China CMO: Best Practices in Marketing Effectiveness and Efficiency

In a wide-ranging if bland review of marketing business in China, Goh and Paull offer insights from top marketing officials for overseas companies about approaches that have worked there. Predictably, they emphasize the need for agility and adaptability, and that regional, linguistic, and cultural factors militate against any one-size-fits-all approach. While dramatic predictions about population growth and growing consumer wealth lure overseas firms, such well-known controversies as mandated technology transfer point to the need for a cautious approach. Goh and Paull avoid mapping out an uncertain future, but note that the rush of foreign competitors to do business in China creates its own imperative to act now or lose out. Their observations include the banal, the practical, and the amusing, and the case studies are useful.