Firms told to heed client feedback

 

Fred Mouawad, chairman and chief executive of Synergia One Group, whose diversified business empire includes the Coffee World restaurant chain, told an M Academy roundtable gathering titled “The Top Secret of Success: Global versus Local Brand Success” that his major hurdle had always been finding good locations for outlets. That is because competition from international brands has grown largely, especially over the past five years, he said.

In choosing a new location, he said Coffee World would appraise the break-even point of a particular site based on rental fees, the expected number of customers and other factors, but competitors like Starbucks may have a better break-even point for the same location.

“Most competitors have long-term horizons. We have to fight against them on a daily basis,” he said.

Mouawad said he used a lot of data to understand customers and then innovated to enhance the value propositions of his businesses. For instance, Coffee World found its customers love chocolate and thus “anything with chocolate” tends to do very well.

Marcos Purty, managing director of General Motors Thailand and Chevrolet Sales Thailand, said that since buying a automobile is an expensive purchase, the brand’s challenge was to gain and keep the trust of consumers. 

“We don’t just sell the cars but the overall customer experiences,” he said.

Asked how he controls the dealers to make sure they keep the brand’s promises, Purty replied: “I don’t control them, they control me.

“Quite frankly, I look at them as customers as well,” he said, explaining that dealers help the company to learn customers’ feedback.

Antonio Del Rosario, general manager for Thailand, Laos and Myanmar at Coca-Cola Thailand, said the Thai market was highly unusual in that there are as many as four big competitors in the cola market. 

“Therefore, the only way to survive in a sustainable way is to be differentiated [from rivals] and communicate to consumers what make us unique,” he said.

Monchai Chokephaibulkit, deputy managing director of Football Thai Factory Sporting Goods, said one of FBT’s strategies was to produce quality products at reasonable prices. 

However, Monchai said that even though FBT can produce products at competitive prices, there were a lot of emotions attached to the purchasing decisions of consumers when they were looking for sporting goods.

And unlike Coffee World, which is competing against international brands, FBT strives to find its own niches, he said.

“We can’t compete with them anyway,” said Monchai, citing Adidas, which last year signed a US$750-million (Bt26.3 billion) sponsorship deal with Manchester United.

 

The flip sides of social media

Del Rosario said social media served Coca-Cola’s needs as a daily-consumption beverage company that has to find ways to connect on a daily basis with its targeted young consumers who no longer watch television.

“On the positive side, it helps us to engage very directly on a daily basis and you can get immediate impact. On the flip side, if something happens in Russia, it will get to Thailand the same day. It’s bad and it’s good,” he said.

Coca-Cola runs a “social hub” at its Bangkok office that is manned by three staff who rotate around the clock to monitor social-media movements around the globe that can affect its brands. Purty said Chevrolet also ran a social hub, which besides monitoring consumers’ conversations on social media, also gauged how quickly its dealers get feedback to customers.

He said the while social media had some “beauties”, such as helping a company learn things that consumers might not usually be saying through normal channels and assisting it in getting back to consumers to explain about something that might not be true about a brand, it was also a “beast”.

“The funny thing is that brick-and-mortar has become less relevant. Customers know everything before they show up [at the showrooms]. They probably tell salespersons about cars,” he said.

Coffee World’s Mouawad said today’s consumers were influenced by social media and traditional advertisements were no longer effective, since consumers no longer believe advertisements but will listen to their friends via social-media channels.

Monchai said the social-media evolution helped a small company like FBT communicate with consumers without having to spend much money, while at the same time making it easier for loyal customers to find the brand. “Have them find you out, rather than spending a lot of money to find them,” he said.

FBT has also benefited from the social-media exposure of the sport teams it has sponsored, he said.

“The world of sports is very engaged with social media. We can actually grow faster with social media and direct marketing,” he said.

 

What’s keeping them awake?

When asked what kept him awake at night, Mouawad said figuring out how to accelerate Coffee World’s expansion, since scale is important for the company to be competitive.

Coca-Cola’s Del Rosario said his most important key performance indicator was not sale figures but the “brand’s love score” that is tracked every month.

Chevrolet’s Purty said keeping employees engaged and focusing on the company’s strategies were among his crucial tasks, since the company went through a “difficult time” and changed its business strategy during the first half of this year.

“How to engage our people to help us win. No one likes losing. Keep them engaged and keep focus on strategy,” he said.

FBT’s Monchai said his challenges included making sure he took care of his employees “in the expanding world” to sustain growth and expand into new markets.

“Now we are in Southeast Asia. We want to expand more in Asia and to the UK and Australia … while |not over-expending our resources,” |he said.