Who is the Chinese consumer? Segmentation in the People's Republic of China

Abstract

This article is a shortened and revised version of the inauguration speech that Bernd Schmitt delivered in October 1996 in Shanghai as the Bat Chair of Marketing at CEIBS. 1 The BAT Chair is the first chair ever donated to a business school in China. The article provides a review of three different segmentation approaches to the Chinese consumer market: geographic, demographic and psychographic/lifestyles segmentation. Given the increased segmentation of the Chinese market, especially in the cities, psychographic/lifestyles segmentation seems to be necessary for the marketing of consumer goods.