Helping Chinese Consumers Making the Informed Choices: the Challenge of Trust
Situation Audit
QuarkMan Technology was founded in 2012 by David Yuan. As the Chinese domestic consumption continues to grow at a rapid speed, consumers need a reliable source for independent and impartial review of products to find the quality and functionality. The mission of the company is one of “unveiling products’ essence in an independent, professional, and powerful way.” The two core principles are “Independence” and “Fairness”.
QuarkMan has set up two business units, Information Advisory and Media. The reports and data obtained by the testing of products are handled by the Information Advisory unit and the Media unit takes this information and displays it in a user friendly way so that consumers can make educated decisions. QuarkMan Media is further divided into Jancr which is the consumer goods testing division and China Consumer Report which is the communication division responsible for settling disputes between the consumer and manufacturer.
SWOT ANALYSIS for QuarkMan
Strengths
Manages their own lab and return team
Strong relationship with third party labs and research institution labs
State of the art testing lab with 400 pieces of equipment and 3000 square meters
External expert network from numerous industries
In-house lab is a stand-along profitable business unit which finances the media unit
Weaknesses
Hard for an independent and fair media company to be profitable in China
In order to remain independent, advertisements on their website is not an option
Majority of the testing resources are owned by the government affiliated consumer associations, industry associations and government research institutes
A big chunk of the capacity has a very low utilization rate
Takes 2-3 weeks for QuarkMan to deliver one product review and others longer
QuarkMan struggling with capacity issues
Opportunities
No mature player conducting