Lured by the dizzying promise of more than a billion consumers, American companies are leading a Western invasion into retail's final frontier. By J. Illustration by Brian Stauffer.
Inside Wal-Mart's Asian headquarters in Shenzhen, China, exists a very different kind of people's army: research teams that are assembled and trained to go door-to-door in search of new customers. Each knock brings a new glimpse into the spending habits of a Chinese family: what they eat, what they buy. And it offers one more small piece of a giant puzzle of a corporation that wants to assemble a clear picture of the Chinese consumer it's selling to.

Lacking the same kind of detailed demographic data that's readily available in the United States, the world's largest retailer is patiently gathering all its own business intelligence, street by street, as it plots a marketing blitzkrieg in the largely unexplored territory of the vast Chinese market.

"It just never ceases to amaze me, the tremendous growth," says Mitch Slape, Wal-Mart's head of global real estate development, after a trip to mainland China.­ "Shenzhen, 25 years ago, had 50,000 people. Today, unofficially, it's 10 million people. Even if you've got good census data, just keeping track of that growth is a tremendous challenge."

It's one that Wal-Mart, among many other companies, has been anxious to tackle.

Over the past 10 years, Wal-Mart has gradually built 49 new stores in 23 cities on the mainland. But that methodical development pace set under rigid central-­government control is about to switch over to the fast lane. Last December, China initiated a sea change in the retail landscape, lifting the last chains on retailers by allowing foreign merchants to expand beyond the largest cities into every profitable nook and cranny that can be staked and claimed. In most cases, the Chinese government has also suspended old rules requiring foreign operators to partner up with a Chinese firm.