Forum provides venue for brainstorming

He said instead of a product manufacturer, Coca-Cola is actually a "relationship company", with 275 partners around the world. Coca-Cola operates with those local partners, which helps it understand the local conditions and consumers much better.

"I think probably the important thing that we see that is changing, shifting at a very dynamic rate is consumers no longer want to be talked to by companies that make products, that they actually want to have a dialogue with consumers," he said.

Talking about how to cope with a new paradigm in the Internet world, Tim Armstrong, chairman and CEO of AOL Inc, said: "Around the world, cultures are different, but in a lot of ways there's a lot of similarities between what consumers want. I think social media is going to play a really big piece in unlocking kind of universal joint aspects of societies and social behavior overall."

Reward for the host

The three-day event was also fruitful for Chengdu, the host city, which aspired to use this forum to raise its international profile and become a growth hub in China's west region.

According to the Chengdu government, at least 74 business deals were signed between the capital city of Sichuan province and Fortune 500 companies or large multinationals, with the combined value surpassing 112 billion yuan ($18.26 billion).

Of this, 12 major projects worth 25.6 billion yuan were sealed on June 7 at a contract signing ceremony at the city's Jinjiang Hotel.

Semiconductor design and manufacturing company Texas Instruments Inc announced its long-term strategy for manufacturing facilities in Chengdu in conjunction with officials of the Chengdu High-Tech Industrial Zone at the ceremony.

Its future plans include a new assembly and testing operation and the expansion of its existing wafer fabrication factory.

Texas Instruments' investment in the operation could total $1.69 billion over the next 15 years for more facilities, manufacturing equipment and land.

Schneider Electric SA of France is planning to establish its first subsidiary for Southwest China in Chengdu.

Sam Chum, vice-president of Schneider Electric China, said the company will soon upgrade its representative office to a branch in the Chengdu High-Tech Industrial Zone as the market in western regions attracts more and more attention from the company's top management.

The branch's business will cover sales, management, coordination and service support, and there are plans for it to become a regional hub that could reach other cities in Sichuan province, Chongqing and the Tibet autonomous region by the end of 2014.

Ellen Kullman, chief executive officer of E I Du Pont De Nemours and Co, said that the company built a plant in Chengdu last year, while jointly founding a research institute with Sichuan University to develop new fire- and heat resistant materials.

"The western city is now a hub for many manufacturing industries and we are glad to have set up a plant here," she told China Daily in an earlier interview.

Shi Lei, an economics professor at Fudan University, said cities such as Chengdu in Western China are maintaining resilient momentum,

"Looking to the future, they may become engines of growth when export-oriented coastal cities encounter more headwinds from shrinking external demand," Shi said.