An article published on 18 May 2012 on Financial Time, ‘Facebook shares already a marketing incentive’, was talking about one Hong Kong-based brokerage company –‘8 Securities’ making use of the hype surrounding of Facebook’s initial public offering, to create values to customers. It also described how this promising company expanded its brand awareness with zero-sum of advertising investment by giving out US$200 of Facebook shares to customers who opened an account with them.
In Innotribe Start-up Challenge 2012, the co-founder of 8 Securities, Abdulla mentioned his team was frustrated with the ‘legacy technology, not having product development, and most importantly, no own customer experience’ in the traditional industry. Being eager to …show more content…

There are still many people offline and coming online.’ Table 2 above spells out the market distribution in Greater China that 8 Securities targeted and planed to target, i.e. Hong Kong (1%), followed by China (98%). In spite of the huge potential of financial market in China for its wealthier and wealth-aware population, “China – so close yet so hard”, a comment from 8 Securities best describes China as complicated market to foreign investors. Completely understanding of the culture, the financial regulations and the consumer behaviour in China becomes essential prior to entering the market. For example, one of the major challenges for 8 Securities is that the social networks like Facebook and Twitter are completely restricted therefore inaccessible in China region.