• Retail sales in Beijing rose to Yn339bn (£30bn) in the first eight months of 2009, up 14.3 per cent year-on-year, reports Savills. Outlet stores benefited greatly from the economic downturn.

• French luxury brand Louis Vuitton plans to open a 2,000-sq m flagship store, one of the largest in the world and the largest in China, in Shanghai before the Expo starts in May 2010.

• Retail sales during the eight-day National Day holiday in October hit a new high, with the home appliances, jewellery and catering sectors all experiencing a surge.

• Lotte Shopping, South Korea’s biggest department store owner, is to buy the Chinese supermarket operator Times Ltd in a deal reported to be worth US$625m. Lotte, which is reported to have beaten China’s Wumart Stores to clinch the deal, will gain 65 stores on the Chinese mainland.

Sources: CBBC, Xinhua, Financial Times, Wall Street Journal, FCO Country Updates and other news sources.

Foreign publishing groups are welcome to invest in the Chinese publishing industry, said General Administration of Press and Publication minister Liu Binjie last month. China has begun to cooperate with foreign companies in book publishing and newspaper and magazine production, in part because domestic publishers are being corporatised and need more capital and business expertise.

Sources: CBBC, Xinhua, Financial Times, Wall Street Journal, FCO Country Updates and other news sources.

Strong and consistent branding is not just vital for products and services.  It is also important for countries, helping them to attract visitors, businesspeople and new businesses alike to raise their profile and boost their economy.

In FutureBrand’s latest Country Brand Index (CBI), Singapore is the country in Asia whose branding efforts have really paid off this past year.  Moving up an impressive 11 spots, from 24th last year to 13th in this year’s overall rankings, Singapore earned top spot in several of the individual categories, including best country brand for “shopping” and “easiest to do business in”.  It was second only to the United States in the “Ideal for Business” category, and was judged as the third best country brand for conferences.

Other ‘rising stars’ in Asia-Pacific, according to this year’s CBI, include the United Arab Emirates (UAE), China and Vietnam, which were named as the top three likely major tourist destinations in the next five years. India was also a notable mention.

However, we should not neglect to point out that Australia and New Zealand, in third and fourth places respectively overall, were the Asia-Pacific region’s top country brands.  The complete Top 10 is shown below:

1. United States

2. Canada

3. Australia

4. New Zealand

5. France

6. Italy

7. Japan

8. United Kingdom

9. Germany

10. Spain

To learn more about branding market research, please click here.

• China’s medical apparatus market will be worth ¥100 billion ($1 = ¥6.83) in 2010 after growing 12% to 15% annually since the 1990s, the state-run Xinhua News Agency reported from an industry summit held in Beijing in late November.

• The US measurement and technology company Agilent Technologies has joined with Shanghai Institute of Biological Sciences and Chinese Academy of Sciences to open a centre for systems biology in Shanghai. The centre will use biomarker identification to better understand diseases.

• China has granted approval to its first home-grown swine flu vaccine, which the producer Sinovac says is effective after only one dose.

Find out more about the pharmaceutical, medical and biotech market research work we do here.

Sources: CBBC, Xinhua, Financial Times, Wall Street Journal, FCO Country Updates and other news sources.

l        Ford Motor Company is to invest US$490m in an assembly plant in China to produce the next-generation Focus compact car, which it plans to sell worldwide.  The US motor giant will partner with Mazda and Chang’an in a joint venture in Chongqing, scheduled for completion by 2012.  This will be Ford’s second plant in Chongqing.

l        A US supplier of clean electric transportation and storage technologies is to establish two joint venture companies with Shenzhen Goch Investment (SGI).  SGI will invest US$10m in a joint company to manufacture and assemble electric vehicle charging equipment, and US$5m in a company to market and sell these charging systems in China.

l       The president and CEO of General Motors, Frederick Henderson, said that China has surpassed US to be the largest market for the automobile giant.  For the first nine months of 2009, GM’s sales in China totalled almost 1.3m vehicles, 56% up on the previous year.  Sales in September were at an all-time monthly record.  GM, the largest vehicle producer in China, last month launched a wholly owned science lab in Shanghai, which will focus on advanced propulsion technology, battery cells, mega-city safety resource, advanced vehicle development and light materials, GM said.

         More information about market research in the Automotive sector can be found at: http://www.b2binternational.com/China/b2bsectors/automotive.php 

Sources: CBBC, Xinhua, Financial Times, Wall Street Journal, FCO Country Updates and other news sources.

If ever you needed proof that companies are increasingly viewing overseas markets as vital to overall company growth and profitability, the Ad Age Global Marketer’s survey should give you some idea of the importance of global markets.

The survey showed that the Top 100 global advertisers spent almost two-thirds (62%) of their measured-media budgets outside the U.S. last year, with much of the overseas spend going to China.  Of the 44 U.S.-based companies in the Global 100, a quarter relies so heavily on international sales that they allocate more than half their ad spend abroad.

Coca-Cola Co., for example, allocates just 16.5% of its $2.67 billion measured-media spending to the U.S. market but spends nearly three times that amount in Europe. Three-quarters of Coca-Cola’s sales come from outside the United States.

Procter & Gamble Co., which overtook Unilever in 2002 to become the world’s biggest advertiser, devotes two-thirds of its $9.73 billion measured-media spending to international markets, just slightly ahead of the 61% of P&G revenue that is generated from outside the U.S. P&G is the biggest advertiser in all regions except Latin America and Africa (where Unilever takes the top spot).

The biggest marketers are investing ad dollars wherever they can find revenue or potential for growth in a tough global economy – and increasingly, that’s deemed to be China. 39 of the Global 100 had measured-media spending in China last year, with five – Yum Brands, Pernod Ricard, Avon Products, Colgate-Palmolive Co. and P&G – already investing more than 10% of their budgets there.  Yum Brands, the parent company of KFC and Pizza Hut, spends 20% of its $1.41 billion worldwide measured ad spending in China and, in 2008, generated 31% of its global revenue from the country, with sales surging 36%.

Overall, China represents 3.4% of total advertising spend for the Global 100, with P&G emerging as China’s biggest advertiser at about $1.1 billion.

The Global 100 last year spent slightly more in Europe ($46.3 billion or 39% of their total) than in the U.S. ($44.4 billion, or 38%).  Yet, the United States seems to have appeal for a number of European and Japanese marketers. Six of the 56 non-U.S. Global 100 companies (of whom four are European pharmaceutical manufacturers, subject to more stringent European advertising regulations) spent more than half their media budgets in the U.S.  Unsurprisingly, U.S. pharmaceutical companies concentrate the bulk of their own ad spending in the U.S.

Overall, total measured ad spending for the Global 100 companies rose 3.1% to $117.9 billion in 2008, despite a 3.7% drop in the Global 100’s U.S. spending.

l          The US networking and communications technology company Cisco has entered into a strategic relationship with Chongqing municipality, under which the US company will work to advance Chongqing’s IT manufacturing industry, promote innovation and R&D in green technologies, and support China’s ‘green growth’ strategy. Cisco and Chongqing will work to increase investment, support local innovation and sustainability, and accelerate the internationalisation of local enterprises.

l          The dominant Chinese search engine Baidu has announced that many of its popular services will be pre-installed on next-generation mobile phones from the local carrier China Unicom. Baidu’s services including its internet search, free music download search and message forum will all be pre-installed on 3G handsets, Baidu said. Baidu will also provide search capabilities for mobile internet web sites run by the carrier, which planned to launch the iPhone in China in October.

         For more about our Information Technology market research services in China and Asia, please click here.Alternatively, to find out more about our Telecommunications sector market research, click here.

Sources: CBBC, Xinhua, Financial Times, Wall Street Journal, FCO Country Updates and other news sources.

In the latest preliminary figures released by the National Bureau of Statistics, covering November 2009, the seventh consecutive month of accelerating economic performance was recorded.

Key figures for November include:

Year on year growth in production was 22% for heavy industry and 12% for light industry.

Uurban investment in fixed assets reached 16,863.4 billion yuan in the year up to and including November rose  up by 32.1 percent year-on-year, or 5.3 percentage points higher than that in the same period of last year.

For foreign companies looking at China, however, the a promising figure is the rises in imports:  26.7% higher in November from a year earlier. China’s trade surplus narrowed to $19.9bn in November form $24bn in October.

For the details form NBS, see

http://www.stats.gov.cn/english/newsandcomingevents/t20091211_402606768.htm

l        Rapidly increasing demand for chilled and frozen food will boost the sale of cold storage facilities in China over the next five years, according to a research report by property services provider, Jones Lang LaSalle. The number of refrigerated warehouses was expected to grow by about 24 per cent annually for the next five years amid pressing demand from consumers and the food export sector, the report said.

l        Demand for frozen meat products, dairy products and other food has increased by 70 per cent over the past six years as the population eat more animal protein, Jones Lang LaSalle said.

         To find out about the market research we conduct in the Food & Drink sector, please click here.

Sources: CBBC, Xinhua, Financial Times, Wall Street Journal, FCO Country Updates and other news sources.

  l   Import tax overturned

China has abolished the higher taxes it imposed on some automotive parts imports, after the World Trade Organisation ruled last year that the tariffs violated trade rules.

  l   Help for SMEs

              The State Council has announced new measures to help China’s struggling SMEs. They include raising the proportion of government procurement of commodities and services from SMEs, social security and tax breaks, and a promised reform of (unspecified) monopoly industries to allow greater opportunities for SMEs. Preferential export credit policies will be extended to SMEs to encourage overseas investment.

Sources: CBBC, Xinhua, Financial Times, Wall Street Journal, FCO Country Updates and other news sources.