Cosmetic Companies in China - Assignment Example

The paper "Cosmetic Companies in China" is a perfect example of a business assignment. For decades, the Chinese, under Communist rule, appeared to have no use for cosmetics. Women worked hard, just like their men, and both genders, at least on the surface, seemed committed to the ideal of hard work in order to lift up the country. In such an environment, it was considered bourgeois and contrary to the ideals of the people for anyone to make beauty a priority in his or her life. This could be seen in pictures from the Communist era, showing people wearing pretty much the same kind of attire. As the article “China’s new role model,” notes, “In Mao days, Chinese communism was unisex-minded. Women weren’t supposed to look like women. “The education of beauty did not exist in China for 40 years” (Button 1994 44). In the 1970s, as China has allowed capitalism to take hold, the people now have the opportunity to express themselves in ways that they choose, and beauty has taken centre stage. Although there are many companies vying for the Chinese market in cosmetics, only those who understand Chinese sensibilities and know how to manoeuvre in that special market are likely to survive over the long haul.

The China Cosmetic Market

Parr of the attraction of the Chinese market is the sheer number of bodies to be found in the country. For a country with more than one billion people it does not take Einstein to figure out that if even a small percentage of people can purchase one’s product, one can laugh all the way to the bank. Much anecdotal evidence also supports the notion that the cosmetics business is a prosperous one in China. Indeed, as the Chinese begin to have more money in their pocket, they have proven to love self-care and self-pampering as much as their counterparts in Japan or in Western countries such as the United States and Canada. The fact that 95% of cosmetic companies in China are private companies means that it is difficult to get reliable information in terms of sales figures, making it difficult to estimate the true value of the market. As the report, “China Cosmetic Market” notes, “it has been extremely difficult to gather reliable statistical data for this industry. For example, most press articles estimated the current market size at RMB40 to 45 billion, while many industrial leaders believe that this figure should range from RMB60 to 80 billion”.