu provides to meet the locals’ needs in its own comfortable language is a biggie. It is really hard for a foreign company to compete with Baidu in China. A global company like Google isn’t nearly as capable of understanding China or the Chinese culture and its people in comparison to Baidu. On top of that, Baidu’s technology is built in Chinese language, whereas Google or other competitors are mainly built in English language.
Another big factor from STEEP analysis is political aspect. Especially doing business in China, you must understand their government policies in doing business since it’s very different compared to the rest of the world. Chinese government controls everything. There isn’t a single word you type in the web that is unknown by the government. They “watch” everything you do on the web and is constantly monitoring. Baidu has biggest advantage in political aspect of STEEP analysis since Baidu’s is based in the government system. Baidu’s entire business strategy is tailored to China’s governmental, legal, and ethical culture. Looking at competitors such as Google probably will have really hard time in abiding to Chinese governmental regulations and cultures due to the degree of differentiation to the rest of the world. In conclusion, Baidu is hardly affected by the external factors if not at all.