Over the last 10 years, on-line purchasing by the general consumer has become commonplace. This trend will continue to grow at double-digit rates for the foreseeable future. Most of the products are high-quality brand names that are recognized by the public. This buying process saves money, transaction time, and allows buyers to return products for a variety of reasons at the supplier’s expense. This is all part of the doing business in America.

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In Europe most enterprises are highly specialized with a strong focus on their core business. Their market position and its core-competences are frequently monitored. In strategic reports terms like: ‘core business’, ‘specialization’, ‘focus’ etc. are hard to avoid.

Finding this kind of highly developed core-competence approach in Mainland Chinese companies is more …

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Successful marketing communicates to a target audience that its needs can be met by a particular supplier’s offering. Any marketing campaign should have at its core the communication of the target market’s needs. With this in mind, it is essential to consider what Chinese businesses require from potential Western suppliers. We have excluded ‘price’ from our analysis, taking this as ‘a given’.

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Inflation in China is soaring and price increases are being exported to the developed world. Customers are finding that factories are increasing prices almost weekly or biweekly depending on the product. Customers requiring their price quotes in US Dollars are finding their quotes only good for one or two weeks.

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Building an effective system for the protection of Intellectual Property Rights (IPRs) has become essential for China. Consequently, the Chinese government has worked hard to establish a world-class patent-protection system during the past 20 years, and during the past 27 years, China joined the major international IP Organizations and Treaties:

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