China’s e-commerce companies are suddenly stocking up on groceries. Buying groceries in Chinese cities like Beijing and Shanghai is a nightmare for many office-goers. After a long day at work, shoppers head to overcrowded supermarkets just to find noise, confusion and impossibly long queues at the payment counter. And it doesn’t end there: they also […]
Playing Favorites: Entitled and Earned Positional Advantages
Why earning a positional advantage is truly advantageous. In my last column I discussed how an inebriated citizen of Beijing surnamed Hou earned a 10,000-fold return through a positional advantage. Back in 2008 he bought the rights to a liquor brand name bearing a strong resemblance to Mo Yan, the winner of the recently-announced Nobel […]
