Page 87 - Battleground The Media Volume 1 and 2

| Brand ng the Globe

table B. World Population by Continent, 1998–2050

(population in millions)
Continent 1 % 0 0 %
Asia and Oceania 3,615 61 5,314 60
Africa 749 13 1,766 20
Europe 729 12 628 7
North America 305 5 392 4
Latin America and Caribbean 504 8 809 9
TOTAL 5,902 8,909

Source: United Nations Population Information Network. http://www.popin.org/.

Nations Population Estimates and Projections also project that the populations
of Europe and North America will shrink to only 11.5 percent of the total world
population by 2050. Africa will grow to account for over 20 percent and Asia
will make up 60 percent of the world’s total population (see Table B.3).
These substantial shifts in the centers of gravity of global markets represent
an interesting new phenomenon: the rise of global consumer culture fueled by
global advertising and branding.

ThE CasE oF China
The People’s Republic of China, for example, has a population of 1.3 billion
people. While the overall gross domestic product (GDP) per capita is still rela-
tively low, during the past two decades, China has been the world’s largest and
most rapidly developing country. China already has one-fifth of the world’s con-
sumers, and it has a rapidly growing middle class, hungry for consumer goods.
Thus, developing countries like mainland China and India are destined to take
center stage in the global bazaar.
This rapid economic growth in the developing world has resulted in a trans-
formation of consumer behavior, and advertising is positioned at the epi-
center of this transformation. In the past 10 years, over 100 million people
in China moved up to the middle class and many others moved up to the
wealthiest class. In fact, the figures on China’s newly rich are staggering. China
now boasts nearly 235,000 millionaires (US$ equivalency). At least 10,000 of
these entrepreneurs are each worth US$17 million, according to researchers
at the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences. In 2006, the 50th richest Chinese
boasted an income of US$190 million, while in 1999, number 50 on the “rich
list” had only $10 million. Economists forecast that in 10 years, China’s middle
class will be 400 million strong. While this economic growth has created un-
precedented opportunities for Western multinationals—nearly 30 percent of
all new McDonald’s restaurants opened this year will be in China, and Star-
bucks, the huge U.S. coffee company, expects China to become their second
largest market in the world—this rampant consumerism has also brought with
it another phenomenon: piracy.