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.