Women and youth: new focus of marketers
Organisations have to become more women- and youth-centric while designing and promoting products and services, to boost sales in the coming years, marketing experts said yesterday.
Women and young people around the world are poised to have more influence on purchasing decisions due to rising empowerment both socially and economically, they said at a seminar on marketing in Dhaka.
“Women may earn 20 percent of household income, but they are in charge of 80 percent of spending,” said Dan Formosa, jury president for product design at Cannes Lions, an international festival of creativity.
Spending by India's women is expected to rise 30 percent to $26 billion in 2018 from now, he said.
But women's buying behaviour is a lot more complex than that of men, as women focus on derived benefits rather than advertised features which draw in male customers while buying a product or service, said Hooi Den Huan, a director of Singapore-based Nanyang Technopreneurship Centre, which is part of Nanyang Technological University.
They spoke at a daylong seminar on “Rethinking Marketing” organised by Bangladesh Brand Forum, at Radisson Hotel.
Bangladeshi marketers have to increase focus on the young as half the people in the country fall under that denomination, said Sunil Alagh, founder and chairman of SKA Advisors, a business advisory and consultancy service in India.
Formosa, also a leading design thinker, said brand design has changed a lot over the years.
In the 1970s, designers focused on products, aesthetics and the visual impact, while in the 2000s they emphasised person-and-process to create more usable products. But the current focus is on innovation and knowledge, he said.
A brand is all about its 'promise'. There are three types of brands: okay, good and great. An okay brand meets expectations, a good brand exceeds expectations and a great brand exceeds expectations by a large margin. “So, a great brand needs to do great things,” Formosa added.
“A brand is all about experience. It does not concentrate only on the logo or the product,” Alagh said.
Huan, also associate professor of Nanyang Business School, stressed treating competitors as value suppliers and customers as value demanders.
To make a strong brand, companies have to innovate products continually, he said. “Kill your product before your competitor makes it obsolete,” he said, adding that leading tech companies such as Samsung, Apple and Microsoft practise this strategy.
Bangladesh could be the next possible 'Asian tiger' after Vietnam due to its huge base of young people, Huan said.
Branding should be a holistic approach, said Sabbir Hasan Nasir, executive director of ACI Logistics that operates retail chain store Shwapno.
“It is time to focus on complete service design for ensuring better experience. Everything that the customer interacts with has to be branded, each and every touchpoint,” he said.
The perception of brand ownership has changed over time, said Rajesh Ramakrishnan, managing director of Perfetti Van Melle Bangladesh, a leading manufacturer and distributor of confectionery and chewing gum.
“Once it was thought that the marketing department is the custodian of a brand, which is not true anymore. Entire organisations create and own the brand.”
The seminar is expected help local brands redesign marketing to match changing needs of the consumers, said Shariful Islam, founder of Bangladesh Brand Forum.
After a year of many challenges and obstacles, 2015 is going to be critical for Bangladesh, he added.
Four global marketing leaders joined the seminar to share their unique experiences, insights and learning on marketing to help local corporate leaders take appropriate strategies, he said.
On the sidelines of the seminar, a session for university students -- Go for Knowledge -- was held at GP House, where 250 students from 25 universities selected through a campaign on engaging men in women's empowerment, participated.
The seminar was attended by around 400 business professionals. Hermawan Kartajaya, president of World Marketing Association and co-founder of Asia Marketing Federation, and Carmen Z Lamagna, vice chancellor of AIUB, the title sponsor of the event, also spoke.
The Daily Star and Marketing Society of Bangladesh were the strategic partners of the event.
Comments