ABSTRACT
L ET'S take apples as a good, practical example ofthe opportunities afforded by the Chinese market with which I, as an advertising agent, have to familiarise myself: Apples are grown in all temperate zones,
th~re are few crop failures, they are comparatively cheap, easier than most fruit to pack and ship, and undoubtedly provide a very popular and healthy food. They can be eaten as they fall from the tree or can be cooked in a number of appetising ways. They can be stewed, fried, roasted, baked or made into cider or salads. An individual apple can be conveniently and cleanly divided into segments of the most meagre or most generous proportions, thus lending itself to small retail sale or to consumption on the .communistic or family plan. Because of these and other reasons, an apple is, among all the fruits, the easiest to market. Suppose we could convince the
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400 million potential Chinese customers that an apple a day would keep the doctor away.l
Apart from the matter of dependable supply, cheap price and satisfactory shipping qualities, an apple has, as a problem of selling to the Chinese, a good many factors which are encouraging. The Chinese believe that everything they eat has some medicinal value, so they would be less sceptical about the health-giving properties of apples than most other people. A great many Britons, in spite of several decades of advertising, are still doubtful about there being iron in raisins, but the Chinese are not, though it is a comparatively new story to them. It didn't take very much advertising to convince them that the eating of raisins would make them healthily ferriferous, because they were curing their ills with fruits, herbs and other vegetable products more than ten centuries before the birth of Christ, and the idea was not a novel one to them. Although very few apples are grown in the country, Chinese eat a lot of them which are imported from Korea, and some which come from America and New Zealand. 2 So there is no question ofovercoming any food prejudices or breaking down any strong sales resistance. I t is only a question ofmaking the present scattered demand for apples universal.
