HP Innovation Journal Issue 12: Summer 2019 | Page 33
CITY 2018 2035 DESCRIPTION
CHICAGO (U.S.) $133K $154K TOP 5 CITY IN U.S. (MEGACITY)
HAMBURG (GERMANY) $62K $35K TOP 3 CITY IN GERMANY (LARGE CITY)
BEIJING (CHINA) $45K $94K TOP 5 CITY IN CHINA (MEGACITY)
XIAMEN (CHINA) $82K $161K MEDIUM CITY IN CHINA
DELHI (INDIA) $72K $170K TOP 5 CITY IN INDIA (MEGACITY)
SURAT (INDIA) $54K $137K MEDIUM CITY IN INDIA
JAKARTA (INDONESIA) $78K $160K TOP 3 CITY IN INDONESIA
Average household incomes in many
Asian cities, large and small, are
forecast to reach and even exceed
household income levels in Europe
and the U.S. before 2035. Cities in
China, India, Indonesia, and parts of
Southeast Asia have 2035 household
income forecasts that look like those
of leading cities in developed markets.
Consider the following examples for
average household income by city 5 :
WHAT DOES IT MEAN FOR
GLOBAL ENTERPRISES?
The rapid rise of Asia, in all of its diversity and dynamism,
presents both challenge and opportunity to global compa-
nies seeking to do business in the region. Here are a few
major shifts to consider:
1. Businesses will need to revisit assumptions
about market and customer segmentation.
It’s common for business leaders to look at global markets
in a binary way—as developed or emerging—and assume
certain products are more suited for one place than another.
However, the picture is far more complex, and one way
to understand this is to look at projected income growth
at the city level. New York, Beijing, Jakarta, and Delhi are
beginning to appear more and more similar, in terms of
purchase power and demand we once associated exclusively
with developed regions. A retailer for high-end goods might
find that New York has less in common with Boston than
with Beijing, in terms of buying patterns and potential.
“The newly wealthy Asian family is becoming more
important to the world than the American middle-class
household,” wrote Michael Shuman, a journalist who has
covered Asia for 20 years, in U.S. News & World Report.
“There is no underestimating what that shift means. It is
reshaping the global economic order as we've known it.”
Businesses of every kind will need
to become intimately familiar with
the needs, sensibilities, and prefer-
ences of not just U.S. consumers, but
of Asian consumers: Chinese, Indian,
Thai, Korean, Indonesian, and beyond.
“While the American middle-class ethos largely shaped the
industries of the last century, in the coming century, the next
Disney, McDonald’s, and Walmart will almost certainly have
Asian origins,” wrote leading members of World Data Lab in
an article about consumer spending in the decade ahead 6 .
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