Marketing Director For Saudi Arabia
It is the photo of the interviewee.
Some signs are unmistakable: in Mandarin, "da non" means "developing one's skills"!
This philosophy is perfectly in tune with the Groupe's history in the Middle Kingdom.
Since its first acquisition in 1987, DANONE has developed its integration by following demand trends in China, all the while taking into account the extreme diversity of this demographical and geographic giant.
To succeed, and in particular, to penetrate and remain in the huge market that China represents, DANONE had to adapt to specific local characteristics.
In the two decades since it gradually began opening out to foreign capital, the face of China has changed and new consumers are springing up from Shanghai to Beijing ("Pékin"). Basically an urban phenomenon, this new "middle class" has begun to develop consumer models that are close to those of the Western world.
Adapting to consumers
Thus, DANONE continues to develop a strategy based on the idea of products specifically designed to meet the expectations of this new middle class: for example, in the beverages market, DANONE is proposing a variety of jasmine tea developed by Wahaha, and Maidong an energy drink launched by Robust which has been a huge success with working urban dwellers. On the crackers segment, which is the leader on the biscuit market, DANONE has launched Tuc with seaweed and Wei ZI, a range of biscuits with vegetables enriched in fibre and calcium. All these products correspond to the new consumption trends.
It is an interview of Ahmad Yahya, the marketing director for Saudi Arabia :
" Danone and I have many things in common. Danone has huge brands in developed markets and is developing these brands in emerging markets and that's what I have been doing for last 12 years and hence is my strength as well. Also its enthusiastic and respectful culture fitted my personality and hence made it a perfect marriage. One night, I sent my application over the Internet and then DANONE called me.
I wasn't expecting such a large company to recruit by the Internet and was pleasantly surprised."