220 Chocolate Fortunes
Managing China’s Multitier Market
Going Forward
To survive and prosper in China’s multitier markets of the fu-
ture, the Big Five chocolate companies will need to fight on
two fronts. They will need to sustain their businesses in first-
tier cities, while investing resources, both human and finan-
cial, in emerging second-tier cities. Failure to continue to
push in the first-tier cities could mean ceding ground to multi-
national rivals. Failure to push into the lower-tier cities would
mean conceding those markets to local competitors such as
Le Conte. Striking the right balance between the competing
priorities of current and future opportunities is the crux of
any successful multitier market strategy, but this is the tight-
rope that ...