SHANGHAI EXPO 2010
May 7, 2010
I am here not on SFE business but working (unpaid) for a short sabbatical at the EU Pavilion. Nonetheless, it is a Busman’s Holiday in a number of ways so I note for this blog one or two business-related points that may interest members.
One thing that is hard to miss is the very high cost of catering and supplies. It is not much of an exaggeration to say that the cost of even the cheapest meal is many days’ wages for many Chinese people. And of the 70 million or so expected to visit over the next six months, most are expected to come from the host country. As for the restaurants in the foreign pavilions, prices are very high even by London standards. So I can’t see them getting much business except from westerners with expense accounts.
The deals on provision of services seem very tight; a few brands have the franchises and choice is very limited. Given the staggering diversity of food and services available in Shanghai itself, this is ironic.
I hear chat that the authorities are reviewing the cost and I have already seen many Chinese visitors bringing in plenty of food and drink of their own. So perhaps market forces will force prices down.
As at all Expos, there are numerous country pavilions and for the most part these are presented in English (or sometimes the country’s own language) and Chinese. But I sought out the corporate pavilions last night. The only non Chinese brand I could see was Coca Cola and the only financial services pavilion was presented by PICC. This may not be a well-known brand in the UK but it is one of the biggest providers of insurance in China. Its full name is the People’s Insurance Company of China. Interestingly, the whole display and presentation was in Chinese so, despite this being an international exposition, no foreigners were evidently expected. When I arrived, a receptionist with some English was wheeled out but she quickly returned to speaking Chinese when the opportunity arose.
Actuaries and others may be surprised that presenting insurance in a pavilion that is surrounded by all sorts of wonders from around the world, in a way that grabs the visitor, is not straightforward. However, PICC had a decent stab at it. There was stuff about the company’s origins and its products, which you could get at by doing things like spinning a big wheel and learning what happened on a particular date. Sometimes, these events were a bit prosaic – like setting up a new subsidiary. At the racier end of the displays was an earthquake simulator, when you stand on a platform and it shakes. I asked whether this might be in rather poor taste, given recent disasters in China like the Sichuan earthquake but was told it didn’t really shake very much, so that was not a problem. There was also a continuous showing of the film ‘The Day After Tomorrow’, in which the whole world is engulfed by climate change and the Atlantic freezes over New York. I left to one side the question of what kind of insurance company would still be focused on paying claims or calculating annuities in such circumstances.
But, with the other displays which showed big bits of infrastructure and how they are protected, as well as ‘lifestyle’ presentations about insurance for daily life, it conveyed what insurance is all about quite well.
But the thing that most struck me was how this whole venture was aimed entirely at domestic visitors. Which perhaps says something about where the company sees its growth coming from.
Owen
