听力达人训练秘籍：China is known for “malinvestment”. Its consumptio
天之聪教育 2012-08-17 economist 659次
Free exchange
自由交流
Fakes and status in China
中国：假货向左，身份往右
China is known for “malinvestment”. Its consumption habits are also pretty dodgy
中国以“投资不当”而闻名，而中国人的消费习惯也存在很大问题
MOST shop windows proudly showcase what can be bought inside. The window of the Silk Street Market, a touristy shopping centre in Beijing, is a bit different. It displays a pair of official notices advertising what cannot be bought inside. These non-offerings include luxury brands such as Prada, Louis Vuitton and Burberry. The notices are meant to save customers from buying fakes unwittingly. But many still buy them wittingly. You could almost say that counterfeits remain Silk Street’s trademark, despite the market’s efforts to stamp them out. On the ground floor, a purple “Paul Smith” polo-shirt from a Guangzhou factory was offered to your correspondent for 1,285 yuan ($200), a price which eventually fell to 150 yuan. It is not easy to walk away from such bargains. Especially when the stall holder will not let go of your coat. 大多数商店都通过橱窗骄傲地向人们展示着在里面可以买到什么。在北京一处游人如织的购物中心——秀水街市场，情况却有几分不同。这里张贴了两张官方告示，告诉人们在这里不能买什么。秀水街不能买的东西包括普拉达、路易威登以及博柏利等奢侈品牌。这些公告意图保护消费者，免得他们在不知情的情况下买到假货。然而，很多人却心甘情愿地去买假货。几乎可以这么说：尽管秀水街市场力求清除仿冒品，但它们仍然是秀水街的“品牌特色”。在商场底层，一件产自广州某工厂的“保罗史密斯牌” 紫色 polo 衫，店家向本报记者开价1285元（约合200美元），而最终成交价仅为150元。如此廉价品真是让人流连忘返——特别是在店主紧紧扯住你衣袖不放的时候。
Economists and policymakers around the world want China to consume more. They are eager for it to reduce its dependence on investment, which amounted to almost half of GDP last year. No economy that invests so heavily can possibly invest it all wisely. Economists therefore worry about a widespread misallocation of capital, or “malinvestment”. But some of China’s consumption is also a bit questionable.
全世界的经济学家和政府决策者都想让中国进行更多的消费。他们急于让中国减少对于投资的依赖；而在去年，中国的投资额占了 GDP 的将近一半。对于进行如此大量投资的经济体来说，几乎不可能在投资中完全不出错。因此，经济学家担忧中国普遍存在的资本分配不合理现象，或者说“投资不当”。但中国部分消费行为也存在一些问题。
Fake goods are rife. Researchers once stopped every fifth person in a Shanghai mall and asked them about their buying habits. Of the 202 who completed the survey, almost three-quarters admitted to buying knock-off luxury goods. The resulting paper* by Ian Phau and Min Teah of Curtin University of Technology in Australia was titled “Devil wears (counterfeit) Prada”. Some people buy luxury brands as an act of self-expression. Others buy them as an act of social emulation. They want to wear the same brands as the people they aspire to be. The Chinese are more likely to be this second type of buyer, according to Lingjing Zhan of Hong Kong Polytechnic University and Yanqun He of Fudan University. And, other studies suggest, such status-seeking consumers are more likely to buy counterfeits.
假货大行其道。研究人员曾在上海一家商场里从每五个人中挑选出受访者，进行关于购物习惯的调查。在完成调查的202个人中，近75%的人承认买过假货奢侈品。澳大利亚科廷科技大学的 Ian Phau 和 Min Teah 发表了一份调查结果论文*，题为《穿冒牌普拉达的女王》。有些人买奢侈品牌是为了展现自我，而有些人是为了进行社会仿效。如果他们期望成为某种人，他们就会和这些人穿同样牌子的衣服。香港理工大学的詹凌静和复旦大学的何雁群表示，中国人更可能属于这第二种消费者。而其他研究表明，这种追求身份的消费者更倾向于去买仿冒品。
A Prada handbag is a bundle of two things: a well-made product and a well-marketed brand. But some consumers value prestige, not quality. Fakes allow shoppers to “consume” the prestigious brand without buying the high-quality good, as Gene Grossman of Princeton and Carl Shapiro, now of the University of California, Berkeley, pointed out in a seminal 1988 paper. This unbundling no doubt drives Prada and others mad, but it would seem to be a boon to consumers.
某种意义上来说，一只普拉达手袋仅仅由两件东西组成：做工精良的产品以及营销成功的品牌。但某些消费者看重的是脸面，而不是质量。普林斯顿大学的 Gene Grossman 和现已加入加州大学伯克利分校的 Carl Shapiro 于1988年发表了一份影响深远的论文，文章指出：假货可以让顾客去“消费”倍增脸面的品牌，而不用去购买高质量的货品。这种产品和品牌的分离毫无疑问让普拉达等名牌大伤脑筋，但它对于消费者却似乎是一种福利。
Or is it? As Messrs Grossman and Shapiro also point out, a luxury brand confers status only because it is exclusive. It has to be “widely popular but not widely accessible”, as one marketing professor puts it. People who buy Prada are paying for exclusivity. The devils who wear counterfeit Prada erode that exclusivity, imposing an “externality” on owners of the genuine article.
那么这真的是一种福利吗？Grossman 和Shapiro 同时也指出，奢侈品牌之所以能体现人们的身份，仅仅因为它具有排众性。奢侈品牌必然如一位营销学教授所言，“广受欢迎但持有者不多”。买普拉达的人，买的就是排众性。而“穿着冒牌普拉达的女王”悄悄破坏了这种排众性，把一种“外部效应”强加于真品拥有者身上。
As counterfeiters rush to replicate a brand, the brand owners fight to distinguish themselves from the fakes. In a recent paper, Yi Qian of Kellogg School of Management studies the response of branded Chinese shoemakers to an influx of fakes after the government shifted its enforcement efforts to more urgent things, such as stamping out counterfeit food, drugs and alcohol. Many shoemakers reacted by improving the quality of their footwear, importing Italian pattern-pressing machines and using pricier materials, such as crocodile skin. Their response contradicts the popular notion that fakes inhibit innovation and investment. But firms also raised prices by more than was warranted by their extra costs. Buyers of fakes therefore impose a cost on people who want to buy the real thing. They make brands less exclusive—or more expensive.
在造假者争相仿制名牌的同时，名牌所有者也在努力把自己的产品和假货区分开来。当中国政府将其强制力转到了更为紧迫的方面（如根除伪劣食品、假药和假酒）之后，中国名牌制鞋商对于大量假货涌入市场做出了反应。凯洛格管理学院的钱怡最近撰文对这种反应进行了研究。许多制鞋商以改进产品质量、引进意大利压纹机并采用鳄鱼皮等更为昂贵的材料来应对假货风潮。之前人们广泛认为假货阻碍了创新和投资，但制鞋商的这些反应驳斥了这一观点。然而这些公司同样也提高了产品价格，且价格增幅已经高于了其额外成本。因此，这种额外费用就是假货购买者强加于想买真品的人身上的。假货购买者让名牌不再那么具有排众性——或者说，他们让名牌更加昂贵了。
But it is possible that buying genuine luxuries imposes an externality of its own. Status, after all, is a “positional” good. To be top of the social heap, it is not enough to have fine things. Your things need to be finer than everyone else’s. Someone who buys a more expensive watch or car to climb up the social ladder forces other social climbers to spend more to stay ahead. In making their purchase, they will carefully weigh how much prestige their big spending will buy. But they will not take into account how much extra everyone else will now have to spend to preserve their social position. As a result of these “arms races”, China may be overspending on luxury goods. Its shoppers account for only 6% of the world’s consumer spending, but, according to figures released by Bain Consulting last month, they now account for 20% of global sales of luxury goods.
但购买奢侈真品这一行为也有可能对别人强加属于它自身的一种外部效应。毕竟，社会身份是一种“地位”商品。想要坐到社会的顶层，仅仅有些好东西是远远不够的。你的东西需要比其他任何人的都要好。一旦有人买了更昂贵的手表或是汽车，想借此在社会阶梯上再上一步，其他阶梯攀爬者就会被迫进行更多消费以保持领先地位。这些人在进行购物时，会仔细权衡他们的大笔开销能为自己带来多少脸面。但他们不会考虑到其他人需要花费多少额外的钱来保住其社会地位。这种“军备竞赛”导致中国可能在奢侈品方面开支过多。中国顾客在全世界消费开销方面仅占6%，但根据贝恩咨询公司上个月公布的数据，他们目前在全球奢侈品销售方面占了20%。
天之聪教育
2012-08-17
economist
659次
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