Alex Chung joins Pizza Hut as marketing head

Alex Chung, former general manager at Lenovo Hong Kong and Macau, has joined Jardines Restaurant as marketing and business strategy director for Pizza Hut, effective immediately.Having spent two decades in the technology and consumer electronics fields working with companies such as Sony, Chung has gained extensive experience spanning sales and marketing, channel distribution, business development, B2B and retail business management.“This marks an interesting career change for me,” Chung told Marketing.“Pizza Hut may seem entirely different from the industry I have spent my past 20 years in, but actually they share the same business nature – consumer marketing.“With more than 100 stores in Hong Kong, Pizza Hut has a much bigger store scope for me to manage, and bigger room for products innovations as well as the operation and production process.”While the e-commerce business in the tech product segment remains less than 5% in Hong Kong, he said Pizza Hut allowed him more space to exercise his e-commerce and social media CRM experience.To date, 40% of transactions at Pizza Hut comes from online. E-commerce and social CRM will be two core focuses in the company’s digital marketing mix.“Consumer behaviour varies across online and mobile; social platforms help us to optimise customer segmentation to enhance engagement rates.”Outside digital, branding is also critical to its business sustainability, he added.“As a 30-year-old brand, it’s important to keep a young and energetic image to retain the young generation.”In July, the pizza chain launched a summer promotion called “Pizza Flexible”, providing an all-you-can-eat experience for teenagers.Amid a retail market slowdown, Chung said one of the biggest challenges in his new job would be to keep customers coming back.“We’re now doing more promotions and offerings as customers in Hong Kong always look for incentives and discounts.“Also a challenge is to keep reacting fast, as trends in the F&B market change much faster than in the tech industry.”Before joining Lenovo, he served as a board member and general manager at Shun Hing Group, the electrical appliance distributor for a wide range of home appliance brands, including Panasonic, JVC, Rasonic, KDK, Breville, Karcher and ReFa.During his tenure at Shun Hing, Chung was responsible for formulating the group’s marketing strategies and expanding business opportunities by setting up new businesses and launching new brands in Hong Kong.Before that, he spent four years at Samsung Electronics Hong Kong as chief operating officer and director, where he helped the company achieve the leading position for its smartphone and LCD TV business.Photo courtesy to Global Sources.