Spending Spree
They're young. They have money to burn. And the race is on to win them as customers
Not to be outdone, the National Football League now wants in on the lucrative China market. Rhoads, the sports-marketing consultant, and his company, Zou Marketing, are helping league officials introduce American football, by going into 200 middle schools in four cities and sponsoring flag football teams. "They took to it like ducks to water. It's all about one side taking land and the other defending," Rhoads says. "Teaching a child with no siblings how to play on a team with a common goal is also really important. In the end, we're here to make a buck, but it's also just really fun to get kids to play a sport." Some schools are now making it part of the physical-education curriculum. Adidas is doing the same thing for soccer, hiring certified coaches to train kids to play on teams, starting this spring.
The economics and demographics may put India behind China, but not for long. Bhavna Mehra, a 26-year-old corporate planner for Infosys Technologies, a star IT company in Bangalore, credits the economic reforms that began in 1991 for opening up parts of the economy, reducing regulation, and ushering in a new era of consumerism. Getting a bank loan or a telephone installed is now much easier, for example, as deregulation and a service mentality settle in. "When you approach a bank for a loan and they know you're from the IT industry," Mehra says, "especially a company like Infosys, approvals work quickly."
Mehra has a name for her socioeconomic cohort: "the fast-forward generation." "People's levels of expectations have changed tremendously," she says. "We want everything yesterday." What seems increasingly clear is that she, like Sharmin Du and her peers in China, will at least get it all tomorrow.
With Thomas Omestad
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