Proctor & Gamble in China

When you sit in front of the TV and wait your favorite TV series in China, you can always watch various ads promoting P&G’s new products. Actually, as the largest consumer goods company, Proctor & Gamble successfully expands on a global scale and maintains its leadership in global as well as local markets. Since 1988 P&G entered Chinese market, it has tagged as the premium consumer goods, providing high quality products for Chinese consumers.

     How do P&G successfully enter Chinese Market? First of all, P&G’s clearly segmentation and marketing strategy contribute to the success. When P&G introduced its products to Chinese customers; they take the strategy of premium quality but relatively low price (even lower than domestic brand during those periods. This strategy made P&G’s product popular in a short term and quickly dominated the market. Moreover, P&G always target at the young generation and launch different activities to allure younger customers: appointing idols to the ads and holding competitions to select their new spokesman.

Second, P&G uses multiple promotion activities selling its different products to its targeted segmentations and localized its products and promotions. The CIM and POS also help P&G to track its sales record and customer’s preferences in a short response time. The company also developed exclusive products target only for Chinese consumers. Before they introduce a new product to the market, they will do a lot research for the customer requirements and take few cities as the pilots to test the consumers’ reflections and they made improvements on those products. When they introduced a new products exclusive for Chinese consumer, they also invite customers watch the new ads for and votes their favorite ads.

Third, P&G values its HR localization strategy. When they first enter Chinese market, most of the employees are lack of experience or knowledge of how to work in a foreign company that had different business culture. In order to establish is management structure, P&G took the strategy of localizing its employees. The undergraduates and graduates are selected as the potential manager, taking special programs. Until now, P&G still takes this strategy. It also sponsor some challenges or competitions, such as “SIFE” targeting talent college students who can be the manager in the future.

   Actually, the success of P&G is not only due to its superior products and fancy ads, but also due to its successful adaptation of its original business model to the Chinese market and knowing well about Chinese consumers.