We are absolutely thrilled to be finalists at this year’s AURA Awards for Innovation of the Year in conjunction with Asahi Europe & International. The award nomination recognises our work using augmented reality to drive innovation in pack and concept testing.
This new approach harnesses augmented reality models, built in-house by our design team, that respondents can interact with at home. The result? Rich, detailed feedback to fuel the innovation and design process without the need for a physical prototype or bringing respondents together centrally.
We conducted a pilot of the technology alongside Asahi Europe & International, which validated a number of benefits over established pack and concept testing methods, including respondents being able to better visualise what the concepts would look like in real life, and spontaneously commenting on critical details of the pack design. Read the full case study to find out more about the pilot.
The AURAs are one of the most respected awards in the market research industry, and are judged by members of AURA, an organisation of client side research and insight professionals. Innovation of the Year is a brand new category for 2021 that seeks to recognise solutions that are helping to “deliver better insights or deliver insights better.”
The winners will be announced at the AURA Awards Dinner in London on 19th July.
We are thrilled to announce that we’re finalists in 3 categories at Singapore’s Agency of the Year Awards. We’re shortlisted for:
Market Research Agency of the Year
Consultant of the Year
Agency Leader of the Year
The Agency of the Year Awards are organised by Marketing Magazine and seek to recognise the country’s best agencies. The awards are judged by an esteemed panel of senior client-side marketers. You can see a list of all finalists on the Marketing website.
In 2019, we were named Market Research Agency of the Year and in 2020, we took home the trophy for Consultant of the Year. Hear the Managing Director of our Singapore office, Phil Steggals, speak to Marketing Magazine about the award win and what Kadence is doing differently.
The global health and wellness industry is booming. Already a top priority for many consumers pre-Covid, health and wellness has come into even sharper focus as a result of the pandemic. Research from McKinsey estimates that the global wellness market is worth $1.5 trillion and is growing fast – at a rate of 5-10% per year. But what are the big health and wellness trends for 2021 that brands need to watch?
My health on my terms. Advances in tracking and testing are facilitating personalized health and nutrition recommendations on demand
Mental fitness. Consumers will take a more proactive and preventative approach to mental health
The science of sleep. The global sleep economy shows no signs of slowing down, but innovation in the category will be driven by a new focus on circadian health.
Function at the fore. No longer limited to just physical health, brands are focusing on products to better the body and the mind.
Read the summary below or download the full report to learn more about these trends and how brands can respond. It contains inspiring cases studies of companies across the world who are innovating to capitalize on these trends.
My health on my terms
One of the most significant developments in health and wellness has been the rapid advances in tracking and testing, which are facilitating personalised health and wellness recommendations on demand.
Wearables are becoming ever more sophisticated. The models on the market now allow consumers to track more granular metrics than ever before, with Mind Body Green hailing this a new era of “micro-tracking”. Not only are wearables collecting a wider range of data, they’re using this to better empower their users. Oura, for instance, the world’s first wearable ring, provides a “readiness score” to help users understand when they are at their best – both mentally and physically – as well as when they should focus on recovery.
Similar developments are happening in the world of testing, with companies springing up that allow users to complete a series of tests at home, and then personalise their recommendations based on this. We profile the best of these in the full report but the really interesting thing about these examples is that, for the first time, they have real potential to enter the mainstream. In the past, in-home testing has been a barrier to personalised health and nutrition, but now, greater familiarity with the concept as a result of the pandemic could open the door to new services which combine tracking with testing to create hyper personalised recommendations at speed.
There’s certainly interest in these kinds of services, with 88% of consumers in the US, UK and Germany prioritising personalisation in health and wellness as much as, or more than, they did in the past two to three years, according to the McKinsey study.
This isn’t a short- term trend. Research we conducted to determine which of the behaviours adopted during the pandemic will persist in the long-term found that undertaking activities to support mental health is one of the areas with greatest sticking power. Businesses are increasingly prioritising mental health too. Recent research we conducted in partnership with Bloomberg found that 66% of companies are engaging an external vendor to provide healthcare / wellbeing training for their employees and half are looking to support employees with mental health and stress management.
In line with this growing recognition of the importance of mental health, we see the concept of mental fitness coming to the fore. What do we mean by this? This a move towards taking a more proactive and preventative approach to mental health, where consumers manage their mental health in the same way that they manage their physical health. The US is a market that’s really leading the way here. We’ve already seen a whole host of brands gaining traction but one of the most interesting is a company called Coa, which bills itself as the country’s first “mental health gym”. We profile Coa and other brands leading the way in our full report.
Free report
Health and wellness trends for 2021
The global health and wellness industry is going from strength to strength. Already important to consumers before the pandemic, health and wellness have come into even sharper focus, with the industry undergoing significant transformation in response to Covid.
To help brands navigate these changes, we’ve developed a new report exploring 4 key trends that will shape health and wellness in 2021, profiling the brands and innovations leading the way.
This is leading to a more scientific approach to sleep. The Global Wellness Summit predicts that a new focus on circadian health will shape the products and services we see in the category.(A number of these – from a smart mattress to connected lighting – are profiled in our report.) Circadian health relates to aligning behaviors with our natural circadian rhythms – 24 hour cycles such as the sleep-wake cycle, which are influenced by external factors like natural light and temperature.
Shifting the way we think about sleep to place greater emphasis on circadian rhythms could have broader implications when it comes to other behaviours, for instance, disconnecting from devices before bed or the way we care for our skin, making this an interesting space to watch.
Function at the fore
The fourth and final big trend we see is a growing interest in functional food and beverages that support better physical and mental health. The most evident application of this is in the field of immunity boosting food and drink. According to research from Innova Market Insights, 60% of consumers globally are seeking out food and beverage products that support immune health and we’ve seen a seen a slew of product launches in this space as brands seek to capitalise on this trend. Increasingly, we’re seeing innovation extending beyond this to food and beverage products that support the mind. We feature the best of these in the full report. For brands looking to tap into this trend, this is a relatively nascent category so there’s real potential here, as well as for cross-over products to improve both physical and mental health.
To learn more, download the full report: Health and wellness trends for 2021
To learn more about how these trends, how they are evolving and the brands leading the way, download the full report. Alternatively if you’d like to speak to us to understand more about how these trends are playing out in your market, get in touch.
Segmenting your market is incredibly important if you want to achieve success in any industry. It has many benefits, from improved marketing to making it easier to expand your offerings. FMCG (fast-moving consumer goods) are no exception. In fact, there are many reasons why market segmentation for FMCG products is sometimes even more important in this industry than others. There are many steps you can take to ensure your segmentation efforts are as effective as possible for your FMCG business.
First, it’s important to understand why segmentation is so important, and what makes FMCG different from some other industries. Then, we’ll move onto some key best practices for FMCG market segmentation.
Why is market segmentation important?
Whatever industry you’re in, it’s almost always helpful to segment your market into different slices based on a range of factors like needs, values, behaviours or interests. This has a wide range of benefits, such as:
It helps you better target your audience. Instead of developing products for a broad range of people, you can hone in on a specific segment and create a product that addresses their pain points more effectively.
It allows you to market more accurately and reliably. As above, when your target audience for marketing is more precisely defined, you can create marketing materials that speak to your prospects more directly, helping you build more meaningful relationships, engage them more easily, and increase your sales.
It reduces risk and optimizes spending. When you (correctly) target a more specific group of people, you increase the chances of successfully converting them to customers. This allows you to use marketing budgets more wisely, focusing resources on people you know are in need of your product instead of taking a costly scattergun approach.
Why is market segmentation important for FMCG products?
FMCG products can be defined as products that are sold quickly and at a relatively low cost. This bracket of goods includes things like snacks, toiletries, cosmetics, and over-the-counter drugs.
This category has certain characteristics that make segmentation a critical initiative for any FMCG business and will influence the approach you take to your segmentation.
With FMCG goods, people’s needs and desires change — sometimes significantly — based on where they are and who they’re with. For example, someone eating out with friends might have very different preferences compared to when they’re eating at home after a long day of work. This means one person may fit into several segments depending on their environment. This kind of fluctuation doesn’t happen in the same way as many other product types, like cars or investment products. As such, an occasion-based segmentation is needed.
FMCG is a high-competition space. Just think of the enormous numbers of potato chip brands, or toilet paper options. All these brands are fighting for customers all the time, and to compete in this kind of environment you need a keen understanding of your market and how to target it.
Innovation is constant. To keep up in this ever-changing landscape, FMCG companies need to be continuously innovating and developing new products. Market segmentation helps them better understand their customers and where the innovation opportunities exist, as well as how their current products are being received by different segments of their market.
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Market segmentation for FMCG products — guiding principles on how to get it right
For FMCG businesses, market segmentation should use many of the best practices employed by other types of companies. Here are some ways to ensure you get the most out of market segmentation as an FMCG company.
Get the right people on board at the beginning
One of the biggest challenges when you’re running a segmentation in an FMCG organisation is getting buy-in to the process from the key stakeholders. A segmentation should drive decisions at every level of a business – from marketing to product development – so it’s important to get these people on board at the outset to optimise eventual adoption of the segments.
One way of doing this is to carry out stakeholder interviews with the key people in your organisation. This is important for several reasons:
It allows you to gather important knowledge that exists in the business to inform the segmentation itself
It helps create buy-in. By having skin in the game at the beginning, you are able to excite people about the project and create evangelists who will be more likely to harness the research going forwards.
Another useful tip is to consider a client side “champion” both for the duration of the research and the internal roll out. This should be combined with a client side “core team” with representatives from each of the departments that is planning on using the segmentation.
Remember that a person’s needs can change based on their environment, which will have implications for the way you approach segmentation in this category.
As mentioned above, one of the unique attributes of the FMCG category is that consumers’ needs change based on the situation. This means that with FMCG products, people don’t necessarily fit into fixed, static segments. As such, a lot of the time, segmentation is done based on occasions.
If we think about the alc-bev category, people tend to consume very different drinks depending on the occasion. Somebody having a beer with dinner on a Wednesday night will be motivated by a very different need than he/she will be when hanging out at a nightclub on Saturday, where they might be drinking something entirely different. Putting this person in one segment would wash out the findings, rather than accentuating the two very different motivations present in these occasions.
For this reason, when doing market research to inform a segmentation, it’s important to be specific about the what and why of the choices people make at different times. Ask them about a range of different scenarios to ensure their diverse needs are represented.
This is important to keep in mind for FMCG products since our habits and tastes fluctuate so much, in a way that they don’t always do with other products.
Identify the segments with most potential for your business
The core element of a segmentation project is the development of the segmentation solution, dividing the market up into segments that you can target. In this stage of the research, it’s important to remember that even though one of your segments might be a relatively small percentage of the market, it could account for a large share of sales. This is a vital principle to bear in mind in any category, but for FMCG it’s incredibly important, given how competitive the market can be. Focusing on a niche segment, by targeting consumers’ needs closely, can be a recipe for success.
Augment traditional segmentation techniques with (self) ethnographic research
Every segmentation involves quantitative research to group people into segments based on certain characteristics. This allows us to target groups with broadly similar attributes with the same types of product.
We always recommend combining this with qualitative research to get under the skin of your segments and to help you create detailed personas. This qualitative research can take many forms – from in-depth interviews to online research such as an online community.
For FMCG brands, we recommend considering ethnography at this stage. This gives you a unique and unmatched opportunity to really understand your segments— if you really want to get to know your Fitness Enthusiasts, for instance, you want to see them in the course of their daily life. What do they do after work? What does their house look like? What’s in their refrigerator?
Ethnography gives you a level of insight that you can’t quite access with surveys. Doing this in person is incredibly rich, but it can be logistically challenging (particularly during Covid) and costly so it isn’t always possible to take advantage of this method. That said, there are a range of self-ethnographic techniques you can use to gain this depth of insight through mobile research. Examples include asking people to create a food diary, complete videos or photo tasks in store to help you understand the purchase journey or interview friends or family members.
The insights from self-ethnography can be incredibly rich, helping you to really deepen your understanding of your segments so you can develop products, services and campaigns that really meet their needs.
Bring your segments to life
Once you’ve created your segments, the next task is to bring them to life. There are a number of ways you can do this but the first step is to create personas.
What is a persona? A persona is a fictional profile that encapsulates the core qualities of each segment, including their needs, behaviours and motivations. The purpose of a persona is to help others in the business understand each segment and how they differ from one another so they can better serve their needs. As such, they tend to be very visual so they can be easily remembered and placed at the forefront of decision making.
Naming here is of vital importance. A memorable name can be really useful in helping stakeholders remember the defining characteristics of a segment so that they live on in the organisation.
Some personas can be as simple as a PowerPoint slide. But at Kadence, we like to take this further, developing a range of visual outputs that you can use to help everyone in the business understand your core targets – from the C suite to the factory floor.
We’ve developed everything from interactive PDFs to infographics to bring different segments to life. Some techniques we’ve found particularly useful include:
Video-based teaser campaigns prior to unveiling the different personas to build interest and engagement
Posters to bring personas front and centre for employees in the office
Documentary-style films with consumers representing each segment. These can be a really effective way of bringing the segmentation to life and helping the key insights stick with stakeholders for a long time to come
Going global – how to approach international segmentations
Most FMCG brands are global, but their products can and do vary depending on where they are sold. As such, marketers often ask us if they should have one global segmentation solution or individual solutions by region or country.
The answer really lies in how you will use it. If you have marketing teams that are deployed at a country level, then country level is the way to go, with, hopefully, a global framework that the countries all fall into that the global marketing team can use.
If most of the marketing action is coming from a single global team, then one global segmentation is better so it really does depend on the set up of your organisation and team.
Need help developing a market segmentation for FMCG products in your business?
Market segmentation in the FMCG space is a powerful way to dig into your market, better understand your customers, create better products, and get buy-in from leadership for your plans.
It’s crucial to do this right. There are many challenges and potential pitfalls to navigate, but a huge potential upside in an industry where competition is fierce and customer expectations are high.
Why consider developing a market entry strategy for India?
It’s very simple: India is a huge market. In population terms, it’s now on a par with China at around 1.3 billion people – and it’s likely to overtake its northern neighbour this decade. India is still a young country – 44% of its population is under 25 years old – and is seeing rapid growth in both its wealth and economic make-up, quickly becoming a global hub for technology and manufacturing.
It’s also seen massive urbanisation over the past 50 years, with six megacities in excess of 10 million inhabitants: New Delhi (31.2m), Mumbai (21m), Kolkata (15m), Bangalore (12.8m), Chennai (11.2m) and Hyderabad (10.3m). Like China, the latter years of the 20th century saw a rapid expansion in the middle class as the impact of globalisation opened international opportunities. The number of households with a disposable income of more than $10,000 a year leapt from around 2.5 million in 1990 to nearly 50 million in 2015.
India’s links with the rest of the world have not always been easy. Their historic relationship with the UK, for example, created lasting cultural ties, but is scarred by colonialism, too. Although India’s recent history as a global powerhouse has been tense at times, businesses from all over the world – and especially anglophone nations and Asian neighbours – are now deeply enmeshed in its economy.
Brands interested in getting into the Indian market will find a strong legal system, democratic structures, a broadly market economy (although with caveats – more on that below) and an entrepreneurial and aspirational customer base with wide interests and diverse patterns of consumption.
One problem for overseas brands coming into the Indian market is that many decision-makers outside the country retain a very mythologised view of India. It’s still perceived by some, for example, as defined by widespread poverty and fixed traditions. While there is poverty – as there is in every country – a rapidly growing middle class and highly advanced tech infrastructure tell a far more nuanced story.
Nevertheless, brands entering India must be ready for a land of diversity and contradictions. This is a nation with a successful space programme; but faces complex challenges resulting from inequalities. It has a thriving cultural industry, and produces (and exports) some of the world’s best medical professionals; yet is in the third quartile for life expectancy.
So it’s no surprise that businesses both large and small rely on local expertise to ensure they can navigate the highly diverse and nuanced byways, trends, localities, attitudes and expectations that make up ‘India’. And it’s a reminder that proper research of this market – or, perhaps, these markets – is an essential stage for successful market entry.
Understanding the challenges – the barriers to market entry in India
Before brands even get to researching the nuances of the different markets in India – and which of them might turn out to be fertile ground in terms of consumer or B2B attitudes and behaviours – they need to some investigate the practical issues confronting companies entering the market.
At the highest level, Prime Minister Narendra Modi has looked to extend the ‘Atmanirbhar Bharat’, ‘make in India’ or ‘self-reliant India’, policy to accelerate the country’s economic development. This is built on five pillars, which offer some guidance for brands looking to enter India on the country’s political and economic priorities:
Economy – designed to deliver significant growth, not incremental gains.
World-class infrastructure – to facilitate additional growth.
Vibrant demography – harnessing the energy of diversity for self-reliance.
Demand – a huge and growing population can massively fuel domestic economic growth with the right supply chain capabilities in place.
It also means restricting imports of many goods that might be manufactured in-country. Modi talks about creating a ‘new paradigm’ for job-creation and entrepreneurialism. “The mindset of free India should be ‘vocal for local’,” he said in August 2020. “We should appreciate our local products, if we don’t do this then our products will not get the opportunity to do better and will not get encouraged.”
In practical terms, that’s meant high-profile bans being phased in on imported armaments, for example (although not to universal acclaim). During 2020, the country’s three Covid stimulus programmes were labelled ‘Atmanirbhar Bharat’ packages; the development of Covid vaccines was cited by the Prime Minister as a success for the project; and India is planning a domestically equipped and run 5G network. There’s also been a push on loyalty to local brands in many consumer categories – right down to cooking oils.
Looking more broadly, India ranked 63rd in the World Bank’s latest Ease of Doing Business rankings, scoring well for investor protections, getting credit and access to utilities; but very poorly on enforcement of contracts, registering property and starting a business.
The rules for trade are also complex. Even after the departure of Donald Trump and his hostile trade policies, India maintains considerable tariff and non-tariff barriers to US trade. And only China has more entries than India in the UK government’s lists of trade barriers for businesses looking to operate abroad. True, some are minor – such as adding labels to food and drink products; others are in very niche sectors, such as the export of luxury yachts.
But non-Indian professional services firms – legal, accounting, architectural – face considerable barriers to entry. And finished cars (including second-hand vehicles) face a basic customs duty of 125% – which can be augmented with additional levies taking total duty in India as high as 260%. There are even moves to adjust duties on car components and kits to deepen the Indian manufacturing base beyond in-country vehicle assembly.
Both national and state-level controls and tariffs need to be evaluated, and it will pay dividends to take advice on specific sectors, categories and regional variations from both home-country trade advisory teams and local Indian experts on the ground. India is not, therefore, a place to skimp on market research.
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Opportunities still abound
But don’t think this means the door is slammed shut. “It’s not going back to socialist India – we want imports to come in,” said Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman, speaking at The Economic Times Awards for Corporate Excellence in 2021. She says the government has been selective in choosing sectors to face rising tariffs. And the policy is far from universal (or universally popular), despite the nationalist rhetoric. So change is not inconceivable.
Trade does remain vigorous. India was the 12th largest export destination for US goods in 2018 (worth $59bn, including services), and the EU exports around €33bn worth of goods and services to the subcontinent each year. And EU-India free trade talks restarted in 2021 after an eight-year hiatus. One recent blip has been Chinese exports to India, which fell 11% in 2020 – albeit to a still massive to $66.7bn. (Note that China remains a major geopolitical rival to India, which shapes attitudes to the trading relationship.)
The recent Britain Meets India report, prepared by Grant Thornton, highlights the scale of inward investment into India (between 2000 and 2020 an estimated $29.5bn of UK capital was invested in India – and that’s just 6% of global investment flows into the country). Trade between the two countries was worth $26.7bn in 2020 alone – even with the effects of the Covid pandemic – with UK exports amounting to around £8bn.
The presence of major global companies such as Apple – especially as an investor in local manufacturing capacity – shows there’s deep interest in working alongside both state agencies and domestic business partners to ensure access to this massive market despite import controls.
Netflix is another example. Despite some initial challenges regarding insufficient Indian content and the possibility of fresh regulation, it’s slated to release 40 local productions to steal a march on streaming rivals, building on its existing five million subscribers. (Although Amazon Prime’s own $2bn investment in India is making Netflix’s progress more challenging.) So it’s no surprise that many countries are eyeing up India as a potential trade partner. In post-Brexit Britain, Prime Minister Boris Johnson wants to “more than double trade with India to £50bn by 2030”, according to texts of a (Covid-suspended) trade speech the he planned to give in India.
Developing a market entry strategy for India: should you go deep or wide?
Standing up the commercial rationale and the practical issues around doing business in the country is a vital first step for brands wanting to enter the Indian market. But the top-level data – the rules and economics– is only half the story. Scale, diversity and local nuance are also important factors, and these demand more careful evaluation.
At the outset of any market entry project, organisations will need to make a series of choices that demand much deeper research into their specific sector, the markets they want to address, and the different audiences they will encounter. In other words, what’s your aim, where will you focus your efforts, what products and services might succeed – and how might you translate this into a sustainable market position?
In a market as diverse as India, that idea of ‘focus’ is central to a successful project. Geographically and culturally vast, the attitude to many of life’s fundamentals differ widely between regions. Of course, there’s language to consider (more on this below). But behaviours and preferences also differ across geographical areas. For instance, in the eastern and southern regions, rice is the staple carbohydrate and hardly anyone uses fresh milk; in the north and west, people eat breads and powdered milk is frowned upon.
That’s just a couple of examples of the kind of consumption gulf that can exist – before we even get to the differences between urban and rural consumers, or cater to varied cultural touchstones.
A misstep many brands make when considering market entry is thinking about how to capture the Indian market as a whole, then. It can be much more valuable to consider which slices of the pie you might be able to go after – the better to tailor your proposition, branding, logistics and competitive position.
Market research in the field: be clear on your objectives when it comes to market entry in India
This idea of ‘focus’ is particularly important when it comes to the market research methodologies you’ll need to inform your market entry strategy.
Imagine a global brand looking to understand its status or opportunities in lots of different markets. It decides to survey 200 consumers in a couple of dozen countries. In Germany – no slouch with over 80 million people, and some marked regional variations of its own – such a study might yield usable national results. But in India, just the top six megacities – each with a very particular identity – comprise over 100 million consumers. Those 200 interviews are only going to scratch the surface of the big cities, let alone the emerging conurbations and rural population.
There are two possible solutions. First, massively increase the sample for India to reflect its scale. Or second, as we mentioned earlier, focus in on higher-probability markets assessed in partnership with local research teams. It’s not simply an either/or choice, of course. But it highlights the need to make some very clear and well-informed decisions right at the outset of any market entry project.
Find the right partner: local research for local people
Because of the diverse nature of India, the key to a great research partner in India is coverage. That starts with teams based in the country whose ability to advise on high probability areas for focus will be much more acute than agencies based outside India.
Then it’s a question of being able to conduct research effectively to flesh out the objectives of that initial focus. The project leadership will need to understand the different regions – and in many cases, have a clear idea about the unique profile of the 28 states and eight union territories that make up administrative India (with all the conditions they impose).
With 415 living languages (22 of them ‘officially recognised’ for the purposes of administration) and countless local cultural nuances, research teams with local sensitivities are understandably valuable. (We joke that every 5km in India the language changes – but watch out, because every 2km there’s a new dialect…) Our teams speak a broad range of languages enabling us to conduct market research across the length and breadth of India.
Harness technology – India’s secret sauce
India is a global leader in technology, boasting one of the largest and best-trained IT workforces in the world. This is no flash in the pan: Indians, particularly in the middle classes, but increasingly across society, are heavy users of connected technologies and mobile devices. It’s a world leader in low-cost data plans, too, and smartphone adoption is widespread enough, even in many rural areas, to allow for the new generation of online research methodologies to make their mark, alongside more traditional face-to-face approaches.
When it comes to online research, to reach the urban middle classes, laptop-based methodologies should work well. It’s worth bearing in mind that good bandwidth can be spotty – which means limiting the use of video-intensive approaches – but surveys and even text-based communities can work really well. And with the level of smartphone penetration even outside the cities, there is even an opportunity to exploit app-based research or community platforms to build long-term engagement and insight.
Watch, too, for the roll out of India’s own 5G network. Like any country – especially one as vast as India – coverage will be limited at first. But as penetration grows, it should offer new opportunities for richer research projects.
Notable openings – target sectors for a market entry strategy for India
We’ve already noted that global brands in new categories are making a play for Indian consumers – such as Netflix and Amazon Prime in the streaming video space. So where else might brands research a successful move?
Premium brands
While ‘made in India’ is politically potent, for less price-sensitive consumers there remains an affection for overseas brands – particularly those with a reputation for quality and durability. Indian firms are catching up fast (its domestic chocolate brands see huge growth in premium products, for example), but the opportunity persists for now. As BCG noted in 2017, “Consumers in emerging cities… have high purchasing aspirations but are often constrained by product availability.”
While domestic makers Tata and Maruti Suzuki dominate (the former state car-maker now owned by the Japanese motor giant has about half of the market), tech and usage transitions create openings for overseas brands if they partner with local industry. India’s passenger vehicle market is something of a roller-coaster: a period of strong growth was halted in 2019 – unit sales fell 12.75% to 3 million – then further slowed by the pandemic. But the long-run pressure on enhanced mobility should present opportunities.
Fast moving consumer goods
Although this has been a target of the ‘vocal for local’ campaign, there are brands such as Unilever that have retained a dominant position in many categories. That suggests there is an option to leverage strong brand image to gain a firm foothold. In areas such as confectionary, for example, French/Belgian group Barry Callebaut sees huge growth opportunities. Kellogg’s initially struggled in India – it was overconfident with existing product and marketing formulas – but has carefully tailored its approach to succeed.
Youth brands
In more traditional rural areas, the division between young and old is less marked. But in bigger towns, fast reliable internet access and varied career opportunities mean young Indians are developing a more global outlook and in many cases, that creates fertile ground for international and ‘cool’ brands. With a median age of just 28 (across Asia as a whole it’s 32) and the ‘millennials’ ascent into higher income brackets, catering to youth in India has huge upside.
Top tips for success
It’s impossible in a market this large and diverse to offer up general principles that will hold true everywhere. But some of the research basics will serve brands well in India – and there are some tips for making market entry a success.
Let experts find you a product/market fit.
Desk research can take you so far, but local expertise will make the process of investigating high-probability markets much quicker and more effective. Kadence’s India team know where to find the populations that dovetail with your product values and attributes.
Adapt brand, marketing and packaging.
Try to get ahead of cultural biases with your presentation – from packaging (where hygiene and transport conditions are a factor for many Indian consumers, incidentally) to the language used. Guidance on these issues should drop out of your initial product/market fit conversations.
Target your fieldwork carefully.
If you’ve been clear on the product or service qualities and work with local experts who can identify more fertile ground, this ought to be easy. Fieldwork costs can mount up in India – and poorly targeted surveys are both money and time wasted so think carefully about the people you want to reach and how best to achieve this
Stay relevant.
India is a fast-evolving nation and its consumers’ tastes are changing too. Customers will reward brands that stay in touch with them – either through programmes such as loyalty schemes or through longitudinal research projects. These same methods are ideal for spotting emerging local and international rivals, as well as shifting attitudes towards overseas brands.
Above all, respect the fact that India is a single nation in many respects, by a diverse collection of people in others. With 1.3 billion people to satisfy, even the kind of precise targeting we recommend for overseas brands can open up vast potential markets. India is not for the faint-hearted. But the upside is enormous.
Segmentations are powerful tools for any business. But right now, at a time where we’re seeing extremes of behaviour – from lockdowns in some markets to a roaring twenties style reopening in others, how should you be approaching your segmentation?
We’ve brought together segmentation experts from across Kadence to share their top tips. In this short 10 minute video, we cover:
How to know if you need to refresh your segmentation – (Hint – if you’re in an industry where behaviours have changed as a result of the pandemic, the answer is very likely to be a yes!)
When you should embark on your segmentation refresh
What you can do in the interim to ensure your segmentation delivers in the short-term
What to do if you need to develop a segmentation now
To understand more about the best approach to segmentation, take a look at our ultimate guide or get in touch.
Launching a new fast-moving-consumer-goods (FMCG) product is a process wrought with challenges and notoriously difficult to pull off successfully. In fact, it’s such a treacherous domain that approximately 80-85% of all FMCG launches fail! So how do you successfully launch a new FMCG product in the market?
Companies need to do all they can to maximize their chances of success when it comes to launching their product. This means getting all the different stages of the process right, investing the right amount of time and resources into planning, and making use of all the tools and knowledge at their disposal.
In this article, we’ll show you how to launch a new FMCG product in the market successfully. To do this right, you need to start at the very beginning by considering what makes any FMCG product successful.
What makes an FMCG product successful?
There are a number of factors that successful FMCG products have in common. Let’s take a look at 3 things that separate good products from failures.
They’re distinct
Successful FMCG products have to offer something that sets them apart from all the other similar products on the shelves. However, this can be a tricky balancing act — you don’t want your product to be so different that it moves away from what the customer wants.
If, for example, you’re selling a brand of instant coffee, you know your customers want some variety of coffee that they can pour into a mug and get a fresh beverage in seconds. But at the same time, you want your product to stand out and offer something more than all the other instant coffee brands.
Brands that can strike this balance right and create a distinctive FMCG product that continues to delight the customer will be on the road to success.
They’re what people want right now
The FMCG space is defined by being in a constant state of change and flux. Innovation is happening all the time, and people’s tastes are constantly changing.
Successful FMCG products are able to tap into trends and popular demand, giving customers what they want right now as opposed to what they wanted five years ago. For example, as people become more health-conscious their taste in snacks has changed. The companies who picked up on this change in demands and adapted their product offering to include healthy, low-calorie, high-protein snacks were the ones most able to adapt and succeed in a changing market.
They persist
In a market where goods go in and out of fashion quickly, brands that can stand the test of time are at a huge advantage. Household names like Coca-Cola, L’Oréal, and Nestle are household names because they’re masters at staying relevant and in-demand in markets that are prone to constant change.
Doing this successfully requires an intimate knowledge of your market and customers and a knack for constantly delivering even as tastes and trends evolve.
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Why do FMCG product launches fail so often?
There are lots of reasons why launching an FMCG product is so hard and why so many fail. Here are some of the main reasons FMCG launches tend to come up short.
It’s a competitive space
There’s no getting around it — there are lots of FMCG products out there. When you enter this market, you’ll be competing with many other brands, brands that have often been in the game for many years.
If you don’t get it right from the very beginning, you’ll never be able to effectively compete and your target customers will go straight to the brands they have been using for as long as they can remember.
Failure to use data and market research properly
Today’s businesses are blessed with more data than ever before in history. Much, much more. And this can be augmented by wider market research to understand the market, the key trends at play and reactions to your concept or product. If used correctly, this data and insight allows you to better understand your customers, and launch a product that takes the market by storm.
Unfortunately, many FMCG brands fail to tap into that rich reservoir of data, missing out on the advantages it offers and instead launching a product that isn’t closely aligned with what customers want.
Development costs and lack of funding
Another characteristic of FMCG launches is that they’re expensive. Developing a successful FMCG product can cost a huge amount of money, and this typically requires a lot of reliable funding and investment.
If you fail to secure enough funding for your project, you’re setting up the entire launch for failure.
Failure to understand timescales and stick to them
Launching an FMCG product involves a huge number of moving parts and deadlines. If you aren’t careful, it’s easy to mess this up and end up falling behind the dates you promised.
One clear example is shipping times. If your product fails to reach your customer within the time they expect, you’re creating a recipe for canceled orders, damaged reputation, lost money, and a failed launch.
Failure to understand the importance of constant innovation
The FMCG space is defined by constant, ongoing innovation. Companies are investing vast sums of money into making sure their next product is enough to stand out from the fierce competition and keep customers delighted. To survive and succeed as an FMCG brand, you need to be constantly learning, adapting, and innovating. It never ends, and it’s the only way to avoid failure.
How to launch a new FMCG product in the market successfully
Understand the market and your customers at the outset through market research
Understanding your customers and the market is absolutely critical when thinking about how to launch a new FMCG product in the market. You need to know as much as possible about your customers’ pain points, desires, their demographics, what they’re already buying, and more.
Understanding the broader market you’re operating in is important too. This can help you identify trends to capitalize on and size the opportunity for your FMCG launch.
This research should take place long before the product launch, in the initial stages of planning to help inform the ideation process.
Testing, testing
Research is also important later in the process when it comes to testing your ideas with consumers. Quantitative concept testing can help you whittle down your ideas and select the ones with the best chance of success to take forwards. Qualitative concept testing can help you to further refine those ideas in line with consumer wants and needs. There are also other elements of research to consider further down the line once you reach the prototype stage, such as pack testing, central location testing or test tastes to optimise your product ahead of launch.
You can read more about what research you need to consider at each stage of the new product development process in our guide.
Get your marketing right
Effective marketing is a crucial element of every FMCG product launch. Use insights from the NPD process to guide your messaging – on the pack, at the point of sale and in your marketing and comms – to cut through with consumers and steal share of market.
Always be learning
Testing should be an ongoing process — make sure you continue to test, measure and learn, even after the product launch. Collecting data, and making tweaks in response to the feedback you receive can help inform product relaunches or line extensions to keep you at the forefront of your category.
Launching an FMCG product is no mean feat. It’s famously hard to pull off, and statistically most brands who attempt it fail. But that doesn’t mean it’s impossible, and with the right approach and expertise, you can significantly improve your chances of success.
To find out how Kadence can help you boost your chances of success with an FMCG product launch, get in touch.
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At Kadence we believe insights must be communicated clearly in order to generate maximum impact. We also believe that demonstrating the value of these insights, and embedding them across stakeholder groups, is vital. With this in mind, we pride ourselves on producing design output that is easily and effectively shared across organisations to inform, add value and drive critical business decisions.
But the designers at Kadence are not only responsible for creating diverse outputs at the end of research studies to embed insights within businesses, they also produce stimulus and workshop collateral, and visualise concepts and products for testing.
The global design team works closely with teams across the Kadence group to tell powerful visual stories, and includes design talent covering digital and print mediums, as well as video production and animation.
We asked our designers in Singapore, Jakarta and London to tell us about a typical day in their roles at Kadence, so let’s go ahead and meet the global design team.
Meet the design team
From left to right, Myra Lafrelle (Singapore), Widyo Prakoso (Indonesia) and Katrin Scheibert (UK).
What kind of work are you responsible for at Kadence?
Katrin “I’m responsible for all things design and video at Kadence UK, but I also work with the global marketing and design teams across the Kadence group. The design outputs and disciplines I work across vary from project to project – one day I could be visualising concepts or products for testing, other days I might be creating an infographic or digital report summarising the data and findings at the end of a study, or I might be producing video content to bring a segmentation to life. Recently I have been exploring augmented reality and how this can be used for visualising and testing products in qualitative and quantitative studies, which I think is really exciting and has a lot of potential across a variety of sectors.”
Myra “I lead the execution of a wide array of dedicated outputs including infographics, videos and interactive whitepapers. I work closely with the insight team to create content that brings to life an idea, solves a problem, or relieves a pain point in an innovative way. Essentially, I translate consumer and business insights into absorbable and engaging data visualisations and marketing initiatives.”
Widyo “I create visually engaging, innovative and functional design outputs that typically include infographics, reports and product mock-ups. These outputs are produced for clients, for marketing initiatives and also for internal use here at Kadence Indonesia. Most recently, I completed the design of an online community platform that we use for local research here in Indonesia.”
Why do clients typically look to include design and video as part of their research projects?
Katrin “The design and video outputs we typically produce for clients at the end of studies are used in a variety of ways – both internally within their businesses and externally in a more public facing capacity – but often our clients work with us to produce digestible, actionable and visually engaging outputs to inform and drive decision making within their businesses. In some cases, we also work with our clients to produce outputs that are used for marketing purposes.
Design outputs that are produced at the start or during the early stages of a study typically include producing stimulus for testing – this mainly includes visualising concepts and products, which are then revised and refined based on the results from the study. These visuals are then used by our clients’ internal teams for further development.”
Myra “The key thing that our clients are looking for is to be able to communicate insights effectively. The right data visualizations and messaging can help explain insights so they are more easily understood and interpreted correctly. A clearly communicated insight creates a strong message that is hard to ignore, preparing the pathway for action to occur. If an insight isn’t understood, the chances of affecting change are limited.”
What does a typical day look like for a designer at Kadence?
Widyo “There’s no such thing as a typical day as a designer. Some days I may be focusing on animation, video and sound editing, others I might be producing an infographic for clients or marketing purposes. I make time to stay up to date with the latest design trends and developments in the creative world, so that I am continuously learning.”
How do you determine which design outputs to produce?
Katrin “The purpose of an output and the preferred communication channels within a business are the main factors that will drive the format or type of output we produce for a client. For a recent segmentation study, we developed various pieces of collateral for a series of personas – this included digital and print outputs that all served different purposes. We developed printed materials in the form of hand-outs and posters for internal workshop sessions, as well as short, animated videos and interactive PDFs that could easily be shared with internal teams via email and an intranet platform.”
Myra “The output is very much dependent on the type of research study. Data from quantitative studies can be crafted into infographics that tell a compelling visual story, or if we’re filming interviews or running an online community where video content is being generated by respondents, then this can lend itself to producing a video that brings the findings to life using this footage.”
What are your top tips for clients looking to land insights within a business?
Katrin “Keep it short, visual and to the point – consider how much time relevant teams and individuals may have to engage with a topic (or study) and how much detail they may find useful, and tailor the format and length of your output to fit this. Using visuals to tell part of the story, or communicate key insights, can be really helpful for this and keep the core messages top of mind.
In some cases, it can also be beneficial to produce short visual ‘teasers’ that clearly and succinctly communicate key points and direct the relevant team members to more detailed reports or outputs. For example, a short video summarising the key insights from a study can be easily shared across local and global teams and can help drive interest and engagement around a topic or study.”
Myra “My top tip would be to remind clients of the importance of taking the time into articulate insights correctly before converting them into visuals. We approach insight like peeling an onion, going deeper and deeper to draw out drivers, motivations and values. This provides a wealth of information, which we then sift through, identifying the key points for inclusion in the design output.”
Where do you go, or what do you do when you need creative inspiration?
Katrin “I think that inspiration can sometimes be found in the most unlikely places. I often find inspiration when I’m shopping for groceries – the abundance of new, innovative products and brands competing for our attention on the shelves of supermarkets can be really fascinating.”
Widyo “One of the best sources of inspiration for me is my colleagues. I find that “ngobrol” (chit chat) with the team after receiving a new brief or a client meeting can be a booster to creativity and generating ideas.”
Myra “I draw creative enlightenment from random places, things and scenarios within my surroundings: moments of inspiration I’ve coined design inspos.”
Finally, tell us what the best part of the job is for you?
Myra “Creating something that did not previously exist is really exhilarating. Solving people’s problems is also very rewarding for me. When you’re starting a new project, you’re trying to solve a new problem for a specific client. From research to interviews to kick off meetings, we take a number of steps to make sure we’re solving the right problem. Then, once we’ve nailed it down, I get to start brainstorming all of the billion ways of solving that problem, until I find the magic one. That’s always something exciting to look forward.
Another thing I love is learning new tips and tricks and finding new tools every single day. Trends change, new tech is created, new languages are written, tools are enhanced, tools disappear, you definitely have to enjoy being a lifelong learner in this profession.”
Katrin “The best part of my job is working across such varied projects and outputs at Kadence. I’ve been able to continuously develop my skills and knowledge in new areas, from UX and dashboards to commercial agriculture and animal health. We’re also lucky to have such diverse teams across the Kadence group – I’m constantly learning from others and there’s always the sense that we’re working towards delivering the best possible outputs.”
Find out how you can use design in your business to land insights and inspire change
Concept and pack testing is an area that’s ripe for innovation – a need made ever more pressing during the Covid-19 pandemic. Watch this 15 minute video to hear how we worked with Asahi UK to pilot the use of augmented reality for this purpose, testing pack designs for Fuller’s London Pride.
We’ll share our key findings, focusing specifically on what we discovered about the value of using AR versus static 2D images. These insights will have value to any researcher looking to broaden their toolkit and harness new technologies in the “new normal”.
This is is the first of Kadence International’s Micro Masterclasses, 15 minute videos designed to provide fresh thinking and a new perspective on research methodologies.
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Vital Strategies
Customer Intelligence Director