SMEs urged to study regional trends to expand

Suharit Siamwalla, president of DHA Siamwalla, a stationery manufacturer, said that to make his business simple he thought of the "CLMV" group of emerging countries as new provinces of Thailand.

His firm has moved into these markets already and found that consumers consider Thai products as premium brands because of their higher quality than similar Chinese products.

However, consumers in Malaysia and Indonesia are familiar with brands from Europe and the United States, so competition is tough in those higher developed Asean countries, he told a seminar on building brands.

He said his company had to apply a different marketing strategy to different products according to each group of consumers.

Tonghathai Kuvanot, director of health and personal care products at Osotspa, said consumers in different countries had different tastes, so marketing must match their flavour. For instance, girls in Myanmar give priority to finding a good job before thinking about how to attract men, in contrast to Thai women who care much more about attracting the attention of the opposite sex. So when launching products, advertising must take into account the particular social context.

Osotspa is successful in selling cosmetics to Myanmar people, as its Babi Mild Baby Powder has 60 per cent of the market. One advantage is also an early move into this new market.

Papon Ratanachaikanot, assistant to the president and chief executive officer of True Corp, said e-commerce was likely to increase substantially in the Asean market when information-technology infrastructure has reached a high stage of development in both Thailand and neighbouring countries.

E-commerce will help SMEs expand their market as well as cut the cost of marketing.

True Coffee, part of the group, now operates branches in Laos and Cambodia. The coffee business serves as a retail outlet for IT products in Thailand where the company also can ensure customer satisfaction with the group’s telecom and Internet services, he added.

Anurut Vongwanij, president of British Dispensary, said new marketing needed to take into account awareness of social issues such as climate change. Firms should engage in activities that draw customers to participate, such as tree planting. He said his products are expected to be welcomed by Asean customers.

Apirak Kosayodhin, chairman of the Asian Knowledge Institute, said few Thai firms had succeeded in creating brand-name products. Firms have a lot of opportunities to use country and city brand names. They could build brands from the country’s famous products such as rice or services such as tourism.