— Snocks Can Charge a Premium in Germany, but Why Is This Model So Difficult to Replicate in China?

By Jane Sonnenschein · February 4, 2026

A few days ago, I published an essay on my WeChat Official Account¹ titled “Why Can a Relatively Unknown Brand Charge So Much for the Same Kind of Men’s Underwear?”

The essay examined a phenomenon that appears very specific but is, in fact, quite widespread: how a German brand such as Snocks can take a pair of men’s underwear that does not look particularly distinctive and, through social media storytelling and brand narratives, sell it at a price significantly higher than comparable products.

When I published the essay, I did not expect very much. In fact, it initially received only a single-digit number of views.

Over the following ten days or so, I was busy preparing for a training course and an examination, and barely opened the dashboard of my WeChat account. Then, two days ago, I happened to check it and discovered that the essay had quietly accumulated more than a thousand views.

I was genuinely surprised. Yet what ultimately made me want to write this follow-up essay was not the number itself, but two comments beneath the original piece.

Both comments expressed almost the same idea: during an economic downturn, people care more about value for money than about brand narratives. Only when the economy is growing, they suggested, are consumers willing to pay for stories, ideas and “added value.”

There is nothing inherently wrong with that argument. But those two comments made me realise that the larger question may not simply be whether the economy is doing well. It may be whether brand storytelling is able to establish itself as something meaningful within a particular society in the first place.

Recently, as I have been studying and practising social media and marketing more systematically, I have become increasingly aware that the same approach to branding, content and storytelling can lead to very different outcomes in different countries, on different platforms and within different consumer environments.

Snocks can turn storytelling into part of a product’s price in Germany. Why, then, does the same path appear so difficult in China?

That is the question I would like to examine here.

We often reduce the question of whether a brand can charge more to one simple explanation: the economic environment. When the economy is strong, people are willing to pay for emotional value, ideas and stories. When the economy is weak, they return to value for money, practicality and price.

But the more I compare Germany and other Western countries with China, the more I feel that the economic cycle is only a surface-level variable. The more fundamental differences lie deeper.

In Germany, a brand such as Snocks can succeed not merely because it tells a good story, but because storytelling itself is permitted, understood and even respected.

One important function of social media here is to build awareness over time. It gradually allows people to learn who a brand is, who founded it, why the founder wanted to create the product and what those repeatedly emphasised but often invisible differences are supposed to mean.

This awareness does not immediately turn into a purchase. It may simply remain in a person’s mind for a long time.

Then, when that person genuinely needs a new pair of underwear, a basic item of clothing or something that does not need to be replaced very often, they may naturally remember the brand that has already occupied a small place in their mind.

A somewhat higher price becomes acceptable because the price carries a sense of certainty.

In China, however, this logic quickly encounters several practical obstacles.

The first is that the space in which a narrative can survive is extremely limited.

China’s social media and e-commerce ecosystem is highly developed—perhaps even excessively so. Livestream e-commerce², immediate conversion, extreme price comparisons and constant stimulation all reinforce the same message:

“If you do not buy now, you are losing out.”

In such an environment, it is difficult for a brand narrative to unfold slowly. Before the story has even been told, people in the comments are already asking about the price. The moment a brand begins to explain its values, someone starts calculating whether the product is “worth it.”

This is not because Chinese consumers are incapable of understanding stories. It is because the platforms and the wider commercial environment do not encourage stories to exist for very long.

The second problem is that the cost of copying a successful idea can be almost brutally low.

In Europe or the United States, even when a brand is imitated, copying it still requires time, supply chains, distribution channels and compliance costs. In China, once a product has been shown to sell, imitation can happen almost instantly.

The design may be copied. The marketing language may be copied. Even the narrative structure a brand has only just begun to establish may be dismantled, rearranged and attached to a cheaper product.

What follows is not a market in which better products drive out worse ones, but often the opposite.

Large numbers of inexpensive, low-quality and rapidly copied products flood the market. Consumers’ attention is repeatedly exhausted, and their patience for “hearing a story” gradually disappears.

Over time, a highly practical conclusion emerges:

Stories are not worth anything. Price is real.

This is not the fault of consumers. It is a judgement they have been trained to make by the environment, again and again.

A third and deeper difference lies in what people expect from their relationship with a brand.

In Germany, many people do not feel an urgent need to use consumption to prove something about themselves. A brand can function more like a long-term companion. It does not need to remind you of its existence every day, but when you need it, it is there.

In China, consumption is often expected to deliver efficiency and immediate results: buy it today and use it today; find out immediately whether it is good; replace it at once if it does not suit you.

Within this rhythm, a brand narrative struggles to become part of the price. It may even struggle to become a story that anyone is willing to hear to the end.

So when those two comments argued that people place greater importance on value for money during an economic downturn, I did not regard them as a rejection of my earlier essay.

On the contrary, they pointed directly to a difficult reality: in China, brand narratives have rarely been fully incorporated into the way a product’s price is understood.

Snocks can charge more in Germany not because its underwear is fundamentally so much better than everyone else’s, but because the environment allows a brand, through time, repetition and trust, to turn “difference” gradually into “value.”

In China, this path is not entirely impossible. But it is expensive, risky and uncertain, and for most ordinary entrepreneurs, it may not be realistic.

This is also why the two markets have moved in such different directions.

One continues to accumulate brand value. The other continues to compress prices.

Once I understood this, I stopped worrying so much about how few likes my original essay had received. The fact that more than a thousand people had read it already suggested that the question reflected a confusion shared by many people.

Perhaps the question most worth discussing is not whether brand storytelling works, but under what kind of social conditions it is able to work.

At this point, whether we are talking about selling underwear or building a social media account, I would also like to say something about my own experience.

Recently, I have been using TikTok while gradually trying to build a presence on Facebook. The two platforms feel so different that they almost seem to belong to different eras.

TikTok is fundamentally shaped by a logic of rapid consumption: scroll, pause, receive a stimulus and scroll again. It is exceptionally good at generating immediate feedback. Likes, views and follower growth can arrive quickly and dramatically.

I have experienced what it feels like when a video suddenly takes off. Watching the numbers rise is genuinely exciting. Yet strangely, once that excitement fades, what remains can feel even emptier than before.

It is as though something has been consumed at great speed without leaving anything substantial behind.

You know how many people watched you, but you do not know who they were. You know how successful a video was, but it is difficult to say whether anyone truly remembered you.

Facebook feels entirely different.

To be honest, had I not started creating content, I might never have used Facebook seriously. I have lived in Germany for many years, yet I always felt somewhat distant from this kind of Western social media—not because of the language, but because of a certain psychological distance.

But once I genuinely began building an account from nothing, I discovered that Facebook is an extraordinarily slow place.

It can be so slow that you post every day and receive almost no response. It can be so slow that the numbers give you little indication of whether you are “doing it right.”

When I started, I literally had no friends on the account. That is not an exaggeration. I truly began with zero.

Yet it was precisely this slowness that made the experience unexpectedly relaxing.

You do not have to spend every day being chased by data. You do not have to prove urgently that you have produced something of value today. You can tell your stories gradually and allow people to learn, over time, who you are, what you think about and why you are doing what you do.

This feeling follows the same logic as the brand storytelling I described earlier.

In Germany, a brand is recognised gradually. On Facebook, context is also built gradually.

TikTok, by contrast, offers immediate gratification, immediate consumption and immediate feedback. Its rhythm resembles the highly anxious pace with which many of us have become familiar: if you do not act today, tomorrow will be too late; if you do not convert attention into results today, everything seems to have failed.

Sometimes I suddenly realise that platforms themselves are already shaping the way we understand value.

One place allows you to tell a story slowly.

Another forces you to deliver a result as quickly as possible.

This is also why I am beginning to understand more clearly why certain things can grow in Europe or the United States but appear so difficult in China.

It is not simply a question of who is right and who is wrong. The rhythms are different, the levels of patience are different, and the ways in which people build trust with one another are different.

Perhaps what I truly want now is not to discover which place is faster, but to find a place where I am willing to slow down and continue telling my stories.

If someone is willing to listen slowly, then the story itself already has meaning.

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Notes

1. Gōngzhònghào (公众号): Usually translated as a “WeChat Official Account,” this is a publishing and subscription channel within WeChat, China’s dominant multipurpose communication platform. Individuals, media organisations and businesses can use these accounts to publish long-form articles, build a subscriber base and distribute content directly within the WeChat ecosystem. Although it shares some features with newsletters or platforms such as Medium, it is deeply integrated into Chinese social and digital life.

2. Zhíbō dàihuò (直播带货): Literally “selling goods through livestreaming,” this refers to a highly developed form of live e-commerce in China. Hosts demonstrate products, interact with viewers and encourage immediate purchases, often through limited-time discounts, countdowns and claims that the lowest available price is only valid during the broadcast. It combines entertainment, social interaction and direct sales, placing strong emphasis on urgency and instant conversion.

This essay is also available in other languages:

Chinese version: 为什么在中国，品牌叙事很难成为价格的一部分？

German version: Warum wird Markenstorytelling in China so selten Teil des Preises?