Coca-Cola aims to make China its largest market
Updated: 2007-08-07 11:52
A: I think we will just make sure that we understand everything in the industry. We wouldn't specifically target anyone. I think currently we have wonderful partners, a strong partnership with COFCO, with which we have just opened, a new bottling factory in Jiangxi Province. And we have a very strong partnership with Swire, another longstanding partner. So we don't see any change to that partnership.
Q: What do you perceive will be the major challenges for you to grow your business in the Chinese market?
A: I think there are quite a number of challenges. The first is trying to calculate the speed of our investments. The challenge is try to estimate how will this growth continue in the next 3, 5, 10 years. So what will be required on our investment capabilities in factories, bottling lines, infrastructure and people.
Secondly, it's a very competitive market. Everybody knows China is a huge potential market and you should compete fast and aggressively to win in the market. Thirdly, the pace of change in the Chinese market is very quick. Obviously if you are not on top of your consumers and competitors, and have the R&D capacities to launch new products, then you'll fall behind very quickly. You need to make sure you're running faster than others, or you will get behind, so these I think are major challenges.
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