【正文】 ossible dream of mass customization within reach. But it requires slick cooperation among suppliers, manufacturers, distributors and retailers. Dell has led the way with its builttoorder PCs, but it‘s a whole new approach for most industries – even online merchants. Despite the Net‘s promise, bringing all data together and making sense of it remains a huge technological and logistical challenge. If these problems are overe, panies may finally provide the kind of frictionless merce that both they and consumers have always sought. For now, mass customization is happening only in bits and pieces. The proliferation challenge But despite better customer information management and lower munications costs, marketing to consumers and businesses is being more plex and difficult every day. Marketers—even the most sophisticated—are struggling to keep up. They must reinvent themselves so they can simultaneously prioritize opportunities in a more sophisticated way and increase the consistency and coordination of their marketing execution. 5 2. The new consumer The Middle Kingdom‘s middle class A social revolution will soon transform China, and multinationals that do business there can‘t afford to ignore it. So far, they have mostly focused on the country‘s tiny minority of urbanaffluent consumers. But as more Chinese migrate to the cities for higherpaying work, they are steadily climbing the ine ladder. By 20xx, McKinsey research suggests, China should have a lower middle class of 290 million people。 by 2025, the upper middle class will be 520 million strong, with staggering disposable wealth. For many multinationals, this is the market of the future. 6 The value of China39。s emerging middle class Demographic shifts and a burgeoning economy will unleash a huge wave of consumer spending in urban China. As China39。s economy has soared at consistently astonishing rates, many global panies have focused on serving the country39。s most affluent urban customers, the 1% of the population earning more than 100,000 RMB per year and manding 500 billion RMB – nearly 10% of urban disposable ine. When these welloff urbanites were the only consumers with significant disposable ine, this strategy of skimming the cream from the top made sense. But new research highlights the emergence of a far larger, more plex segment—the urban middle class, whose spending power will soon redefine the Chinese market . While some panies are already focusing on the evolution of this new class, many others have yet to broaden their vision and thus risk missing a significant opportunity. Fixating on the urbanaffluent consumer could mean that panies fail to capitalize on the dramatic changes that lie ahead as China39。s economic growth, barring unforeseen shocks, improves the livelihood of hundreds of millions of its citizens. Over the next 20 years more people will migrate to China39。s cities for higherpaying jobs. These working consumers, once the country39。s poorest, will steadily climb the ine ladder, creating a new and massive middle class. Because they are now still relatively poor, serving them will naturally require a pany to change its strategy significantly. Early movers, such as CocaCola and Pamp。G, have already begun creating models to target this segment profitably. Recognizing tomorrow39。s middle class: The rising economy in China will lift hundreds of millions of households out of poverty. Today 77 percent of urban Chinese households live on less than 25,000 renminbi a year。 we estimate that by 2025 that figure will drop to 10 percent. By then, urban households in China will make up one of the largest consumer markets in the world, spending about 20 trillion RMB—almost as much as all Japanese households spend today. Furthermore, since these estimates were calculated at today39。s tightly managed exchange rates, they may significantly underestimate China39。s future consumer purchasing power. Rapid economic growth will continue to transform the impoverished but largely egalitarian society of China39。s past into one with distinct ine classes. This evolution is already creating a widening gap between rich and poor, and tackling the resulting social and economic tension has bee a focus of government policy. Our projections indicate, however, that China will avoid the barbell economy that plagues much of the developing world: large numbers of poor, a small group of the very wealthy, and only a few in the middle. Two features of China39。s emerging middle class are already particularly notable. First, it will be unusually young pared with that of most developed markets, whose highest earners tend to be middle aged. Since higherpaying jobs, on average, require a higher level of education and training than what older generations have obtained, the Chinese government currently makes substantial investments in higher education for the younger cohorts, meaning that the country39。s wealthiest consumers will be from 25 to 44 years old. Second, the urban middle class will dwarf the current urbanaffluent segment in both size and total spending power. From 20xx onward we will see some distinct subsegments among the affluent—including the mass and globalaffluent categories—but they will still total only 40 million households by 2025, accounting for just 11 percent of all urban dwellers. They latter will remain a critical market for some panies. These uppertier households already account for 25 percent of Chinese household savings and will continue to control the bulk of the nation39。s accumulated wealth—60 percent by 2025. Their importance to banks and other financialservices firms will therefore increase and they are most likely to buy relatively expensive items, such as automobiles and durable goods. 7 Nevertheless, the biggest opportunity for panies selling massconsume