【正文】 th 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。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 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。M‘s to give the celebrating couple a sugar overdose. Chocolate lovers clamoured for smaller portions. And in 20xx, Masterfoods responded, tweaking its manufacturing to produce 227 grams and kg customized bags and selling them online. Although these cost nearly three times the price of regular Mamp。 observing them for what they are doing, not what they‘re saying。 and with the development of specific, rather than generic strategies, tailored to the needs of individual customers. CASE: China Enter and GXS Partner to Launch B2B e。 observing consumers。 M‘s launched an online site called Colorworks. It offered a palette of 21 colors to coat specially ordered Mamp。s tightly managed exchange rates, they may significantly underestimate China39。s economy has soared at consistently astonishing rates, many global panies have focused on serving the country39。s emerging middle class Demographic shifts and a burgeoning economy will unleash a huge wave of consumer spending in urban China. As China39。 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。G, for example, offers more affordable Olay products in supermarkets and hypermarkets and highend lines such as Olay Regenerist in department stores. Customer Relationship Management Companies use Customer Relationship Management (CRM) to better understand customers in order to acquire, retain and grow accounts with those most profitable. Data collected through CRM enables firms to differentially serve target segments, including tailoring products to include features valued by these segments, and exclude features that add costs but fail to significantly influence target customer purchases. CRM provides data to educate employees, align their incentives and position a pany strategically to profit from evolving market needs. A MASS MARKET OF ONE The year was 1997, and Masterfoods USA, the division of Mars Inc., that makes M amp。berg has guided Electrolux through a major restructuring that includes importing more parts from Asia and shifting assembly operations from about 20 sites in Western Europe and the United States to lowercost countries such as Hungary, Mexico, Poland, Russia, and Thailand. At the same time, he has pushed the pany to sharpen its value proposition at both the high and low ends of the market by taking a fresh look at what consumers really want and by creating new products that are specifically aimed at the purchasing patterns and lifestyles of more finegrained customer segments. There is a whole series of techniques and approaches for figuring out what these segments are and what they really expect: videotaping consumers and asking them the right kind of questions。 with cooperation as much as petition。 and so on. The people doing this work should be anized in crossfunctional teams—product developers who are actually ing up with the ideas, sales and marketing people, and support personnel who can help collect and anize data. This approach has helped us almost double the number of newproduct launches in the past three years. 9 Given the differences in what consumers value, the traditional industry segmentation based on price and a ―goodbetterbest‖ hierarchy is abandoned. Now segmentation has as many as 20 product positions that relate directly to the lifestyle and purchasing patterns of different consumers. Steam ovens, for example, are now successfully marketed to healthoriented consumers. Compact dishwashers, which we had initially developed for smaller kitchens, are now marketed to a broader consumer segment interested in washing dishes more often. In both ends of the market, brand credibility and trust are very important because customers entrust our products with expensive loads of clothes or have a lot at stake when cooking dinner for people. You want to show that you‘re very good at cooking, and therefore you can‘t be let down by the product. After looking outside our industry, we mitted ourselves to