Bildung 4-Personal Development Plan and Personal Learning Plan

PDP and PLP

Before the start of this semester I set development goals in order to assess my skills and discover my strengths and weaknesses in favor of to improve in the most appropriate areas.  The three main goals are to get insight of the Chinese culture for cultivating friendships and business relationships. Secondly, learning the Chinese language is of importance, because it is getting more important and popular with each passing day. Final goal is to understand the Chinese business culture and etiquette in order to book success in trade.
I stayed approximately five months in Shanghai for my internship and learned a lot of things about China and its people, but looking back I couldn’t learn more about China. I understand how it is to live in China, but without communication I couldn’t learn more about it. Also in the internship company it was difficult to understand business people. It is not only the language but also the behavior of people in doing business was difficult for me.
I hope to improve my Chinese language, or at least understanding the basics and learn to adapt to the Chinese culture. Furthermore there are opportunities in China that should not to be missed. The business case study and other related courses are helping to gather more information about it.

Bildung Portfolio 3-Opinion about China

Opinion about China

I lived in China for 5 months. I studied, worked, travelled, and researched all around Shanghai. There are still so many places I need to explore.

China is a wonderful peace loving country of nice people who treat foreigners very well. Chinese culture, civilization and their way of life is heavily influenced with ethical morals and being modest is one of their assets. I have a great opinion of China and the Chinese people. China is a great country with an incredible diversity of ecosystems, peoples, and cultures. In any big city is possible to discover all the commonalities and eccentricities available to the observer. 

The Chinese people are a great bunch. Very kind and warm, and most of them quite well informed. They are extremely polite, which sometimes makes it difficult to distinguish good manners from a honest attempt to build a friendship. In big cities, middle and upper class Chinese are quite “instrumental”, by this I mean they emphasise the utility of their connections (business, language learning, etc.) instead of an idealistic sense of friendship.

Bildung Portfolio 2-Discovering the meaning of the minor

Discovering the meaning of the minor

In the first two weeks of the minor several subjects were introduced such as art workshop, Chinese religion and ethics and technology. Some seminars were interesting for me, other did not meet my expectations.

The first week was more practical lectures in order to get to know each other better and to introduce the Chinese culture. In the first class of this minor the group had to cook dumplings. In that week we went to the MuZIEum in Nijmegen where we walked in a dark room in a small group. Also we had a lecture about Ethics and Integrity. The lecture that followed was Identity and global citizenship which was not really related to this minor. It was more general information about Cultural management.

Besides the workshops, a few seminars were offered. It van about Chinese religion by Mr. Overtoom. The lecture itself was interesting. You could’ve seen the driveway of religion in the following years. At the start of the lecture Mr. Overtoom used a bowl to mediate, but no one knew what the purpose of this mediation was. 

After the introduction week week we were asked to do a presentation about these two weeks. The content of the presentation contained development goals and achievements we wanted to set for ourselves.

Bildung Portfolio 1-Home

Home

Welcome to my blog about the minor ‘Doing Business With China’. My name is Zekerya Bacakli and I am a final year International Business & Management Studies student. This is a new minor program which is offered only at Saxion University of Applied Sciences in Deventer. The total number of participants are nine students with different backgrounds. Furthermore each student in this minor has its own reason or interest regarding China.

I am following the minor ‘Doing Business With China’ in order to have a better perceptive of the Chinese language and culture. The context of the minor will be written and explained further in this blog. Also in this blog some important topics related to China will be discussed and information will be gathered in order to highlight everyone about a different country. The topics which will have priority are trends and developments, social media, e-commerce, consumer behaviour and cultural diversity.

I will be glad to help you with any question that might arise regarding the blog, the subjects, the minor or any other businesses.

Kind regards,

Zekerya Bacakli

China Consumer Behaviour

How do Chinese consumers act abroad?

In the past three decades, Chinese consumers’ shopping habits have changed dramatically as incomes have risen and new products and concepts have entered the China market. Consumer habits continue to evolve today, and examining generations of consumers can reveal certain shopping trends. Planet Retail has found that the older generation generally maintains “traditional” spending habits, middle-aged Chinese oscillate between tradition and new trends, and the younger generation is becoming more Westernized and quality conscious.

Generally, Chinese consumers develop shopping habits in their youth and keep these habits through adulthood. Though increased wealth can change some preferences, such as beverage and snack food preferences, most Chinese consumers’ habits are identified by their objective living conditions and limited earnings. The current Chinese consumer population can be separated into several groups with distinguishing characteristics.

Traveling to and from China has experienced in explosive growth. More and more tourists know where to find China as adventurous and mysterious country to travel around. Meanwhile, more Chinese people travel around the world.

However, the presence of Chinese people does not remain unnoticed everywhere. They are noisy, spitting everywhere on the street, defecate and urinate anywhere on the street. But not everyone is happy with the massive arrival of the next generation world travellers. Chinese tourists have different behavior than Dutch people.  They scream, throw everything on the ground, urging for and are rude. Especially in cities like Amsterdam and Rotterdam are the complaints growing about the Chinese tourists.