Unlocking Emerging Markets

Businesses are increasingly forced to compete on price rather than on product or service quality, where they have a distinct competitive edge sustained by highly efficient processing and delivery systems. Conventional wisdom suggests businesses to localize their service offering, provide less, and compete on price. Yet in so doing, firms will lose their leading position and worse, tarnish their global brand image. We suggest an alternative route. That is, businesses need to realign internally and externally so as to create innovative strategic space that enables them to avoid vicious price traps and achieve sustainable performance. Through such strategic realignments, businesses can build intimate consumer-brand relationships and enhance their global brand equity with tailored strategies to meet local competition and institutional demands, both winning their battle in China and other emerging markets.