PROCTOR & amp; GAMBLE Russians seek American products as incomes increase

Personal income is rising more than 20 percent a year.
CINCINNATI (AP) -- Nearly 5,000 miles from Procter & amp; Gamble's Cincinnati headquarters is the company's fastest growing market -- Russia. Moscow residents are snapping up Tide, Pampers and other P & amp;G products, and sales are growing 50 percent a year.
The average Russian has only about $100 a month in disposable income and fewer than one-third of households have a washing machine. But personal income is rising more than 20 percent a year, and P & amp;G is gambling that increasingly affluent Russian consumers will turn to its products.
Although it has 145 million residents, Russia's economy is only about 15 percent as large as the United States'.
P & amp;G expects Russian market sales of about $500 million this year compared with $20 billion in North America.
Yet the 50 percent annual sales growth is unmatched in the West, and the pool of potential customers such as Kashenkova is growing quickly, said Natasha Zagvozdina, an analyst in Moscow for Renaissance Capital, an international research and financial services company.
"The more wealthy consumers become, of course, they will move to higher-priced products," she said. "The brands that P & amp;G is pushing in Russia are so well-known, and the consumer acceptance is already there."
Targeted marketing
Still, P & amp;G is remaining mindful of what Russians can afford right now.
A box of Tide that might cost $5 or $6 in the United States, for example, costs 35 rubles in Moscow, slightly more than $1.
To reach, P & amp;G must alter marketing strategies that have worked for decades in the United States.
Alex Nasard of Procter's Moscow marketing office said the company uses straightforward pitches rather than the entertaining, nuanced ads aired in the United States. Nasard said Russians are more immune to propaganda because of years of communism.
P & amp;G also has left English labels on most products, to maintain the company's global branding as well as to appeal to Russian customers' desire for anything American.