Introduction

The rise of large emerging markets is the defining economic story since the change of the millenium. It is more fundamental, rapid and far-reaching than anything else before it in commercial history, including the Industrial Revolution. Britain was the birthplace of the revolution. Driven by steam engines, cotton mills and iron making, it took the country 150 years to double its economic output. By comparison, China doubled its economy every decade after it started the reforms of the late 1970s, and while Britain began industrializing with a population of roughly 10 million people, China took off with one billion inhabitants. The current “revolution” is taking place at 15 times the speed and at 100 times the scale of what happened in Britain after 1750. Meanwhile, consumers in many developed Western countries are still licking their wounds from the global financial crisis that started in 2008 and most economies in Western Europe are more than likely to face slugish growth for several years to come. These developments are forcing forward-looking managers of leading international companies to set their sights more than ever on the large growth markets like the BRICS (Brazil, Russia, India, China, and, by some reckoning, South Africa) and other emerging markets. Besides these general considerations this introduction discusses how global multinationals have already benefitted from the major shift in economic gravity and how major brands from the BRICs are getting ready to conquer the global market place.