Will China Choose Cheese?

The goal of this research project is to chart the path made by a product in the Chinese market.A product with no traditional presence in that market,one that has fought tooth and nail through the initial challenges of setting up a new market,then through various unforeseen hurdles,to become a product that is present in any major Chinese convenience store.The product in question is cheese.Often seen as an embodiment of the complete dissimilarity of Western cuisine with that of China,cheese has nonetheless made significant inroads in the Chinese mainland,transforming from a product that barely anyone had even heard of,to something that is sold in the millions of tonnes,at an ever-increasing rate.This project seeks to analyse the current market status of cheese in China and how this situation has been attained,by introducing the history of cheese from a generalist perspective,all the way to its current popularity in the world’s most populous nation.In addition to the historical perspective,an analytical economic tract of research will also be utilised to show how the market’s biggest players have leveraged their various competitive advantages to create a market for cheese in China.By doing this,light will be shed on the factors that have contributed to this growth,which will then be explored further by the original research undertaken by the author.This research will employ a mixture of quantitative and qualitative methods to form a picture of how cheese exists in the Chinese culinary consciousness today-which will then be used to shape examples of strategies that could be used by firms to start business operations in the Chinese cheese market.With this in mind,let us start with a broad outline of the topic,in order to create the analytical lens through which the peculiarities of the Chinese cheese industry should be viewed and understood.