Combined with the high-income population – households with disposable income of 35,000 U.S. dollars or more – the market is expected to be enormous, with a population of more than 2.2 billion. In China, durable consumer goods such as color television sets, refrigerators, and washing machines have become quite common in urban areas, but are still not as widespread as in Japan.
And they will be out there, going after a bigger slice of the world market. The way to stay ahead of the game is by developing and maintaining a competitive edge. This means improving productivity and finding more efficient, less costly ways, of delivering the products that foreign customers want. And it goes beyond innovation and investment in new technologies.