'Pay attention to consumers' real needs to succeed in Asean'
Companies wanting to compete in Asean must gain an understanding of what consumers really need while also keeping costs down, a seminar heard yesterday.
Speaking at the “Bloomberg Asean Business Summit” in Bangkok, Samuel Kim, chairman of the US-Asean Business Council’s Asean committee and vice president for Asean and Asia development markets at Procter & Gamble, said companies must understand consumers’ true needs and cater to those needs.
“Some rural markets have very basic needs that they [are] looking for, and in some sense by taking away the additional benefit ingredients from a product in a market that they do not need, it would allow a company to lower production costs, deliver true benefits [to the consumer], and enable [it] to deliver superior satisfaction,” he said.
“The company can build loyalty by doing so, and this company will be able to build a leadership brand, and that is the scale that a company needs in order to have a financial return.”
Alison Kennedy, managing director for Asean at Accenture Strategy, said that if a company actually spent time with consumers and really understood what their needs were, it would be able to understand what is driving the population, which is one of the challenge of Asean companies.
“A market like Asean is incredibly diverse, and by trying to really understand it in terms of what consumers want … and what they respond to is one of the things that companies absolutely must do practically when this region becomes more integrated in the near future,” she said.
John Christie, chief executive officer of Tesco Lotus, said the art was to listen, understand, and deliver to the consumers what they want from a product and what they want from a price. If company tries to lead the customer, that is where it will go wrong, since companies have to listen and react to what customers need and work out how to make money from it.
“If you start off from the premise of ‘I am trying to make money’ you would go wrong every time,” he said.
Sanjay Gujral, regional managing director of L-Capital Asia, said the growth area in the Asean right now would be across the consumption and services landscape. This includes food and beverages, beauty and wellness, travel and leisure, along with fashion and jewellery and hospitals. Meanwhile there is room for the media and entertainment sector to grow in the region.
