Understanding the Mind of the Emerging Market Consumer

Market research started by asking people questions. Initially the questions were simple and researchers asked, for instance, how may sticks of cigarettes the consumers smoked or which brand did they normally buy. Not satisfied with just knowing the behaviour, the researchers started to probe into the consumer mind to understand the factors determining the behaviour. The questionnaires were replete with open-ended as well as close-ended questions, trying to understand the reasons for consumer choice. In qualitative research this developed into what was called as motivational research and over time the quantitative researchers started relying more on observational research and derived statistical methods.

When the cigarette and washing powder companies started researching the consumers in emerging markets (earlier referred by various names including poverty stricken countries, under developed nations or developing markets) they brought the same bag of tools to this part of the world and sari clad women in India were goaded to try to imagine Surf as a person and more recently the Chinese, with their recent discovery of money and what it can do to you, started ticking the top 5 out of the 30 attribute long list of factors which could have led them to make their choice. The question really is whether the tools and techniques developed in the Western world work equally well in the emerging markets or do we need to develop new techniques or at least to modify them to reveal the emerging market consumer's psyche. Of course some will argue that many of the techniques used for decades in the Western world (particularly the few that I alluded to earlier) never actually worked in the Western world also - so they never had a chance in the emerging markets. Setting aside such cynicism here, I give six reasons why marketing research (though hardly any one uses this name any more) needs to work differently in Asia and other emerging markets.

1. The very process of asking pointed questions to try to understand why consumers do what they do, assumes several preconditions. Firstly it assumes that the consumers themselves know the answer. In many cases it may not be true as the process may be subconscious (few will deny that consumer in both the developed and the emerging world have a subconscious!). Secondly it assumes that the consumer is willing to share the underlying reasons for their behaviour, which may not hold water in general, but even more so in emerging markets. Lower income consumers may be reluctant to admit that is was price that played the principal role in their decisions. On the other end of the spectrum (emerging markets seem to be producing more than a fair share of the super rich!), in many Asian cultures sticking out and attracting attention is frowned upon, and decisions are supposed to be rational rather than emotional. Luxury consumers are, therefore, unwilling to admit the extent to which intangible factors such as status and emotions guide their decisions. The true reasons in Asian markets therefore often need to be derived and reliance on direct questioning is inappropriate.


2. Value derived from direct questioning critically hinges on the existence of an adequate level of articulation from the consumers. Of course emerging market consumers in general are not inarticulate, but limited education as well as not being used to air your opinion, particularly on products and brands, can make the consumers feel substantially challenged in articulating their reasons of choice (assuming that they know the reasons). In general the questioning needs to be less open-ended or hypothetical and more based on choice analysis. The best way to understand the consumer mind in the developing markets is to place them in alternative choice scenarios, and analyse the choices through statistical techniques.


3. The shopping context is often different in Asian and other emerging markets as compared to the developed markets. The emerging market consumers do not necessarily shop in the Wal-mart and Carrefour hypermarkets that were the favorite haunts of the consumers from the developed economies (till the economic crisis made them hold tighter to their wallets). In India as in small town and rural China, traditional trade dominates. The traditional trade situation results in a unique dynamic between the shopper and the seller which can strongly influence the choices of the shoppers. This is unique to the developing markets and the researchers in the West never had an opportunity to study this dynamic. The right research tools to study this needs to be specific to the emerging markets.


4. The emerging market consumers, not having the benefit of hefty wallets, show price sensitivity to an extent that the Western consumers will be entirely indifferent to. Additionally the price sensitivities can vary substantially at various price points. The pricing research techniques in emerging markets, therefore, need to be more sophisticated to catch the higher sensitivities and variations - conjoint analysis and discrete choice modeling should find even wider applicability than in the West.


5. In general the experience and interaction of the emerging market consumer with brands is relatively limited. Thirty years ago a Chinese consumer seldom saw an advertisement. Today they are overwhelmed by them. Thirty years ago they had practically no choice and now they have a bewildering array of product options in front of them. This rather rapid change in scenarios has led to the development of choice algorithms which are different from the ones which guide the Western consumers. For example the choice algorithms in certain categories include a rapid screening process and then a detailed evaluation to make the task more manageable. Understanding these choice processes will therefore require a two stage questioning and exclusive reliance on detailed attribute image measurement will not be appropriate.


6. Lastly the consumption context of products is different in Asian and other emerging markets as compared to the developed world. Refrigerator, for instance, may find a place of pride in the living room rather than in the functionally more appropriate position of the kitchen. Food may be consumed on the floor rather than on the dining table. These differences give rise to new attributes of relevance which we do not normally associate with the category. Neglecting these aspects will provide an incomplete picture and fail to fully explain consumer behaviour and choices in these markets.

In sum, researching the consumers in Asian and other emerging markets requires more sensitivity and sophistication than in the developed markets. It is essential that the researchers focus their efforts and energies on this part of the world, sharpen their tools and develop new ones to accurately capture the mind of the emerging market consumer.

Written by Ashok Sethi
Published in Research World, March/April, 2011

MR a cultural perspective


Market research is a complex process which starts and ends with strategic issues and decisions faced by companies. However, in between there is an elaborate process that involves several different activities, often employing diverse skills and hundreds of people. It is inevitable, therefore, that the process will get tinged by the culture of the country where it needs to be conducted and the characteristics and proclivities of the people who are involved.

The Starting Point

China is a process driven society, where people like to think in simple, orderly steps. They are likely to clearly focus on accomplishing the tasks which need to be clearly defined. Chinese researchers expect the briefs to be clear and unambiguous – somewhat like the specifications to produce a piece of machinery. Ambiguity is something that the Chinese can do without.

In contrast, the Indian mind, quite like the country itself, is complex and likes to think, hypothesise and argue. Indians thrive on briefs which are strategic and non specific and addressing which involve a great deal of discussion and cogitation. Indian proposals often have several alternatives for the client to choose from – often as a result of the researchers failing to reach an agreement on which approach to recommend to the client!

The Japanese are closer to the Chinese, and really look for and respond enthusiastically to branded research solutions, which will magically solve all their problems. Indians in the region are least responsive to branded business solutions and demand a unique tailored approach designed for their unique needs.

Elsewhere in Asia, the situation varies, but possibly closer to China than India. In countries like Philippines, with a longer history of doing market research a strategic perspective is often applied and creative evolvement of the process often seen, but rules developed over the last forty years also come into play and some times act as a constraining factor..

Data Collection

In most of Asia, including China face to face interviews rule the roost. The reasons are many – including economic, social and cultural aspects. Telephone interviews, though much more prevalent than before, have failed to become as dominant a methodology as in the West. This is despite the fact that the telephone penetration is no longer an issue in many countries (including most of urban China). Culturally the idea of revealing your habits, likes and dislikes over a soulless, faceless telephone line to a stranger does not find resonance with the Asian mind. Asians love to talk – both face to face and one the phone, but the talk needs to be directed at a well defined, preferably a familiar face (preferably good looking too!). However, with increasing incomes, the residents of key cities in Asia have surrounded their homes with high walls and security making it more difficult for the interviewers to reach them. For easier access another form of face-to-face interviews, that is street intercepts, has become very common. However, with consumers becoming more and more busy, acceptance rates are normally low and the sight of an interviewer chasing a reluctant respondent makes a comic (though also a bit tragic) sight.

Mail interviews are only popular in Japan – not just because traditionally it was the only Asian country with a working and reliable postal service, but also the Japanese willingness to assiduously take up tasks and toil if the end objective is clear. In most other countries, market research is a matter of pleading and cajoling and physical presence of the interviewers in front of the respondents is a great help.

The traditional mail panels in Japan have now been largely replaced by online panels, though mail surveys are still used when the target group is relatively older (which is often so in Japan, as it is an ageing society and unlike in China, the money lies in the hand of the old). Online research has also become the dominant mode of conducting research in other relatively developed Asian countries such as Singapore, Hong Kong, and Korea.

China, which is seen by almost everyone as a pot of gold, online panels of variable quality abound. Claims are often heard of panels of enormous size and spread, who could answer every question that you may have. Of course, managed panels, where the flow of questionnaires is tightly controlled to the respondents to avoid fatigue as well as bias, and at the same time enough activity is undertaken to ensure that the panel remains interested and alive, are relatively rare.

With the caveat of reach and profile skews, Asian markets have taken well to online research . the research-on-research done by TNS suggests that the respondents’ answers in online interviews are actually more candid and even more elaborate than in administered interviews. However, it is also clear that special considerations need to guide the design of online surveys and it is not just a matter of feeding a paper questionnaire into a scripting programme. Relevant design considerations pertain to the amount of information a respondent can digest on a screen, the layout which is most effective, and probing follow-up questions which are most useful in eliciting the required response.

It is evident that the future of research in Asia is also online, and companies which invest in state of the art methods to recruit and engage the consumers are the ones which will thrive in the marketplace. Engagement based on permission based approach and interviewing is the key to obtaining reliable responses from valid target group.


Interviewers

Students are the major staple of the industry and the primary force for data collection. In most countries, another group of interviewers are from older women. In China these would be the retired workers from state owned enterprises, many of whom lost their jobs as these companies were suddenly given the unexpected and unplanned task of making money! These hardy interviewers are ready to take challenges that their younger counterparts dread. They will toil door to door in blistering sun or freezing cold or chase reluctant respondents on the road. In India, Philippines, Thailand and Indonesia, these would be the middle aged housewives, who do not wish to take full time employment but still want to supplement the family’s income (or have a little bit if money for themselves, away from the scrutiny of their husbands).

CATI (Computer Aided Telephone Interviewing) centre interviewers are relatively more stable and often seek long term employment. The TNS International CATI Center at Hong Kong resembles the general assembly of the United Nations, with tens of interviewers carrying out involved conversations in many Asian languages with respondents in different parts of the continent.

With online interviewing becoming more and more prevalent, the career of an interviewer may be of a limited life-span. In fact, what may be required is the development of online virtual interviewers – who may be even more hard-working and diligent than the traditional interviewers!


Focus group discussions

James Parsons cogently argues in the Research World July/August 2009, “Creating great qualitative research and brand understanding here in Japan requires us to understand the inherent contradictions that place the very enterprise of qualitative research as conceived in the West at odds with some fundamental aspects of Japanese culture”. Parsons further argues that “to ask a Japanese individual to express personal thoughts or feelings about a piece of stimulus, believing reflexively that they are valid, important and interesting, relies on dodgy assumptions”. In Japan, therefore, the conduct and analysis of focus group discussions need to innovatively address the cultural block and extract the required insights.

Chinese, though also traditionally a collective society, are also known to be conscientious, diligent and providing value for money. The same attitude is brought forward to focus group discussions by the Chinese respondent, who endeavour to provide satisfaction, even if it involves engaging in activities that may seem ridiculous or even foolish to them. In the end, however, the researcher goes back with information which at least appears to be rich – and the participants walk back with their fifty dollar pack, and hope that their animated performance will earn them another invitation from the research firm some time in future.

The “Argumentative Indian” (the name of a book by Nobel laureate Amartya Sen) was made for focus group discussion. Indians thrive in sharing their opinions, and even more refuting the arguments put forward by others who hold a different point of view. Indian participants of focus groups need to be controlled with a firm hand and channeled towards a productive discussion rather than a riotous argument, which is their more natural inclination.

The response factor

The consumer response to market research also differs significantly across Asia. In places like Hong Kong and Singapore, where perhaps every citizen has been interviewed several times, the response is expectedly less enthusiastic that in the villages of India and China, where any visitor from outside is seen with a mixture of curiosity and amusement. The most extreme example is in India, where the traditional hospitality may still get the interviewer a cup of tea and even some biscuits to go with it. However in the larger cities, this intrinsic hospitality is now threatened by a feeling of insecurity and fear of crime, and people are more reluctant to open their doors to strangers. In much of rest of Asia including Indonesia, Thailand and Philippines the respondent cooperation is still acceptable – and is inversely proportional to his or her income.


The market for market research

Japan which is the largest Asian economy is still the largest market for market research. Japanese companies look at marketing as a sub-discipline of engineering, which requires consumer input and diligently go about collecting it. India and Philippines have been traditional markets for research where the business was kicked off by companies like Unilever, which started of by having an in-house research department (complete with own field-force and everything). The relatively cold Indian government’s attitude to foreign capital did not encourage many multinational to rush to India for a long time, but Indian companies did take to research in a big way. Now the government is more welcoming and foreign companies are more interested in selling their wares in India and hence research is getting a further fillip. Giver the size and heterogeneity of India, research is often done on a large scale. The National readership study has been having a sample size of nearly 200,000 across cities and villages of India. However, the financial size of the market remains limited because of the relatively low price of market research.

The Chinese research market has been growing phenomenally and is expected to overtake Japan in the coming years. There are five key factors which are currently driving growth of the research industry in China are expected to continue to do so. Firstly, China is an extremely complex market to comprehend. The reason for the complexity lies in the high degree of heterogeneity within China as well as the complexity of the Chinese consumers. This implies that that marketers need to research more frequently in China and research a broader number of areas than in mature markets. The heterogeneity implies that the scale of research needs to be much larger in China than anywhere else.

The Chinese economy and the market is growing at a blistering pace. While in mature markets, once a market or a consumer segment has been researched, the markets can safely rely on the insights for a certain period of time to guide their marketing decisions. In China within a short period of time (some times within 6 months for fast growing categories) the market place is unrecognizable. Similarly the consumer, who is on one hand being exposed to such a rapid change and on the other hand is also experiencing the happiness of growing wallets, also changes rapidly in their decision making criteria and needs. Hence the Chinese market needs to be studied much more frequently than mature markets.

Elsewhere in Asia, some other economies like Vietnam have also experienced a ballistic increase, with a concomitant growth in market research. However, other Asian countries are more mature and the industry has also been experiencing modest though steady growth. On the whole, it is very likely that Asia will the future engine of the global economic growth as also the future engine of growth for the market research industry and the industry needs to invest more in developing further its expertise in feeling and deciphering the pulse of the Asian consumer.

Written by Ashok Sethi, TNS China

The Consumer Lab
The marketing problem

The issue of pricing was bothering John for quite some time. The increasing costs were squeezing the bottom-line, and at the same time aggressive assaults from competition were chiseling at the market share. As the marketing director, he needed to provide a recommendation to the MD on how to take this brand forward. John called up the research agency and took an appointment to spend a day with them exploring the issue and providing clear guidelines for the decision.

The agency’s office was located in a leafy suburb. As he approached the building, it posed an impressive sight. Surrounded by trees was a low rise building, with several satellite dishes dotting its roof. The building looked contemporary, even futuristic, and yet blended well with the surroundings. John was met at the reception by Emily, the Senior Consumer Scientist that he had been talking to for some time. As Emily ushered him to the conference room, John could feel the buzz around the place, a feeling that a rocket was to be launched soon. “Marketing is not rocket science,” it was often said. In fact it was more difficult, he some times felt, before the research agency changed the way his company used consumer and market information.

Learning from the past

The meeting kicked off with Kevin, the modeling expert, bringing up a few charts of the screen. The data Kevin presented looked back at all price increases implemented by John’s company and every major competitor in the past 3 years. The general trend was obvious – the major brands all suffered a temporary set back on price increase, but were able to bounce back in 8-10 weeks to inch back close to their original volume share. There were exceptions, but those were related to other marketing variables, including the response from competition. The Hierarchical Bayesian model showed that if Refresha (the beer brand that John was responsible for) was to increase its price by the required 5%, the brand will show a temporary dip, but would resiliently bounce back.

While john was relieved to know this, he was still concerned about the possibility of opportunistic tactics from competition in this vulnerable moment. Kevin, pulled up the simulator and together with John proceeded to test a number of alternative scenarios of competitive action. Some scenarios worried John and he wasn’t really convinced that the brand will be able to bear the onslaught if the main competitors launched some significant consumer promotions to exploit this opportunity.

In order to bring in an element of the current disposition towards the brand, and to test several additional scenarios, a Discrete Choice Modeling experiment seemed to be in order. Kevin fed the parameters into the computer and tested the design. The field-work department sent out invitations to potential respondents and informed Kevin that he will have something to look at in a few hours.

Analysis of blogs and consumer feeds

A worrier by nature, John also wondered about the adequacy of brand’s strength in the consumer mind. Though the tracking parameters were looking good, John really wanted to see what the consumers are talking about his brand. Emily fixed an appointment with Jenny, the consumer scientist who specialized in studying blogs and bulletin boards, and James whose job was to focus on analyzing consumer behavior video feeds. The agency in collaboration with restaurants, bars, supermarkets, had a continuous flow of live feeds of consumers buying and consuming. Sophisticated software could filter out the feeds where a specific brand was displayed or mentioned.

After a light sandwich in the lunch room, John was back in the meeting room and Jenny and James were waiting for John. James fired up a screen and brought up an image in a restaurant, and a table of a group of friends, ordering beer with their meal. Refresha was on the menu but the group chose its competitor. The picture then moved to a bar, where some college kids seem to be celebrating their survival through another term. Refresha was the drink of choice. While the consumers were too occupied with other concerns and the brand didn’t really come much into the discussion, value for money was mentioned in the context of the brand. John was concerned that this was just the attribute that he would be playing with when he increased the price by 5%. James continued to pull up recordings of consumers using Refresha and competing products. John took copious notes and discussed several questions and hypothesis with the team.

Jenny, came up next and presented her analysis of online consumer conversations. The research company has sophisticated tools not only for analysis of public blogs, but also a panel of specially recruited bloggers for different product categories. The Internet allowed consumers to record much more than their purchases (the old-fashioned diaries and scanner panels were confined to recording consumer purchases) and included what they felt about the brand, how they consumed it (including videos of their consumption situations) and what were their friends taking about it. The analysis came up with a positive picture of the brand. It had a positive word of mouth, was considered to offer good value for money and had an image which resonated well with the younger adults. However, the brand was showing some signs of weariness among the slightly older consumers and some consumers had moved to competing brands. The team felt that while the brand was, overall, in good shape, Refresha should take some specific action targeted at the older consumers, and find more connection points with them.

The final picture

The Discrete Choice Modeling results were in. John was relieved to see that the price elasticity for Refresha in most segments was relatively low. The older consumers again displayed higher elasticity. The Discrete Choice Modeling results also fed into the simulator he was looking at before lunch. The fusion of Discrete Choice Modeling data and market mix modeling gave the simulator an added precision and ability to forecast accurately. He ran several scenarios with the research team and was finally convinced that he could take that price hike but he needed to simultaneously enhance bonding with the relatively older consumers.

The death of the research project

On the way back, John was reflecting on how research had evolved and changed the way his company took marketing decisions. Just a few years ago, it would have taken him more than a month to look at similar data. Gone were the days when he and his team thought in terms of research projects, sample sizes and debated whether they needed to do a research for the particular issue which was facing them. They had to negotiate the price for each project and bargain for the findings to be delivered in 5 weeks, against 6 weeks that the agency wanted. The research project was dead – instead the research company now provided John with a continuous feed of consumer behaviour, attitudes and trends. There was no need to do periodic U&A studies, pricing research, advertising research – the data was all continuously collected by the company and addressing an issue was merely a question of isolating the relevant data and looking at it from the appropriate perspective. The company not only tracked consumer behavior in relation to consumption of specific products, but also general trends in fashion, entertainment, leisure habits and values – providing companies with a holistic picture of the consumer and the way his concerns and focus were moving with time. Of course, once in a while a few additional experiments were necessary – just as the Discrete Choice Modeling that they did for him today. With access to this type of consumer lab enabling him to always keep a finger on the pulse of the consumer, he could react more swiftly, more decisively and be more competitive in the market.

Written by: Ashok Sethi, Head of Consumer Insights for Emerging Markets - TNS

The Perfect Interviewer


“Anything else?” Grace asked in her soft voice. Bill reflected and wrote down another reason to indicate why he is attracted to the new product that Grace had just described to him. Reluctant to air any negatives, he skipped over the question on dislikes and proceeded to the next section. “Please mention whatever you dislike about the product, however small it may be. Please remember that all your comments will help the manufacturer to improve their products.” Bill forced himself to get back and type in a few points which did actually reduce the appeal of the product in his mind.

“Thank you, Bill,” Grace said in a tone seeped in charm and gratitude. “That will be really helpful.” Grace then proceeded to explain the next task, “The next question is a bit of challenge to you and also an opportunity to win some extra points”. Aware of John’s fondness for word games, Grace urged, “ Bill, given below are some phrases that people like you have used to describe the new product. Can you please tell me which of these phrases would you use yourself, to describe the product. But first you need to unscramble these to decipher what they were talking about!” Always ready for a verbal challenge, Bill proceeded to unscramble “ R.N.T,S.I.O.U.T.I.U … nutritious.” Bill arranged the letters in the appropriate sequence and proceeded to check the box, as he recalled the mention of Vitamin E in the concept and felt that it did describe the product.

Grace as the name implied, was elegant and graceful. She was the kind of person that Bill felt comfortable with and would have liked to spend time getting to know better. Unfortunately Grace would not be that person. In fact Grace was not a person at all, but a creation of programmers from the research agency to conduct online interviews. Her job was to motivate, engage and to entertain the respondents to make their experience more interesting and participative. The agency realized that in order to maintain the quality of the responses they had to enhance the engagement and interest of the respondents and make the whole exercise worthwhile from their point of view. The agency did this in recognition of the need to more effectively tap into the consumer views and creativity and to convert the normally one-way, interview process into a dialogue. Grace was programmed along with several other virtual interviewers based on consumer idealizations of a perfect interviewer. The idealizations differed from person to person and so did the interviewer that agency sent to dialogue with the respondent.

Grace, therefore, was not only attractive, had a charming manner, but also had a personality that strongly appealed to Bill. Grace also followed the cardinal rule for interviewing – to come prepared for the interview, not only to master the subject but also to be familiar with the interviewee. And Grace was in a perfect position to do so, having full access to Bill’s demographics, life-style and answers to several questionnaires that he had responded to in the past.

She knew that Bill was a cinema freak and would love to know about what lay in store for the coming vacations. “I have some nice previews for you, Bill, that I am sure you would love to watch. Please have a look at this and call me back whenever you are ready.” Having a dinner appointment that evening, it was not till the following day that Bill fixed himself a coffee and settled snuggly in his favourite chair to see the trailers.

He sent a message to Grace to tell her that he was ready and she was back instantaneously. Beaming cheerfully from the screen she said, “Hope you enjoyed that Bill.” “Can I now ask you a few questions about some commercials that you saw along with the programme. Can you please write down the names of the products whose advertisements you noticed while watching the previews.”

“I now need you to accompany me to the supermarket, Bill. It will only take five minutes, but if you have the time, would you like to race me to the market for an additional 20 points?” A racing enthusiast Bill could not resist the temptation and clicked the button on the screen to assume the persona of Michael Schumaker and braced himself to race with Grace. Grace gave a tough fight and was leading for a long stretch of the road where the traffic was relatively dense. However, hitting the suburbs Bill came into his own and hit the accelerator. Finally he beat her to the destination and earned his additional 20 points.

Grace guided Bill to the yoghurt shelf of the supermarket. “Please carefully have a look at the products displayed here. It may have some products that you are not familiar with as we have created a common shelf across the country. Please pick up the products that you will like to buy to meet your needs till you visit the market again.” Bill browsed the shelf, zoomed in to have a closer look. Sometimes picked a virtual pack to examine the label and dropped it in the shopping basket if it seemed attractive. Finally approached the check out desk, paid with virtual money that Grace had provided him and was ready to race back home.

Grace, and the tribe of virtual interviewers will transform the way companies collect information to aid in marketing decisions. A virtual interviewer has several advantages over the flesh and blood species that research companies have been working with since the start of the business, Virtual interviewer is a disciplined and indefatigable worker, follows instructions to the tee, ensures that questions are asked in a uniform manner, is patient and encouraging, minimizes interviewer bias and is not tempted to cheat. Virtual interviewer can overcome the physical barriers of fences and guards, and easily access the hard to get respondent through comfortably squeezing through the broadband connection. Employing elements of gaming and interactivity, the virtual interviewer can engage, stimulate and entertain the respondent and convert the one way interview into a bi-directional dialogue – something which has been sorely needed for some time now.

Written by Ashok Sethi
Head of Consumer Insights – Emerging Markets, TNS

Whose ratings are these anyway?

In September 2006, the Media magazine brought out a substantive and impressive looking supplement encasing the list of the Top 1000 brands from Asia. The well presented list is based on a research study done by a market research agency in the region, covering 500 to 750 adults in each of the 9 markets in Asia. It is said that the human beings are always hungry for lists. There is something about the simple hierarchy and order of lists that appeals to the human mind. Lists possibly help to put some kind of order and comprehension in the usually chaotic world around us.

At the same time, publishing these lists carries a responsibility. After all they are a public statement about the relative worth of these brands and create a word-of-mouth for the different members in the list – though perhaps not always in the right target group.

What is the concept of a “best brand” anyway? Should it be conducted as a poll of consumer preferences or should it be something which is derived by asking a series of questions? Questions which measure the strength of the brand, the respect with which the consumer views them and the degree of affinity that the consumer feels for them. Experience with researching Asian consumers on a large range of products and issues is clearly indicative of the wisdom of deriving rather than asking. When we conduct a poll of consumer preference by directly asking them to name the best brands, are we getting brands which are really considered the best or merely the most salient?

Generating lists which cover more than one geography - e.g. Asia's best - brings in other complications. The most important of these possibly is weighting. As brands have different status in different markets, if you want to construct an aggregated picture you need to assign a weight to each market. What should be each market’s weight – should it be the total population of the market, the adult population, urban population, population above a certain income level – a hosts of possibilities arise. While theoretically it seems to make sense, if population is used as the weight, the Asia’s top 1000 would merely be a mix of the top brands in China and India. The findings from the smaller markets like Singapore and Taiwan would be such a small contributor that you might as well not survey them. The Media list shows Indomie from Indonesia a notch ahead of HSBC, Air Asia ahead of Singapore Airlines and Cathay, Starbucks beating Nike and Adidas. Some of these oddities makes one wonder about the methodology used and possibly the weighing scheme followed.


Lastly, while the issue of identifying the best brands within a category is difficult enough, producing a list running across categories is even a more daunting task. How does one take a disparate set of brands across different product categories, different target groups, ranging from universally consumed instant noodles to premium coffee house and toy stores and put them on the same pedestal and generate a hierarchy? Should you weight again by the sizes of the category, by the number of people who use each category or the affinity that the consumer feels with the category? Clearly no obvious answers are available. But the position of the brands in the list will vary depending on what approaches you use for these. Perhaps a debate on these issues would lead to lists which are easier to accept, better reflect the real prowess of these brands, and are more objective indicators of their performance.