Hong Kong and the Limits of E-Commerce
Air travel is a horror. But still, how amazing! I mean, to get on a plane at
10 p.m. in New York on a Thursday night and, 22 hours later, hop off in Hong
Kong--where it's 6 a.m. on Saturday morning, I'm sorry, call me Amish, but how
cool is that! I've been thinking a lot about our trip and the amazing Place of
the Future that is Hong Kong ...
The thing that I think will totally mess up businesspeople when they
consider Hong Kong and, to a different degree, the rest of China, is the extent
to which e-commerce--and the Net--will catch on. It's the classic fool's trap
that every businessperson from Marco Polo on has made when considering the
gigantic potential market of China.
Again, it's easy to leap to the wrong conclusions when you wander around
Hong Kong and see how wired everyone is. So many cell phones! Groups of people
out on the town, and rather than talking to each other, each was engaged in a
cell-phone conversation with someone else. It seemed like we were never more
than 10 paces away from a street-side stall selling cell phones, service, or
accouterments. I've never seen such customizing of digitalia: It made me want
to buy one (since you made me get rid of our old, useless one!) just so I could
"personalize" it with one of those translucent antennas with the lightning bolt
inside. People customize their phones in Hong Kong the way bus drivers
personalize their vehicles in Mexico. Fringe, medallions, blinking lights.
Remember the teen-age girls talking into phones that were buried inside Winnie
the Pooh covers?
Now, imagine when all those cell-phoners start browsing the Web through
their smart phones ...
Shopping is the culture of Hong Kong, and add the Net to it, you figure, and
you've got a trillion-dollar opportunity--but you'd be wrong. The thing about
shopping here is it's a social activity, a reason to get out of your tiny
apartment. Didn't we hear that HK is the most crowded place on the planet?
That's why e-commerce will never catch on: It provides a "solution" to a
nonexistent problem. People want to leave their desks and their apartments,
indeed, they have to if they want to see each other. The Net will never catch
on there the way it has here.
