Foreign brands were priced around 400-500 percent more expensively than local brands.
But price was important to consumers.
According to analysts, “no factor contributes more heavily to local brewer dominance than pricing.”
The leading local brewers, for their part, appeared to be consciously using their volume efficiencies to engage in predatory pricing and exploit consumers’ price sensitivity. As in the rest of the world, beer consumption in China had an intensely local nature, with patriotic feelings attached, which potentially meant that global beer brands could remain nothing more than a passing curiosity: