Customer Trend Log
Presentation
Consumer Insight: Marketing to Muslims
Hello, welcome and Salam,Thanks for taking time out and stopping by at my blog. Today’s post is about the insight we as marketers are overlooking when we target Muslims. I have posted earlier on the same topic; you can find that post here
I will try to summarize below my conclusion about what insights are missing when we target Muslims.
- Imagery Driven: I am not sure when marketers will realize Islam is beyond crescent, veils and prayer mats. (may be the end of the Mayan Calendar will be the beginning of that realization – pun intended)
- Muslims are undoubtedly a big and juicy market USD 2 trillion, but there are not enough specialized advertising agencies, other than Ogilvy Noor, for this market segment when compared to other Niche segments like Hispanic Market.
- Young: On an average, Muslims of the world are 27 years old. Your typical YPE, generation Y & generation x. Imagine their lives, facebook, multiculturalism, strong faith and tons of media bombardment trying to tell them that they are backward or fundamentalists. They clearly seek clarity what is stopping brands to offer them that?
- Indonesia & Malaysia have done some interesting advancements in Islamic Branding front like introducing a Fashion brand etc. I crave to see more of that coming from rest of the world.
- Muslims are travelling: I have a privilege to live in UAE (most of you know it as Dubai), everyone here travels at least once a year. And when we do, trust me it is hassle to find comfort from small to large things e.g. availability of water in washrooms, halal food, Ramadan timing breakfast etc. The market spent of Muslim Travellers is around USD 126 billion, tourism industry must try to capture it.
- Less Judgmental: Aren’t we a bit too quick in drawing our conclusions when it comes to religious minority or majority? Here is an interesting article about that
Have a look at the presentation and slides, hope you will find them interesting.
Enjoy the remaining days of 2012, see you in 2013
Marketing to Muslims
Map of Muslim Population
Muslim Segment is worth 2 trillion dollars
Marketing Evolves for Women
Missing pieces in Evolution of Marketing to Muslims
Expert Opinion – marketing to muslims
Muslim Population demographics
Muslim Traveler
- Marketing to ignored Target Audience
Learn from Quran – Dig Deep
Marketing Research Sector – From Insight to Foresight?
Another morning that made me thinks in which direction is my career heading? Am I going to be the new hype – the Nate Silver of Middle East? Or am I going to drown in the data piles around me? Marketing research sector at large, haven’t introduced a game-changing idea for quite some time now and as the information age is coming of age the need of conventional researchers is reducing. So what should we do….? Lead or follow? change careers?
And guess what! Miss Monneypenny from ‘Sky fall’ was able to answer my question – She says “An old Dog should learn new tricks”
Jokes apart, I recently attended a training course on Business Planning, and I have learnt one key thing. All markets mature and all products age, you must stay ahead of maturity and keep on innovating. Innovate anything like process, customer expectation, resource utilization, market differentiation. But you must innovate if you want to survive.
So what should I innovate in my projects, what should Marketing Research Sector at large innovate?
What should Marketing Research Sector at large innovate?
In my opinion, we should innovate our human capital. Instead of producing a whole squad of insight discoverers we should aim at producing decision facilitators.
Researchers who can give input on processes, business scorecards, performance monitoring and managing systems, marketing strategies, sales plans and forecasts.
To enable us increase and improve the pricing model of research sector. To help us sustain the competition from social media monitoring industry and consultancy firms.
The slide deck reflects my thinking, and following is what I think is a summary of my vision for MR sector. have a look and let me knowwhat do you think
Data to Decision Value Chain
P.S. And while you are thinking about it, listen to this song – it helps to focus. (or okay lets’ admit it I liked the movie a lot)
Emerging Consumer Trends in 2012
Trends helps us to shape ourselves according to consumers’ expectations, following are 3 trends which are affecting the consumer. It is now up to us to use them or ignore them.
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Trend |
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The Aware Consumer |
We are talking to consumer, who are well traveled, informed and aware about their rights. They are becoming allergic to meaningless brand promises. And legislation and watchdogs are giving them new information about their choices |
They seek a genuine relationship with brands. Be Honest with them, try to be a partner to them in their journey of life. |
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Lonely but connected |
Massive friends on FB but Living alone. Consumers are disconnecting from real life. And they know this. |
Help consumers’ to get back in touch with Real Life |
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Seeking a Meaning |
Gen Y is more aware and hence are more conscious. Trend watching calls it Emereging Maturlism, you may call it a consumer who wants to make a positive impact |
Offer consumers a chance to add a positive foot print, you will be pleasantly |
- What Researchers do all day
[Thanks Planning Lab. ]
Future of Marketing Research
Change is the only constant, and who knows it better than us.
Since internet and mobile is changing every industry so I decided to have a look at the impact of these two game-changing factors on MR and summed up my thoughts in the attached presentation.
Here is a summary of what I think will happen in Marketing research:-
1. Traditional MR will be replaced by Social Media Listening and Integrated data solutions
2. Revenues of marketing research will mostly come from emerging economies and hence more understanding of local languages and cultures will be required to interpret data meaningfully
3. Integrated data mining tools that will integrate social media data, sales data/ retail data and with customer profile will be used in predictive models to forecast behaviors and trends.
4. Impact of each data based decision will be assessed through financial value i.e. cost of analysis and revenue generated
5. A Research manager will be required to understand the complete value chain of client and how the data is flowing in the value chain. Plus, he will be required to understand strategic planning, forecasting models, data integration methodologies
Additional Readings
Infographic – Key insights into Gen Y
Gen Y today accounts for 1/3rd of consumer base, it is important to understand what defines this generation and how they perceive their personal & professional lives. Hopefully this infographic will help
Sources:
Another interesting infographic on Gen-Y
How to build a brand in UAE? Ten rules that all marketers should know
The world is full of global brands. Which were never designed to be global brands? How to dominate the world is about how to beat them.
This presentation adds insights from United Arab Emirates to the points raised by Simon Silvester
Rule 1: Think Zeitgest - UAE has startled the world through its development and growth, brands should capitalize that
Rule 2: Think Trial – UAE is a paradise of retail outlets, think trial to all the young audience and the expats that have recently arrived
Rule 3: Think Visual – When 208 nationalities combine speaking multiple languages, the language of your brand should be visual
Rule 4: Think Youthquake – UAE population has an average age of 27, you should connect to the young & rising.
Rule 5: Think Small – UAE is getting green, your brand should be saving on paper and all avoidable wastes because you love environment
Rule 6: Think Print – The media in UAE is print, followed by digital. Think visual, body copy and go crazy
Rule 7: Think Fast – People are on the move, fads are coming and going and where the hell is your brand? Move fast because if you will not your competition will
Rule 8: Think Cultural Neutrality – So many cultures, so many languages but one dream — Dubai Dream
Rule 9: Think Kiasu – Ambition charges UAE population & your brand should fuel it
Rule 10: Think Mobile 200% penetration rate of mobiles asks brand to evolve through modern technology
Brand Mantra: In UAE brand should capture human imagination, and should capture it faster than human imagination
Marketing Research sector: Tips for marketing research presentation
In all the years I spent in marketing research both as a client and as a research executive I have learned that presenting research is more of an art and is more complicated than it seems.
I have been in sessions, where client completely negates the data. And on the other hand some clients have been eager to know recommendations. In either case, the client has to be entertained in a certain way. I am suggesting a matrix in the light of my experience; hope it adds value to your daily jobs. I suggest that one should try to read the client before presenting the data, try to predict his reaction and than draft the presentation.
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Public Sector Insight: Public Engagement in Public Sector
Recently Community engagement has reached an appraisable level of interest across public sector globally. There could be many reasons for this including success of Obama’s election campaign, strong conviction of USA, UK & Australian government towards public engagement, UN millennium development goals and technological advanced population.
I have tried to compile the learning’s from across the globe in this document (public engagement in public services), I hope you will find it useful.
I personally believe in identifying the challenges first because that stimulates the thinking as to how these challenges can be addressed. Below is an extract from the document, it highlights the key challenges
Challenges:
A comprehensive list associated with community engagement is available at the website of Queensland Government (Australia); following are some risks which I foresee in community engagement
- A broad target segments: Unlike private sector Government reaches out to everyone equally. Now this involves lower & higher SECs, hard to reach audiences, opinion leaders and followers, literates and illiterates, segments with vested interests etc. This together broadens the scope of community engagement for public services and makes it complicated to ensure unbiased results
- Accountability, information access and federal government:- Unlike private sectors in public sector – community and citizens have all the rights reserved to access the information they shared at all levels. But it is very difficult from Governments’ perspective to share information at all levels, especially in the absence of web 2.0 technologies. Governments are also centralized and decisions take a lot of time before implementation. This results in distrust of communities on the Governments and consequently people feel that their input is not being valued.
- Generic community management issues:- Addressing the destructive impact of ‘bad participation’, where negative attitudes to community involvement lead to poor engagement practices, causing increased hostility, decreased trust and poor experience and outcomes not only for communities, but also for officials and politicians, thus further reinforcing negative attitudes and behavior. Recognizing the catch-22 faced by residents who take on responsibilities as community leaders, but find their legitimacy challenged precisely because they ‘stand out’ – becoming labeled as ‘unrepresentative usual suspects’.
- Inconsistent vocabulary: - The term ‘community participation’ is understood and applied differently by different statutory bodies, and by different officers within those statutory bodies. These variations can make it hard for different bodies to work in partnership with each other and with communities.
- Lack of available statistics on how community engagement helped Governments gain popularity, enhanced their positive image and got re-elected also acts as a barrier from government officials view point
- Managing expectations: – increased community engagement results into high level of expectations. So it at times become a catch 22 whereby increasing satisfaction through involvement Governments can lead to dissatisfaction by inconsistent policy or by not incorporating the community inputs
- Lack of time and interest: – An audit in Canada found that 55% people don’t want to be involved in community engagement because of lack of time, feeling of no influence over decision making etc.
IMPLICATIONS to United Arab Emirates
- In a tax-free environment, the first question which Government as a service provider asks is the depth of community engagement. Why and to what level people should be engaged? On top of tax-free environment, high turnover rate of expats (which constitutes the major part of the population) complicates service delivery, satisfaction levels and result oriented community engagement
- A unique mix of expats from different parts of the world results into different level of satisfaction and expectations across different segments. It becomes increasingly difficult to understand the cultural, lingual differences in involvement and product delivery.
- UAE has very high penetration of mobile phones and internet; this actually paves a way for technologically advanced means of sustainable community engagement.
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Customer Trend: Post recession Consumer
We (you and I), people who are in the eye of the recession and were in the eye of the unrealistic boom are one of the most interesting consumer segment I have come across during my marketing career. This is the reason why I think so
- We saw a magnanimous growth in last few years – We saw more than one economic bubble i.e. the dot.com bubble, real estate bubble, and the most interesting of it all is the rise and fall of credit based economy.
- We have seen wars and threats of terrorism – 9/11, Iraq war, Afghanistan war
- We have seen the most devastating natural disasters – Tsunami, Earthquakes (Haiti, China, Pakistan) and still we are expecting much more as the “globe is warming up to take its revenge from mankind.”
- We have seen media revolutions and are still witnessing it – Satellite television, computers, Internet & social media
All of this has shaped our behavior, we can laugh about things which our previous generations couldn’t. We worry about situation which never existed before. In short, We are stronger, agile, insecure and more connected. If you disagree then enlighten me with your opinion.
Now in the following presentation I am investigating the post-recession consumer. I believe the world is going through an optimism divide i.e. hopeful BIC (Brazil, India & China) vs. the rest of the world. The insecurities and the charged passion is changing marketing landscape.
Here is my view:
Additional Readings
I talked about trust in this blog almost 6 months ago and PWC’s report released today on 31-Oct-10 just re-confirms my thoughts (talk about bragging): PWC – Trust report
How The Current Economy Has Changed Consumer Behaviors
Survey report – 3 out of 5 people in UAE believe that UAE is in recession - (This is just the executive summary – full report can be viewed by premium members)
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