Dama dames: China's secret weapon | |
Middle-class matrons do not make big money, but to a large extent they control thenation’s spending. Now, they are even influencing global financial markets.
In the mid-1980s, before I enrolled in a US business school, I noticed a print ad in theChinese press. It was from United Airlines, if I'm not mistaken, and featured a middle-agedChinese lady in the center of the design. She was not a fashionable woman, mind you, justsomeone average.
"Gee, this is not the kind of person who can make this kind of purchase," I told myself. Atthat time, flying to the US was miles too expensive for most Chinese. Even if a family wassending a kid to the States for graduate study, it would probably be the price — and pricealone — that was the determining factor.
At Haas School of Business, I used this ad as an example of a US company using Americanlogic to sell to a Chinese clientele. Yes, the image was of a quintessential Chinese woman,but Chinese with money at the time did not want to be identified with a typical Chinesewoman of little glamour. It would have been so much more natural and attractive tofeature a young American woman, a supermodel type, in the ad, as I suggested in myinternational marketing class.
It has turned out that UA was 20 years ahead of their time in that advertising detail. Thetypical Chinese lady — middle-aged and middle-class — has of late been making waves inworld financial markets. The group is called Chinese dama and for the lack of an accurateEnglish equivalent even the mainstream Western press has been using the easilypronounceable dama.
Dama literally means "big mama", but one should refrain from adding an African-Americanaccent to it. It is an affectionate term in the vein of "aunty", which can be addressed to anymiddle-aged woman whether you are related to her or not. The male equivalent is dashu(uncle, not "big daddy"). And it has nothing to do with the person's physique.
【1】 【2】 【3】（Editor：DuMingming、Yao Chun） Related reading
|
