Going the Distance: China’s 10K Chocolate Race 203
weaning them on the luscious taste of their imported Austra-
lian-made Dairy Milk Chocolate, then inadvertently replacing
it with a cheesy-tasting China-made chocolate in 1995.
Though Mars has emerged as the leading chocolate com-
pany in China, the Big Five have barely scratched the surface
of the country’s chocolate sales potential. Indeed, chocolate
remains readily accessible to only 300 million of China’s 1.3
billion people. Given their extremely shallow market penetra-
tion, the past quarter century has been only the initial salvo
in the opening battle of the ongoing chocolate war. If penetra-
tion of the China market were a 10K foot race, the Big Five
might be viewed as having run only about 1