Auntie Anne's Pretzels In Beijing: Why The Chinese Didn't Bite
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License (according to Flickr): Attribution-ShareAlike License
License (according to Flickr): Attribution-ShareAlike License
Audio for this story from Morning Edition will be available at approximately 9:00 a.m. ET. The lure of the China market is legendary. The dream: Sell something to 1. 3 billion people, and you're set. The reality is totally different. Ask the MBAs from the University of Pennsylvania's Wharton School who tried to launch Auntie Anne's pretzels in China. The result is a funny, instructive and occasionally harrowing journey that is now the subject of a new book, The China Twist. Wen-Szu Lin and Joseph Sze's venture began as an appealing tale of taking the American soft pretzel to the Middle Kingdom. They opened their first store around the time of the 2008 Beijing Olympics, and were even featured on NBC's Today Show. "We bought the rights to China so... we could try to expand this brand in China," Lin said on the show.
Keywords:
China Auntie Anne Lin pretzel China market Sze pretzel mix U.S. standard Auntie Anne Chinese consumers pretzels American soft pretzel dozen Auntie Anne Wen-Szu Lin Bergstrom larger trade tussle melamine milk scandal beloved American snack pretzel giveaway savvy Chinese consumers pretzel cost various local flavors global financial crisis pretzel dogs pretzel bites Joseph Sze China Twist Free pretzels Mary Bergstrom Bergstrom Group book soft pretzels company time brand Wharton School Chinese government new book sample Morning Edition Chinese shipments Middle Kingdom Great news Chinese heritage self-published book Difficult Launch cultural divide food-related products Beijing Olympics Financial ObstaclesPeople:
Wen-Szu Lin
Overall Sentiment: -0.125948
Relevance: 0.702244
| Sentiment | Quote |
|---|---|
| 0 | "We bought the rights to China so ... we could try to expand this brand in China," Lin said ... |
| -0.730035 | "I was really shocked by it," Lin recalls, ... |
| -0.727983 | "I was really shocked by it," Lin recalls, "because actually I had never sent in a second sample." |
| -0.0145998 | "During that time, I think a lot of Chinese shipments, food-related products, going into the U.S. were getting detained," Lin says. ... |
| -0.168812 | "During that time, I think a lot of Chinese shipments, food-related products, going into the U.S. were getting detained," Lin says. "My guess was the fact that it could have been tit for tat in terms of stopping our shipment." |
| 0.176072 | "They were janitors; they were the employees of other stalls next to us, and their friends," Lin says. ... |
| 0 | "I don't feel like I'm done with China yet," he says. ... |
| Sentiment Stats: |
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Joseph Sze
Overall Sentiment: 0.0116104
Relevance: 0.36592
| Sentiment | Quote |
|---|---|
| -0.24416 | "The cultural divide was huge. I think we made a faulty assumption in the very beginning that our Chinese heritage was in line with the cultural phenomenon that was happening here in China," he says. ... |
| -0.396801 | "We managed to get the platform to break even," he says. ... |
| Sentiment Stats: |
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Mary Bergstrom
Overall Sentiment: 0.0936168
Relevance: 0.255789
| Sentiment | Quote |
|---|---|
| 0 | "The trials and the tribulations and the challenges are so different than maybe what you would expect," she says. ... |
| 0 | "No. 1, consumers aren't used to eating things with their hands, so that's already a behavioral hurdle you have to get over," Bergstrom says. ... |
| 0.186718 | "No. 1, consumers aren't used to eating things with their hands, so that's already a behavioral hurdle you have to get over," Bergstrom says. "The second issue would be the taste. In the U.S., doughnuts are very sweet, where in China, cakes tend to be less sweet." |
| Sentiment Stats: |
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Key:
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- The Mean is meant to be an indicator of an individual's average comment sentiment.
- The Standard Deviation, when there are enough quotes, will indicate an individual's consistency of sentiment (i.e. a Standard Deviation of 0 would mean they were very consistent in their sentiment and 1 would mean they were very inconsistent).
Note that quote stats are likely to be meaningless beyond the aggregate score due to the tiny sample size. However, they are always provided just in case you find something useful there.
Additional Info:
Company: Auntie Anne
Overall Sentiment: 0.0122138
Relevance: 0.608735
Disambiguation: References:
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Source Webpage: http://www.npr.org/2013/02/11/171081595/auntie-annes-pretzels-in-beijing-why-the-chinese-didnt-bite?ft=1&f=1004
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It's the entrepreneurs' dream: tapping into China's market of 1.3 billion people. That dream fueled the efforts of two Chinese-American MBAs to take the soft-pretzel franchise — a staple of U.S. shopping malls — to China. Cultural and financial barriers, however, led to a far more challenging reality.
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Auntie Anne's Pretzels In Beijing: Why The Chinese Didn't Bite
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