Marketing to Millions: China's Changing Tastes

In the 1840s, an English author famously wrote that if every person in China lengthened his shirttail by a foot, British cotton mills would work around the clock.

The lure of China's massive untapped market has only increased over time. So how are today's multinationals tailoring their products and their strategies to attract China's millions of newly minted consumers?

Think ancient beauty potions and tea-flavored toothpaste.

Just 40 years ago, wearing makeup or using any beauty product was condemned as bourgeois in China. It's a measure of just how much society has changed that in a swanky shopping mall there's even a waiting list to buy Creme De La Mer skin cream, which retails for nearly $300.

So how are companies like Estee Lauder, which sells this face cream, getting Chinese consumers to part with their money?