Chinese consumers tend to know exactly what they want to buy – and it is not always what multinational companies want to sell them.

That is a lesson foreign companies ignore at their peril, say businessmen involved in everything from putting pulp into juice drinks, to allowing customers to trade stocks while on the toilet.

Chen Can of Beijing-based Analysys International says: “When foreign companies come to China, they are very – sometimes too – proud of the business model that gave them success in other countries.”

The Chinese love foreign brands – but especially those that have learnt to act local.

Best Buy, the US retailer, is a perfect example: it is looking for a way to re-enter the Chinese market after failing ignominiously with its own-brand stores, which were closed this year. Retail analysts across the board agreed that Best Buy’s mistake was, in a way, its all-American arrogance.

Torsten Stocker, head of the China consumer goods practice at Monitor Group, the strategy consulting firm, says: “Best Buy tried to replicate the US model, providing a premium shopping experience that consumers were ultimately not willing to pay for.”

To hear Best Buy tell it, its mistake was to be “too far out in front” of the Chinese consumer – and to sell at fixed prices rather than allowing haggling. Local analysts reacted to those comments by wondering whether Best Buy had yet learnt the lessons of its failure.

“It has nothing to do with being able to haggle,” says Shaun Rein, author of the forthcoming book The End of Cheap China, and head of China Market Research in Shanghai. “Consumers told us they liked the fact that Best Buy had set prices.”

Liu Buchen, an independent electronics retail analyst, says: “Only when Best Buy faces the reasons for its failure will it make the right decisions next time.”

Two other US companies that are household names – KFC and Amway – took the opposite approach, and it worked. They made localisation their theme song. KFC has been more successful in China than McDonald’s, partly because it has localised its menu and management, retail analysts say: the average KFC in China serves rice gruel with pork and thousand-year-old egg for breakfast – not a staple item on US menus.

Amway, the US direct selling company, even abandoned core elements of its business model when pressed to do so by Beijing, including setting up retail outlets.

This proved a winning strategy, says Audie Wong, president of Amway China. “We opened retail stores to comply with government regulations, but we found they were very useful,” he says, noting that Chinese consumers prefer a brand with physical premises that they can go to in case of problems. Now China is Amway’s biggest market.

Indeed, Chinese consumers are now so important to some multinational companies that their tastes and preferences are shaping how consumer products are designed and marketed, not just in China but around the world.

Carmakers have long given cars more leg room in the back seat, to accommodate the chauffeur-driven Chinese entrepreneur, only to find – as GM did with its newly designed Buick LaCrosse sedan – that others, too, like a more spacious back seat as much as Chinese passengers. The LaCrosse sold in Detroit has a back seat influenced by Shanghai.

Now China’s passion for high-tech multi-tasking has begun to influence even something as mundane as the lavatory. The $6,400 “smart” toilet from Kohler, the plumbing fixtures company, has several features inspired primarily by China’s entertainment-obsessed consumers.

The heated footrest, designed for chilly Chinese water closets, has proved one of its most popular features globally, says David Kohler, president of the family company founded by his great-grandfather in 1873. The toilets’ sleek iTouch-style remote – which controls an internal music system and the temperature of the seat – has also proved popular outside China, he says.

Kohler also has a remote-controlled bidet seat which allows users to Skype, play video games, go online and read ebooks while abluting.

Kohler’s decision to make these toilets partly in China reflects the growing influence of Chinese tastes on the global market and a nascent movement by foreign companies in the consumer goods, pharmaceuticals and automotive fields to increase research and development in China.

Beijing has put pressure on foreign companies to do more than just manufacture on the mainland, aiming to transform China from the world’s sweatshop to its design studio.

As the country urbanises – and its middle class grows wealthier – Chinese tastes are likely to influence more of the things the rest of the world buys. Rolls-Royce Motor Cars says China’s love for back seat drinks cabinets and champagne refrigerators has spurred the company to offer these perks also in other markets.

Loos that Skype and Silver Shadows that make ice: from the Middle Kingdom, always something different.