ABSTRACT
Procter & Gamble largely created the market for shampoo in China. Previously, many Chinese still washed their hair with bar soap. Slick Western-style commercials launched P&G’s Head and Shoulders brand, and its success encouraged other multinational corporations (MNCs) to develop the Chinese market further. These MNCs included Japan’s Kao Corporation, France’s L’Oreal and Anglo-Dutch Unilever, as well as U.S.-based Colgate-Palmolive and Bristol-Myers Squibb. For ten years, big global brands such as Coca-Cola and Head and Shoulders killed local brands in China. Then things changed. Chinese brands recaptured two-thirds of the shampoo market and strongly reasserted themselves in other consumer nondurables such as soap, laundry detergent and skin moisturizer. A state-owned company even produced one of China’s largest-selling brands of toothpaste.
