Archive for the ‘Emerging Markets’ Category

Blog, Emerging Markets, Ethnography, Insights

Ethnography: Really Getting Under The Skin of a Culture

Date February 03 2011
Posted by Sharmila
Tagged with

Ni Hao!

Greetings from a very very cold Beijing. Face have been working on an extremely interesting ethnography and filming project for the past few months, culminating in a tour of Beijing and Sao Paolo where we’ve been hanging out in people’s homes and professionally filming them to bring them to life. All very exciting stuff, and a truly illuminating experience.

Ethnography has been an approach utilized within qualitative research for a long time now. In market research terms, when we talk ethnography, we’re not talking true, academic methods, where the researcher may spend weeks, months or even longer with their participants. More often than not, we don’t have the time or the project scope to undertake such extended periods of observation. However, the principle of ethnography is still at the heart of this method in qualitative research – by spending time observing our participants’ environments, we ultimately uncover a larger number of richer insights about our target. From seeing how peoples homes are decorated, to how they like to hang out with their friends, we get the chance to really get under the skin of people, and that should really be the ultimate aim of any form of qualitative research.

This project has been a brilliant example of when ethnography proves so rich and eye-opening. Whilst we’ve only scratched the surface of understanding what Beijing,and Beijingers are all about, we’ve got a lot closer than we would do by watching people talk from behind the mirror. From spending time in peoples houses, I’ve come to learn a myriad of things, from the fact that a 10 square metre hudong can sell for the equivalent of £600,000 because of location and “cool factor”, to understanding just how much Chinese people love small dogs. Along the way, I’ve also come to realize just how proud Beijingers are of coming from Beijing and of their identity as cultured, informed people who love to talk about politics and the weighty issues of the world.

All of this insight and more, has reinforced our belief that being able to carry out ethnography is a true privilege for anyone interested in finding out more about any country they may find themselves in. Next stop, Sao Paolo. Amidst the caipirinhas and sunshine, we look forward to finding out more about how Brazilians tick.

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Blog, Co-Creation, Emerging Markets, Insights, Planning

Innovating For Emerging Markets & How Co-creation Can Help

Date June 22 2010
Posted by Job
Tagged with

According to the IMF emerging market economies will contribute 70% of the worlds economic growth by 2014. In fact Brazil, India ,China & Russia (BRIC) represent the vast majority of this growth while in comparison the G7 nations including US, UK, Japan, Germany, Canada, France & Italy will only achieve 13%. In fact when you look at data for most categories it is clear that compared to the developed world emerging markets are experiencing massive growth. For example Euromonitor data shows that while the soft drinks market is declining by 10% in Western Europe India is seeing growth rates of 15% and Argentina is growing by a massive 25%.

Clearly there are big opportunities for brands to take advantage of this growing consumer demand by launching existing and new products – but of course it is not that easy.

Take Kelloggs as an example who in 90′s launched Cornflakes into the 900m Indian consumer market with a modest ambition of gaining 2% share which if achieved would be bigger than their existing US sales. However it bombed badly Cornflakes achieved just £7 million worth of sales in 3 years. Kelloggs failed to understand that in India breakfast is a religion! It is freshly prepared in the morning predominantly hot and spicy, plus milk in India is always boiled and consumed hot which has the effect of making your Cornflakes soggy and horrible to eat.

Pampers also had a difficult start when they launched in China in the late 90′s with a cheap plastic version of their US product. Again this giant brand was arrogant and failed to understand that Chinese parents brought up their children differently. They potty train them by 6 months and that they care so much about softness of their skin they do not put their children in nappies at all preferring to use a kaidangku… see below…

From our experience working in these markets it is crucial that marketeers discard their western lens and avoid the temptation to see npd process as just an extension or replication of their current business. Put simply you need to invest in developing deep consumer and cultural understanding.

This is why co-creation with consumers is so useful when entering an emerging market.

Cultural Immersion - by working directly with consumers in emerging markets to develop npd concepts global marketeers quickly understand the values and motivations that drive purchasing decisions

Language & Codes - when marketeers start to bring early product concepts to life with consumers it is incredibly useful in uncovering the tone and cultural codes that will appeal and just as importantly those that will turn off consumers

Brand Positioning – co-creation with consumers is a very effective way of exploring what role a brand can play in a new market helping to answer key questions: what new products can it accommodate? can this brand work across socioeconomic groups? do we need to localise the brand in anyway?

Product Stretch – innovating with local target market consumers enables marketeers to understand how well existing products will resonate in local markets and can help tweak and refine features and packaging to optimise them for the new market

For more information on co-creation and emerging markets take a look at these related articles: