China: to market to market

The key to cracking China lies in understanding the demographic, geographic and economic peculiarities across its provinces and prefectures. High distribution costs relative to margins and a large, well-spaced population have seen each area develop its own culture. Failure to grasp this has ruined the ambitions of many a good enterprise that incorrectly targeted consumers who either couldnt afford its products or were simply not sufficiently numerous to justify significant distribution and marketing costs. Copyright 2005 Clint Laurent. No part of this article may be reproduced by any means without the written consent of the publisher.