Word: interiorized
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Wang Li may live deep in China's interior, in a city you may never have heard of--the provincial capital of Chengdu--but that doesn't stop her from shopping like the big spenders of Tokyo, Hong Kong or Shanghai. One Friday evening, Wang, 28, trolls down Chunxi Street, a jam-packed thoroughfare of flashing neon signs, McDonald's restaurants and boutiques, looking for the latest fashions she's admired in Cosmopolitan magazine...
...quite. Yet only a few years ago, the boundless interior was a daunting and unprofitable place for many companies. Giant cities like Chengdu languished, starved of investment and government attention that went to Beijing, Shanghai and Guangzhou. Chengdu was known mainly as China's largest panda-preservation center. Some companies like Korea's Samsung that tried to make an early move were disappointed and left, or limited their expansion...
Foreign investors are lured west by the interior's lower costs--salaries for highly skilled college graduates in Chengdu are about 30% lower than in Shanghai--as well as tax breaks and other juicy incentives. After Motorola opened a software R&D center in Chengdu in 2001, the city government built the company a special building, complete with a rooftop patio...
...China," says William Ghitis, president of global apparel at Invista, the maker of Lycra. One hurdle is the logistical nightmare created by China's sheer size. Motorola has tripled the number of its sales outlets, to 30,000, in just the past 18 months to penetrate deeper into interior markets. Chapman-Banks says it often takes weeks to get new phones to these outposts. Then there's the challenge of organizing marketing efforts and training salespeople in such far-flung locales. "This is the most complex market I've ever worked in," he says...
...likelihood, Chengdu and China's other interior cities will look more and more like Shanghai every year. The optimistic citizens of Chengdu, such as Liu Xindi, couldn't imagine anything else. Liu, 33, has seen his income skyrocket 20-fold since he began working 15 years ago. Now Liu, who sells ads for the local Yellow Pages, can splurge whenever he wants on his soccer shoes, badminton racquets and biking gear. But he still thinks the good times are just starting to roll. "Of course, I think my life will be better in the future," Liu says confidently. "The economy...