Taiwan Story II

Raising A Copy Cat Becomes A New Trend in Taiwan

Whenever coming into a department store, a supermarket, and Nova, we see lots of different products on shelves. There are so many choices for customers, but only a few of them are local brands. Take several big companies for example. Hitachi, Panasonic and Sony are famous brands from Japan; Apple, Mc’donalds, and Clinique are stemmed from United States. Taiwanese are even addicted to Hong Kong’s and Korean manufacturers instead of supporting our local brands.

In entertainment news, we often hear the terms of 哈韓族 or 哈日族. It means that many fans follow foreign stars and almost go crazy with them. Why people tend to be blind in Taiwan? Is Taiwan really inferior to any other countries? Of course not!

As everyone knows, there’s a main scientific domain in Hsinchu. Actually local brands have their qualities as good as foreign, and they may get a lower price. What drives Taiwanese crazy about overseas product is their vanities. Consumers decide a good brand based on its high price. Does the product deserve its price? In fact, high prices contain too many other elements such as patent fee, transportation fee, agency fee, etc. Local manufactures just dismiss those unnecessary expenditures. It is so sad that consumers are blind then.

No wonder someone considers Taiwanese copy cats. The nickname derives from our worship toward foreign things and foreign culture.