LG is here and in a big way, in products other than consumer durables. The huge splashes in the print and visual media have announced their entry into the personal care and other FMCG products. LG has already built an enormously visible presence in India.
One company that will closely watch what happens is HLL. Not that Procter & Gamble, Godrej, Jyoti Laboratories and other FMCG companies will not.
What these companies would like to know is not so much whether LG will succeed, but whether their customers will stay loyal to them. What is at stake, for them, is the strength of brand loyalty (towards them). If we are living through times when loyalty is at a massive discount (and opportunism is all that matters), why should brands be any exception?
Unless we myopically believe that this is a contextual question, we can safely wager that one of the major areas of consumer research (in India) is definitely going to be measuring brand loyalty. The key question is: why would consumers shift loyalty? Rather than market share numbers, research that can provide answers to such questions could well become more important. An entire game of strategy-cum-tactics will rest on the outcomes of such research. It is a sense of uncertainty about such vital aspects that is forcing many companies to tinker around with tactics, rather than think through a strategy.
In general, one can wager that more and more research will tend in the direction of grasping the underlying behavioural dimensions of consumers, as a variety of influences exert their pressure on them. Market-focused companies will want to focus especially on those aspects that will inform them of where they stand vis-à-vis their competitors, and more important, why. Recall surveys therefore, do not serve any purpose. They are like Quiz-Contests which don’t tell you whether a person is intelligent. Surveys have to be so designed as to measure the underlying strength of feelings for the product and company. Societies are changing, value systems are changing; how can we be sure that consumer behaviour will remain insulated and pursue its own trajectory?
As Peter Drucker would say, go back to understanding who is your customer. To be fair, there is already a fair degree of sophistication in profiling customers. The first NCAER study on urban-rural households in India more than a decade ago and the second one this year has ensured that consumer profiles are ‘constructs’, and not simple categories. However, in some instances, there may be a need to go beyond even these ‘constructs’. For example, some people may harbour a strong dislike for some companies and hence may shun their products. Has there been any study done to evaluate how many customers engage in politically-sensitive buying?
Global brands have had to go through fire in some countries on precisely these grounds. It seems quite natural that such phenomena happen, as the world becomes more and more globalised, with intense feelings either way. Are these questions going to be more important than the debate over whether marketing should be global or local?
Theodore Levitt argued a little more than 20 years ago the need for a global marketing approach, as he felt that consumers were tending towards a commonality of responses the world over. Studies over the years show that things cannot be so simple. When (and how) to localize and when not is a serious aspect. HSBC will remain a classic example of an intuitively brilliant approach, relying on the strength of diversity of meaning of various symbols and objects. However, Marlboro’s advertisement recently in China with local artists (waist drummers) and local flavour went flat, as none could associate it with Marlboro, until the end when Marlboro wished them a happy new year. Respondents to a survey said they would have preferred to see the ‘global’ advertisement featuring cowboys, suggesting strength, because that’s how they have always seen Marlboro.
If consumer research had to fight shy of over-simplification, it has also to steer clear of one more danger: over interpretation. Take for instance, Moscow just a little after Perestroika and Glasnost, when savings increased sharply. Studying only these figures would have furnished a misleading picture. Housing was so expensive that few could afford it; a general shortage of most goods ensured that people had no other choice but to save. To read too much into the growing savings in Moscow was obviously incorrect. The challenge for research in future is to be more ‘rounded’.
That is going to be tested in the single most challenge facing any company: to be able to remain relevant over newer generations. Which again brings us back to the question of brand loyalty. The debacle of Levi’s with the emergence of Khakis in the US is far too well known to be recalled here. There is a corollary for those in the business of market and marketing research: how to understand a ‘new’ generation, and how soon?
This means that top-of-the-mind recall surveys, especially of advertisements, that were quite popular a few years ago have to be passé. They convey nothing. Companies and advertisers both need to recognize that advertisements have become cultural products subject to debate (engaging or otherwise). And since it seemingly doesn’t demand professional background, just about everyone (academically) discusses advertisements. That doesn’t convey anything about the effectiveness of the advertisement.
This is an important point. Hutch which ran a brilliant campaign with the little boy and his inseparable companion pet dog, was, we heard, upset over what it felt was not an enthusiastic response to its next campaign featuring another set of young boys and girls for its group call services. If you recall, those advertisements haven’t been seen for quite a while.
Was the company right? Can we really go by the fantastic response to the first campaign which simply swept everybody off? Aren’t we to measure how many new customers signed up with Hutch and how many shifted to Hutch from other service providers, in response to the first campaign? Isn’t that what really counts? Why are business organizations getting taken in by superficial dimensions?
That raises a basic question. Is reaching customers a game of owning a unique space in their minds? For over two decades, positioning, for many, has been the be all of approaching customers. It is tempting to ask, given the brittleness of all businesses: is it time to go beyond positioning? Jack Trout will violently disagree, but perhaps his innovation two decades ago too cannot escape the influence of change.
In a sense, it is surprising that, for all the talk about customer-focus, the study of consumer behaviour has only recently become a distinct discipline. It took some years before organizational behaviour became a separate subject of study. In a similar fashion, consumer behaviour needs to be studied as a distinct area, but under a multi-disciplinary approach. Remember, a consumer is not a simple description, but a construct, born of sociology, psychology, culture, politics and what have you. Research firms too will need to recruit a range of talents and skills to be able to meet the challenge. Remember what they said about statistics years ago: what they reveal is interesting, what they conceal is vital. You have to be rounded to grapple with the vital.
USP Age magazine 2004
