Between of all the challenges that the middle class is representing to marketers, understanding the very specific needs and the growing purchasing power of this group is extremely important. Indeed, because middle class consumers have this rising purchasing power and are increasingly willing to pay more for more higher quality, famous brand names and differentiated products, they are a new target that represents opportunities and challenges for the premium car manufacturers. Identifying these opportunities is essential to success in the Chinese marketplace (17) (18). As a matter of fact, thanks to China's insatiable economic growth, increasing personal income and the expansion of urbanization, the demand for luxury cars is totally …show more content…
As brands such as German premium ones are increasingly trying to engage with customers by using more and more experiential marketing to promote what it means to be a part of a brand and not just own a product, China can be their new Eldorado. These are some important findings from a 2012 McKinsey survey of 1,200 Chinese premium car consumers in 12 of the Chinese biggest cities. McKinsey’s research has also shown that 80 percent of Chinese premium car owners have annual disposable household income of more than RMB 200,000. They have predicted that, by 2020, there will be 23 million affluent urban households in China and the analysis shows that 300 cities in China will have consumers with sufficient household income to buy premium vehicles by 2020 (16). But, this fast emergence of a large number of “new” consumers can poses a challenge for premium automakers: determining new body styles that will satisfy Chinese premium auto buyers and that could be a new integral part the premium car manufacturers’ product portfolio strategy. Automakers should focus to identify the next body style that will become the future “hit” in