ICI Swire Paints(China) Ltd.——Winning Competitive Advantage Through Reforming Product Strategy

China is a huge decorative paints market, which amounted to 800 million liters in 1999. Among thousands of players across the country, many are strong regional brands. ICI and Nippon are two most aggressive companies and both want to be No. 1 in China market. ICI is an international company, with headquarter in the United Kingdom. Nippon, however, is an Asian company with headquarter in Singapore. Both being foreign investors, they use completely different strategy in China. ICI uses different brands for different segments and focus on 揇ulux?in premium segment all the time. Nippon on the contrary uses one single brand 揘ippon?for all segments. It entered non premium segment first to get critical mass and introduced premium products afterwards. Although entering China market back in 1992, earlier than Nippon抯 1995, ICJ抯 volume share is far behind Nippon. However, ICI is going to counter Nippon and turn around the situation. The author believes that ICI can cut through with right product strategy, which will help ICI to regain competitive advantages effectively.