Chinese booze maker Maotai is pissed about Singles Day discounts

China’s massive Singles Day online shopping spree is coming up next week, and people are excited. After all, who doesn’t like a steep discount?

The makers of China’s expensive alcohols, apparently. On Thursday afternoon, a number of Chinese booze makers including the world-famous Maotai announced that they do not have any kind of collaborative relationship with ecommerce platforms selling their products at below market prices. Maotai’s announcement also says the company is acting to “protect its legal rights” via the relevant government departments.

The announcement specifically mentions a number of Chinese ecommerce sites focused exclusively on selling alcohol, but Maotai’s products are on bigger ecommerce platforms like Tmall, and some of its offerings will be discounted significantly for the holiday next week.

See: How Singles Day went from a niche bachelor holiday to the world’s biggest online shopping bonanza

Although at first glance it might seem like companies should be happy to see their customers get good deals, Maotai’s dispute with its products being discounted has much more to do with branding than it does with the company’s finances. Maotai is a luxury product – a bottle of the good stuff costs far more than most liquors – and often people buy it precisely because it is expensive. If you want to impress that government official you’re hoping to bribe, or get your father-in-law to finally change his mind about you, a bottle of top-shelf Maotai works because it shows how much you were willing to spend, not because of how it tastes. So having genuine Maotai available online at steep discounts undermines the company’s branding, and could even hurt its sales (given that a steeply discounted Maotai is still way more expensive than your average bottle of baijiu).

Maotai’s announcement also warns consumers to beware of sites selling fake Maotai – reportedly, a widespread practice – this Singles Day.

(Source: Techweb)

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Chinese booze maker Maotai is pissed about Singles Day discounts