• CMO Magazine, Wednesday, January 4, 2006 11:45 AM

It's no secret that China is the next great frontier for American consumer product marketers. The secret is how to penetrate this elusive and sometimes mysterious nation and launch successful marketing strategies. In a wide-ranging article, CMO Magazine examines the challenges posed by the Chinese market and the obstacles marketers must overcome in obtaining reliable information about the population. The piece asks and attempts to answer questions such as: How do you survey a nation of at least 1.3 billion people who belong to 56 ethnic groups and speak scores of distinct languages and dialects? How do you overcome a physical infrastructure that can make travel and trade among the nation's 22 provinces (23, if you count Taiwan, which the Chinese government does) incredibly difficult? How do you get insights from people who, for the past 55 years, have lived under a repressive, totalitarian government where answering the wrong questions often has highly negative consequences?

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