Also, marketing has been strongest in the affluent populations of coastal cities where people are more educated and can afford to buy dairy products. For example, cheese and butter sales are most successful in Beijing, Guangzhou, Shanghai and Tianjin where there is a sizeable expatriate population to complement and shape dairy products consumption and sales. Although statistics indicate Hong Kong is the largest exporter of dairy products to China, the figures are misleading because, in most cases, Hong Kong is an acting distributor for leading supplier nations like Australia, New Zealand, the Netherlands, France, Switzerland and Denmark. Danone, Kraft, Nestle, and Unilever are some companies that have successfully set up joint-venture production facilities to produce yoghurt, cheese, ice cream and butter. In order to succeed in the local market, foreign companies have to understand and cope with the regional characteristics of each local market they enter.
Provinces have their own unique taste preferences as well as different infrastructure developments.
Inland provinces, and those farthest from the coast, have the least developed storage and distribution systems, severely limiting the production of some food products. For example, Danone locates its dairy businesses in various geographical regions to meet logistic and storage necessities. They have separate companies in Guangzhou and Shanghai. In Shanghai, they have a joint venture with a local company, the Shanghai Dairy Corporation, to make fresh and flavoured milk. They also have businesses with local Chinese partners in Shenzhen, Wuhan, Hangzhou and Hebei so that their products are available to the local Chinese people in those regions.