Urban clusters in China – chart

Chart Focus: How to compete in emerging markets – from McKinsey Quarterly’s Chart Focus newsletter,  a recommendation for international companies to group cities in an emerging market by shared characteristics as a way to more efficiently expand into that region.

…in China, to give just one example, even nearby tier-one cities can differ radically. Guangzhou and Shenzhen, two urban areas of comparable size, are just 62 miles apart. However, in Guangzhou a majority of consumers are locally born Cantonese speakers, while in Shenzhen more than 80 percent are Mandarin-speaking migrants with diverse tastes reflecting their diverse origins. In an emerging market, global companies should group cities into clusters with common demographics, income distributions, cultural traits, media outlets, and transport links.

To read the full article, Winning the $30 trillion decathlon: Going for gold in emerging markets, you have to go through a brief – free – registration process, but it’s well worth it.  See this previous post about a related video.