The realisation of such a marketing strategy requires not only the existence of a he t- erogeneous consumer goods market, but also the possibility to identify market seg- ments which are internally homogeneous and externally heterogeneous with regard to the product related needs and wants of their members. 17 Chinese consumer goods markets meet the first condition very well, as explained above, but up to now very few empirical segmentation studies of these markets have been carried out and pu blished, such as, the studies of Ariga/Yasue/Wen, Sum, Wei, Schmitt, Cui, Cui/Liu and Ma18 , published between 1997 and 2004. .
