China was growing fast. The question was how to enter it
A leading global air purifier manufacturer was assessing the opportunity in China, a market growing on rising health awareness and urbanisation.
Growth on its own does not tell you how to enter. The client needed the competitive landscape, the distribution dynamics, the channel economics and the technology trends, and it needed all four specific to China.
A market entry strategy stands or falls on those four together. Any one of them read alone points somewhere the other three do not.
We asked the people who sell it then went to look at the shelf
In depth interviews ran with senior sales, marketing and insight leaders inside the category.
Those conversations were then checked against the shelf. Store checks and retail field audits covered offline retail and e-commerce, so what was described could be compared with what was actually stocked.
Distribution channels were mapped with their economics attached, because a channel without its margin is only half a fact.
Alongside that ran a technology landscape separating standard HEPA from HEPA+, so the product question could be answered on the same evidence as the channel question.
Thirty percent against ten. That is the channel decision in one line
Offline distributors were earning about 30 percent gross margin. E-commerce was earning about 10 percent.
That gap is the route to market question answered, and it is not something a market sizing model will ever show you.
On the product side, HEPA+ was gaining over standard HEPA as health awareness rose, and post COVID health awareness was accelerating growth in the premium segment.
Tier one and tier two cities showed distinct purchasing behaviour.
The client took away a prioritised HEPA+ development roadmap and clear channel margin benchmarks to refine its route to market in China.
