Evolving Asian Consumer

A lot of studies done in the field of psychology suggest that Asians' way of thinking is fundamentally different from the westerners. A book written by Richard Nisbett, called 'The geography of thought' outlines the details of the differences and implications of the same. The key differences are:

1. Asians look at everything 'within a context', while westerners look at things 'individually' or in isolation which is independent of the context. Westerners therefore pay more attention to the specific attributes of the object and would judge it in the same way irrespective of the occasion/situation. But Asians could judge the product differently in different situations! For instance, if you ask a westerner to describe himself, he would talk about his likes, what his passions are, what he want to achieve in life, etc. Asian is more likely to describe what people at work think of him and what kind of husband/father/brother he is. Asians are very comfortable in changing roles from one situation to another and they behave the way society expects them to behave - there is no ambiguity in switching roles and they are very comfortable in quick transition from one role to another. A westerner, on the other hand, would behave in the same way whether he is in office or at home or with friends. All this comes from the fundamental belief of Asians that everything is connected to each other and everything is a part of larger 'continuum' where anything done by anyone can affect everybody. There are slightly different versions of this in Indian, Chinese and Japanese philosophies, but they are essentially the same on this front.

2. Because of this belief, Asians are comfortable in accepting that the opposites can exist at the same time. Contradictions do not make them uncomfortable. The yin and the yang philosophy of Chinese is similar to the Indian belief that opposites are always together. (For instance Indians believe that sadness would always follow happiness, rich people/countries are bound to see poverty in the future). Westerns thinking, on the other hand, has been very 'logic' oriented where contradictions don't exist. For instance, a very common principle in the development of scientific theories in the west has been to prove that the opposite of the hypothesis is false (and hence the hypothesis is true). Asians indeed struggle with this kind of thinking and this actually leads to several Asians having to work much harder in the American universities for their PhDs!These are the reasons why Asian philosophy, science, way of life is different from westerners. One of the big examples is the system of Ayurveda or even the Traditional Chinese Medicinal system which believe in holistic treatment rather than curing the symptom. If you go to an Ayurvedic doctor for a headache, he would prescribes the entire diet change, gives medicines for overall digestion improvement which would seem far away from the problem you went to him for! A western doctor would simply give you a pain killer for a headache!Anyway, the implications for us, selling products to consumers in Asia and the west are huge! It has implications on the way the way we position our brands, the way we advertise and the way we do consumer testing. It also addresses an often asked question - if the Asian consumers are evolving with their economic growths - would they evolve in the same direction as the west has?My submission to this would be - no they would evolve differently, because they are fundamentally different from westerners.

I recently presented a paper at global ESOMAR conference highlighting how Asian consumers are evolving and how the evolution is different from the west. This was done by studying consumer evolution various consumer goods categories (soaps, shampoos, detergents, skin care, etc) in the last ten years and comparing it with the western market.

Important learnings from that analysis are:1. Spontaneous recall levels are changing: Number of brands that consumers can recall spontaneously is going up! But the number of ads she can recall spontaneously is going down. This is true in Asia as well as in Europe. This means that we have a lower chance of our ad being noticed, but if the ad is well branded and relevant to her, she may remember the brand name!

Also, there is no point in mindlessly increasing GRPs for the ad - that would only increase the clutter and reduce the recall chances further.

2. Consumer needs are changing: This trend is also common in Asia and Europe (indeed it started happening in Europe much before Asia). The needs are changing in two ways:1. Needs are becoming more specific in each category: For instance, Indonesian women expected mosituriser to be good and suitable to all etc 8 years ago. Today, she wants it to care for her, make her fairer, younger and be innovative and premium. Same is true for shampoos - which have been transformed from a cleansing into beauty category. Needless to say that this change has been brought about by marketers, along with the influence of media from the west.

3. Consumer is simplifying and prioratising: With increasing clutter and brands making all sorts of noises, consumer is beginning to prioratise on what she wants and what gives her what she wants! For instance, facial foams in Thailand were expected to give her beauty care, apart from cleansing in 1998. But today, she expects facial foams to give her effective cleansing more than anything else!3. Evolution of brands: This is where Asia and Europe start becoming different! In Asia, with this consumer evolution, brands have gone from being generic good for all brands to the ones that are differentiated on some key needs. Which means, consumers today see different brands being suitable for different needs (Sunsilk for beauty, H&S for dandruff and so on). Asian consumers (who are used to dealing with ambiguity and are used to seeing things differently in different lights as the discourse above highlights) manage to break through the clutter and recognise what brands stands for what benefit. Westerners, on the other hand are not!! The brands in Europe have remained largely as undifferentiated as they were 10 years ago! Consumers have not been able to understand how one brand is different from another. It would be hard to justify this by saying European marketers are not clever enough - but Richard Nisbett's theories come in handy!

4. Changing consumer behaviour: Here the difference between European and Asian consumers gets magnified even more. Asian consumers, who see many things at the same time, who are able to see brands differently from each other are using more brands at the same time. They have been increasing their purchase basket by buying more number of brands within a category (like I said Sunsilk for beauty, H&S for dandruff). However, the amount spend does not increase dramatically - which means smaller pack sizes have a huge role to play. Europeans on the other hand, given their aversion to contradiction and complexity, have not increased their basket size. They stop buying one brand and then switch to another instead of using multiple brands at the same time. This is I think the true manifestation of the fundamental difference between Asians and Westerners.

So what are the biggest implications for us with all this learnings?

1. Smaller pack sizes would continue to be key - not just because Asians are poor! But also because they love to experiment and use multiple brands.

2. Variants within a brand can exist - as long as you can differentiate them clearly on key benefits sought by consumers

3. Increase in GRPs for increasing salience could be mindless. A good focussed advertising could make the consumer remember your brand, even if she does not remember the ad

4. Keep discovering the new and innovative benefits and keep the consumer evolving. If you don't, someone else will

5. The biggest of all - don't expect a brand/variant to be successful in Asia, just because its been in the west. If you want to sell a pasta, don't expect Asian woman to stop consuming noodle! She would probably add it to her basket initially and cook it like a noodle. But don't expect her to start eating a pasta like a European!
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