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ASIA RESEARCH Q3 20182

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ASIA RESEARCH MAGAZINE: SPONSOR DETAILS

PUBLISHED BY ASIA RESEARCH PTE LTDEDITOR Diana SartikaDEPUTY EDITOR Piers LeeEDITORIAL TEAM Clare Diston, Valerie Lum, Claudia Siregar-HauensteinDESIGN & ART DIRECTION Linking Asia 21 Pte. Ltd.

For all enquiries related to advertising, please contact:[email protected] Research welcomes contributions and reserves the right to select and edit readers’ contributions. The views expressed in contributions to Asia Research are not necessarily those held by the publisher.Send contributions to [email protected]

Asia Research has taken all reasonable care to ensure the accura-cy and objectivity of the information contained in this publication, but accepts no responsibility for the content of advertisements published, and no liability for mistakes, misprints, omissions, typographical errors, loss or damage suffered as a result of relying wholly or in part on the content of advertising or editorial published herein. Cover: Hellen Kustanti/welinku 21 Image: Liu Zishan/ Shutterstock.comImages: metamorworks/Shutterstock.com (2, 6), Shutterstock.com/ (12), Chinnapong/Shutterstock.com (14), Freepik (3, 4, 5, 10, 11, 9, 15).Asia Research is published quarterly. Copyright is reserved throughout. No part of this publication can be reproduced in whole or in part without the express permission of Asia Research Pte Ltd.Twitter: @asia_research LinkedIn: Asia Research Media

BDRC AsiaContact: Piers Lee T: +65 6258 7109 E: [email protected] W: www.bdrc-asia.com

GMO ResearchContact: Atsushi Yamamoto T: +65 8435 9426 (SGP) +81 3 5456 3244 (JP) E: [email protected] W: www.gmo-research.jp/en

Jupiter MR SolutionsContact: Usa BudsabaT: +66 (0)2 129 3274E: [email protected]: jupitermr.com

Join the DotsContact: Karen Schofield T: +65 3157 9338 E: [email protected] W: www.jointhedotsmr.com

NeurosensumContact: Rajiv Lamba T: +62 811 8893 315 E: [email protected] W: neurosensum.com

Research and ResultsContact: Alexandra FrankT: +49 (0)89 1490 279-10E: [email protected]: www.research-results.com

Resources GroupContact: Rowan Haylett T: +61 2 9258 1121 E: [email protected] W: www.resourcesgroup.com

welinku 21Contact: Hellen KustantiT: +49 (0)40 7880 7831E: [email protected]: welinku21.com

3 News: In case you missed it

4 Two divergent strategies from the big players

9 Thailand 4.0: Are you ready?

12 Survey writing 101: Tips for keeping quant relevant

14 Getting to the heart of the shopper

17 On the move

AI–The NextGENERATION OF RESEARCH

10

13 SHAPE-ingSHOPPER EXPERIENCES

6

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IGD LAUNCHES RESEARCH AND INSIGHTS PLATFORM FOR ASIANot-for-profit training and research organisation IGD has kicked off a new research and insights platform with an Eastern focus that builds on the compa-ny’s existing expertise in the region: IGD Asia.Lead by IGD’s team of industry experts headquartered in Singapore, the service will offer field-based research and anal-ysis into Asian food and grocery retail-ing, providing businesses with in-depth information to trade successfully in the region.The new platform will sit alongside IGD’s current global insights platforms, Retail Analysis, ShopperVista, and Sup-ply Chain Analysis, with a focus on fu-ture-facing insights that cover the latest trends shaping the evolution of the gro-cery industry in Asia: the best retail in-novations, in-store category excellence, and best-in-class promotional and sea-sonal activity. •

REUTER COMMUNICATIONS LAUNCHES NEW INSIGHTS UNITAsia-focused luxury intelligence and marketing communications agency Re-uter Communications has started an in-house research and insights capability, Reuter Intelligence.Reuter Intelligence provides custom-ised research and syndicated research products for luxury brands seeking to better understand China’s luxury mar-ket. Client solutions include market landscaping and strategy, brand identi-ty and awareness, customer experience,

and segmentation studies. In addition, it supports clients in developing luxury market thought leadership and industry reports.The agency has appointed former Kan-tar (WPP Group) Research Director Lee Folland to lead the business as Director of Research and Insights. Lee has more than 10 years of expertise in market re-search across China and Asia Pacific. Prior to Kantar, Lee was at Jigsaw, one of the first qualitative research agencies in China. Lee has extensive experience in consumer insights across different verticals, including fashion, retail, fi-nance and insurance, fast-moving con-sumer goods, and health and wellness. •

ILLUMINERA PARTNERS DBM IN MERGERData-empowered marketing and strat-egy consulting group Illuminera has merged with Australia’s insight-based financial services consulting firm DBM. Founded in 1992 by Dhruba Gupta, DBM is a specialist research and insight agency and one of the top five largest privately owned market research agen-cies in Australia. DBM has a rich record of experience and expertise in financial services, blending research and analyt-ics to solve the most challenging prob-lems facing Australia’s banks, insurers, and wealth managers today and be-yond.With a strong commitment to customer service excellence and a proven track record, Illuminera is a leading indepen-dent data-empowered marketing and strategy consulting group in the Asia

Pacific region. According to both, Illu-minera and DBM will benefit from their combined knowledge and capability in the fields of data analytics and in-sight-based consulting to meet the in-creasingly demanding needs of clients across the Asia Pacific region, with over 160 full-time consultants and annual revenue of more than 160 million RMB. •

NIELSEN EXPANDS MEDIA IMPACT SERVICE TO THE PHILIPPINESConsumer insights agency Nielsen has launched its Media Impact service in the Philippines. A key part of Nielsen’s Total Audience framework, the solution will help marketers better plan advertising campaigns across TV, radio, and print. On the other hand, TV networks, radio stations, and print publications can use it to be more competitive in today’s me-dia landscape.Nielsen Media Impact brings together consumer media behaviour informa-tion across TV, digital, and print media into one easy-to-use planning interface. Marketers, agencies, and media own-ers are given a granular, unduplicated understanding of how different media combinations reach audiences, and how much time their audience spends on those media channels. In addition to standard information about age, gen-der, and social classification, Media Im-pact allows users to put together media plans based on advanced audience at-tributes such as advanced demograph-ics, psychographics, lifestyle behaviours, and media behaviours, so that they un-derstand how best to reach their audi-ence, no matter how granular it is. •

The Innovative Insights Corporation

TOP HEADLINES

NEWSIn Case You Missed It

CenSiart ‘18

Q3 2018 ASIA RESEARCH 3






On 30th July 2018, Ipsos announced the acquisition of four divisions of GfK’s custom research business, including customer experience, experience innovation, health, and

public affairs.

COMMENTARY

The deal, worth €105 million, is for a combined business currently worth around €200 million. This acquisition will involve Ipsos absorbing nearly 1,000 GfK custom research employees across 25 countries.

The deal involves two highly divergent strategies from two of the largest research firms in the industry, and industry observers will be keen to see how these two strategies play out in the next few years.

The GfK strategy looks to be more in tune with the gen-eral developments in the industry – that is, towards big data and analytics. Peter Feld, Chief Executive Officer of GfK, commented that this will transform GfK into a “truly technology-enabled data analytics provider”. They will re-tain their retail audit and media measurement divisions, allowing them to leverage off data sets, panels, and to focus on the analytics linking the various sources.

GFK’S SALE OF FOUR DIVISIONS TO IPSOS HIGHLIGHTS

TWO DIVERGENTSTRATEGIES FROMTHE BIG PLAYERS





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GfK’s move is recognised as a desire to drop the more competitive custom research business, which is associat-ed with lower margins. Custom research is much harder to automate and has far more competition from the full range of agencies, large and small.

Ipsos already has a sizeable custom research business and is, in a sense, having to commit itself to the growth of this sector of the market. The acquisition will provide an immediate boost in its revenues and remove an ex-isting competitor in the same tier. The question, though, is for how long that revenue boost can be sustained, as changes will inevitably lead to a review of business allo-cation across agencies.

Furthermore, the GfK divisions that Ipsos has bought dupli-cate much of the current business. Ipsos already operates in healthcare, customer experience, innovation, and the public sector, and has its own specialist divisions and proprietary solutions for these lines of business.

Ultimately this is yet more consolidation at the top end of the industry, and while there will be an immediate boost

in Ipsos’s revenue, the longer benefits to Ipsos will have to come from gaining ‘staff efficiencies’.

The market research industry will need to wait to see how these two players, currently ranked 7th and 8th in the glob-al rankings, develop over the years with their quite different strategies. The GfK strategy is very much a ‘private equity’ rationale of focusing on core profitable businesses, leverag-ing more on technology and less on people, and operating in a less contested space.

Ipsos maintains its focus on the more labour-intensive cus-tom research, sometimes dependent on individual talent within the organisation. This might seem like a less favour-able strategy, but Ipsos retains a more diversified business with considerable cross-sell potential.

GfK, on the other hand, runs the risk of being trumped by any new analytics technology that could be introduced to the market and could disrupt today’s technology.

Who will be ahead in 10 years’ time – a company more dependent on technology, or one more dependent on people? •

COMMENTARYwww.asia-research.net




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Based on this research, we found that the current budgeting arrangements for corporations in Singapore include:

• Centralised research budgets, usually held by the research or consumer insight departments, but often coming under the general marketing budget

• Research budgets assigned to lines of business within the corporation, or included within the overall brand marketing budget

• Country-level budgets – e.g. a regional research department centralised in Singapore can have budgets allocated to specific countries, and the size of the budget is dependent on the importance of each of these markets

• Specific budgets, that require larger investments, which may be set aside for trackers and more recently for insight communities

Budgets can be structured globally, regionally, and at a country level. The Singapore-based insight manager

may be involved in all of these research studies, either commissioning their own local or regional studies, or helping to implement global studies commissioned outside of the region.

There are a few ‘side doors’ within client organisations, i.e. where research is not channelled through the research/insight departments. These include the following:

• Media – It is still common practice for research on communications to be part of the overall engagement between the marketing department and the advertising agency, e.g. where it is the advertising agency rather than the client that commissions the research firm in creative testing or development, or for pre- and post-advertising effectiveness measurement.

• Product design – A department might engage a design agency to create a new product or store design. The design agency in turn engages a research firm to provide consumer insights to the product development or architectural concept evaluation.

COVER STORY

A QUESTION OF

Even in the good times, we often hear clients saying that they have “budget pressure” or “budgets are being cut”, and many agencies see the market for mainstream research

shrinking. To gain more insight into how clients manage and plan their research budgets, and how they deal with budget pressure, Asia Research interviewed several major buyers of research in Singapore about these topics as part of our Annual Buyer Survey.





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COVER STORY

• Marketing departments may undertake DIY research, e.g. ‘quick polls’ within their customer base, or engage research firms directly for specific projects.

• Local offices may engage research agencies directly in their own local market, sometimes without the central research department knowing about it.

• Business-to-business research may occur that does not go through the consumer marketing department.

Although not mentioned in this client research, senior management can also undertake research, sometimes through engagement of a management consultant where research is part of the overall engagement. The management consultant can then hire a research firm to deliver this, but increasingly they are doing the research themselves.

HOW BUDGETS ARE PLANNEDAnnual planning, including the setting of the research budget, can involve historical reference to past budgets, perhaps with a top-up for inflation.

There are usually several core research programmes to be planned for and, as stated earlier, programmes might have their own separate budgets, as in the case of trackers and insight communities.

Some of the ad hoc research expenditure can be fairly predictable – for example, a certain budget will be set aside for a number of product and communications tests

that would be expected throughout a year. As part of the planning process, clients ‘examine their strategic initiatives’ for a year or more in advance, and research budgets will be set aside for this accordingly. This could be for expansion of specific geographic markets of strategic importance, or for particular segments of the market that the client wants to develop.

Although budgets are usually set in advance, there is some evidence of ‘notional budgeting’ – e.g. a budget might be set, but expenditure will need to be justified on each request and not determined by historical expenditure. This can mean research budgets vary considerably from year to year, reflecting the principle of zero-budgeting accounting that some corporations like to use as a means of reducing costs.

Conversely, if research requirements exceed the allocated budget for research, the insight manager can sometimes seek additional funds, usually from the broader marketing budget.

DEALING WITH BUDGET PRESSURE AND NEGOTIATING WITH VENDORSClients comment that they see a wide variation in pricing from their suppliers, which can be a concern to them, e.g. regarding whether the vendor has understood the brief properly. There is also a perception that agencies are not finding savings in the right way, for example by removing senior involvement in projects in order to reduce the notional senior management time charge to the client.

In order to ‘help’ the agency price the project, it is fairly common practice for clients to state what their budget is




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for the project, hence allowing the agency to design an optimum solution around that budget. This then allows the client to compare the quality of the solution and delivery across agencies working within the same budget – in this instance, the budget is set, price no longer becomes the deciding factor, and the client can choose an agency based on quality.

Clients might also have a buffer, i.e. they will have a bit more budget than what they have shared with the agency to ‘buy’ more value.

Where there is pressure on budgets, common practices for controlling research spend include:

• Reducing sample sizes and frequency of surveys

• Undertaking more online research, or using hybrid online and offline methods

• Generally reducing research for certain products where the client does not see major changes in the market for the year

• Sticking to priority growth markets, and not researching the smaller markets

• Carrying out fewer ad hoc studies – trackers are usually retained as the ‘core research’ pieces

• Dropping smaller tactical pieces of research

• Using technology more, e.g. text analytics

• Dropping studies that previously gave little insight or failed to deliver much actionable value, e.g. U&A

Some clients can see a reduction in their budgets as part of a general cut in budgets across departments, e.g. if revenues in their region are falling. This has been observed with some media clients who are losing advertising revenue, for example.

Feedback from the broader industry indicates that the multinational FMCG companies, being traditional ‘big buyers’ of research, are those most likely to be scaling back on their research budgets these days. As a result, they are adopting ‘quicker and cheaper’ surveys, primarily through online research or other low-cost innovations, and a lot of research is now conducted in-house.

CONCLUSIONSAs data becomes more embedded in client organisations, some clients are enjoying higher market research budgets. That said, clients will always face some pressure on budgets, and clients have a wide range of options to reduce costs, ranging from negotiating with vendors, to ‘trimming’ studies, to using technology.

Clients are also becoming more practical, such as by using mixed methodologies (e.g. hybrid online and offline research) that would be frowned on by more traditional researchers.

Research budgets are still governed mainly by the overall budget set aside for marketing, and hence need to compete against expenditure for other marketing, e.g. advertising. Hence the arguments over the ROI in advertising vs research continue.

One threat to look out for is the adoption of ‘zero budgeting’, meaning that, while budgets are set, expenditure on each budget will need to be justified. The theory is that the harder a corporation makes it to grant budget for a project, the less money will be spent. Also, the harder the research manager works to secure this budget, the more important the project must be, so the less important ones will be dropped. The implication is higher cost of business development. •

COVER STORY




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Thailand has experienced tremendous economic development in the past decade. With strong government support, a competitive labour force, and excellent infrastructure, the

Land of Smiles is now touted as one of the most attractive markets for foreign investments. In fact, Thailand has been voted as one of the top 10 best countries to invest in in 2018 by Washington D.C.-based magazine US News and World Report.

For the past few years, the Thai government has been actively promoting the economic initiative Thailand 4.0, which seeks to free the country from the middle-income trap and propel the economy into becoming one driven by innovation and technology.

There are four main objectives of this economic model:

1. Economic prosperity: to create a value-based economy driven by innovation, technology, and creativity

2. Social well-being: to create an inclusive society that progresses collectively

3. Raising human value: to transform Thai citizens into “competent human beings in the 21st century”

4. Environmental protection: to become a livable and sustainable society

With this vision in mind, the government, as well as busi-ness, has strived to transform the Thai economy and drive growth. As a result, economic development looks set to accelerate and there will be a rapid shift of focus from agriculture and industry to technology and innovation. This will bring about exciting changes and development across all market sectors, including the market research industry. Jupiter MR is an example of a market research agency riding on this wave of technology and innovation in Thailand by providing new technology, data collection, and online solutions.

This new initiative has also attracted many entrants to the market who have the same goal of elevating Thai-land into a value-based economy. From combining social responsibility with tourism, to creating on-demand tuk-tuk services, these innovative start-ups have no lack of creative ideas to disrupt the market. Thailand is one of the largest rice exporters in the world, and agriculture will remain an integral part of the Thai economy for a long time to come. Some start-ups are venturing into smart farming, with the help of satellite imagery and drones.

With 57 million internet users, Thailand has one of the re-gion’s largest populations of netizens, who are adept at us-ing digital technologies, mobile, and e-commerce. This pro-vides an ideal playground for e-commerce businesses. Out of the online purchases that take place, more than half are transacted through social networks, so e-commerce mer-chants need to consider the dominance of social platforms if they want to successfully engage with consumers in Thai-land. With a high percentage of consumers going online, consumer insights have also taken on a whole new per-spective. As such, the market research industry in Thailand will become more dynamic and competitive, with a shift in focus from traditional services to high-value tech services.

Given the size of the Thai economy, any nation-wide policy will take considerable time to execute and gain traction. That said, many start-ups are already making headway in disrupting the marketplace, one step at a time. Those who fail to keep up and innovate will be left behind. •

FEATURE

PROSPERITY, SECURITY, SUSTAINABILITY

INNOVATIVE / VALUE-BASED INDUSTRYHIGH-INCOME COUNTRY

ARE YOUREADY?

By Usa Budsaba, Chief Executive Officer, Jupiter MR




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METHODOLOGY

Market research has for decades relied on researchers asking questions, and on respon-dents giving answers to those questions. We have, of course, gotten a lot smarter

about asking the questions and understanding the answers, but we are still learning.

Projective techniques, metaphoric thinking, and the use of imagery such as the Zaltman Metaphor Elicitation Technique (ZMET) have tapped into the deeper-held thoughts and feeling of consumers. Statistical techniques have also derived the underlying importance and drivers behind areas such as purchase decisions, but they still rely on interviews or surveys to gather the information, and some manual processes to deliver the results.

The ‘next generation of research’ is about using technology to probe directly into the irrational mind of the consumers, and this falls into the area of neuroscience and artificial intelligence (AI). These applications will revolutionise market research in several ways, but the science needs to be distinguished from the survey technology that preceded it.

Since the 90s, the research business has seen automation, e.g. data capture through CATI, CAPI, and later through online surveys, and automated data delivery through dashboards. Previously, data analysis followed the instructions it had been given and did not make any decisions or learn anything new each time the process ran.

Today, Neurosensum is leveraging the ‘next generation’ of research, which is the ability to process large, unstructured datasets, and is applying electroencephalogram (EEG), virtual reality (VR), eye tracking, reaction time-based applications, and facial coding techniques to go that much deeper. We are applying this to communications, product testing, and packaging research.

Often people say that neuroscience and AI will not deliver the ‘why’ behind market research, but we are able to combine implicit data with the explicit survey data of consumers to give real insights to brands.

To demonstrate the usage of EEG and eye tracking, we conducted a project with our client PT Nippon Indosari, one of the largest bread producers in Indonesia (Sari Roti). Our objective was to evaluate the performance of their TV commercial (TVC) before it launched. The consumer responses were computed into brain states and emotions which helped to measure the engagement of consumers.

The overall performance of the TVC was excellent and it passed all normative databases. From the EEG device, we found 43% of the TVC was engaging, in comparison to our norms of 34%.

AI – The NextGeneration of Research







But to make the TVC more attractive to the audience, we recommended improving some scenes; we recommended taking out text like “Siapa Pun”, “Kapan Pun”, and “Dimana Pun” as eye tracking revealed consumers were not looking at these elements in the TVC, while explicit data revealed that consumers were able to recall the message that “Sari Roti can be consumed anytime, by anyone and anywhere.”

We also recommended adding music/a jingle to gain the consumer’s attention when text like “Empuk”, and “Bergizi” appeared in the TVC. We know how text placement influences the message perceived by the

audience, thus we recommended moving the text closer to the centre. Neurosensum also helped the client to make a 15-second TVC by taking out the scenes which were less engaging (from brain states/EEG data).

Neurosensum is a team of experienced neuroscientists, consumer research experts and AI experts. To improve usage of neuroscience across the world, we are also open to white labeling this technology and methodology to various research agencies. •

METHODOLOGY

By Rajiv Lamba, Managing Director, Neurosensum




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With a bit of creativity – and using a wider frame for thinking than just quant research – it’s easy to ask better survey questions. Here are some principles to think about for your next survey, or to refresh your existing tracker.

THINK MOBILEWe’re competing for consumers’ time in a world of short attention spans and no shortage of interesting and engag-ing things to do online. ‘Interesting and engaging’ does not include filling out long, dull surveys full of grids. Make your surveys short, optimised for mobile, and fun to use.

MAKE IT APP-YTake inspiration from the apps people use. Our swipe tool takes a cue from Tinder: people swipe their answers right or left. This tool also reflects the fact that people don’t think in five-point scales (who’d have thought?!) but in binary terms (yes/no, like/dislike), so not only is this tool familiar – at least to a generation of Tinder users – it also accounts for the psychology of how people really think.

SCALES AREN’T DEAD – BUT BE CREATIVERather than being a staple of quant surveys, we should rely on scales less, and employ them creatively. A TripAd-visor-style review tool is a more engaging way of asking for a rating. Its format is familiar and it encourages people to think like a reviewer rather than a research participant. Our split sample tests have shown that this generates sig-nificantly better open responses, as people are willing to spend longer on it. The boring old ‘why did you give that rating?’ question has had its day.

USE PSYCHOLOGY AS INSPIRATION‘Anchoring’ is a cognitive bias whereby we tend to focus on the first piece of information we’re given when making decisions. We’ve found that specifying a character limit in open questions, Twitter-style, means people typically write more (up to 33% more) than in a standard open question. It might seem counter-intuitive, but adding a limit actually generates more insight.

DESIGN WITH A QUAL MINDSETTake a cue from quallies and use projective techniques in online quant. Ask consumers to imagine they’re writ-ing an email to the Marketing Director, using deprivation techniques or messenger-style tools. We know how pow-erful it is in qual when consumers imagine they’re having

a conversation with a friend looking for advice about a product category, or with a pharmacist about a product they should take, so why not emulate this in a survey environment?

BRING OFFLINE ONLINEGive your surveys a power-up by bringing offline tech-niques online. Survey-based text highlighters can dissect and quantify the best or confusing parts of written con-cepts just as well as a paper-and-highlighter approach in a focus group; brand maps can help to plot where your brand sits vs competitors on two dimensions; and virtual heat-maps for shelf testing are another tool you should have in your online kit.

THINK BIGGER THAN ‘QUANT’While some of these techniques are certainly more qual-focused, they can still be used at scale. But ulti-mately, the question shouldn’t be about qual or quant, it should be about insight. We need to expand the frame of reference from ‘quant’ and ‘scales’ (and, often, ‘boring’) to ‘what’s the best and most engaging way of generating this information?’

If we want to uncover real insight and engage consumers in research, it means rethinking the whole survey experi-ence, including the format and the way we ask questions. There’s plenty of room for innovation in survey research; we just need to apply a bit of creative thinking to keep surveys a relevant – and insightful – part of the toolkit. •

METHODOLOGY

Clients often tell us that their quant surveys have been neglected over the last few years, left behind in the wake of research innovations focusing on online qual, or technologies

like text analytics or facial coding. As a result, they’re still asking survey questions in the same way they did 10 or 15 years ago, even if the mode has switched from off- to online.

Survey writing 101:

TIPS FOR KEEPING QUANTRELEVANT

By Karen Schofield, Managing Director, Join the Dots Singapore




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It helps to use behavioural principles structured around the journey through a store, both from the point of view of the shopper with limited time and that of your brand.

The starting point is the shopper entering the store. You should SIMPLIFY the environment, making it easy for peo-ple to navigate and using simple messages to help brands as easily, quickly, and accurately as possible. For example, ‘chunking’ information (up to a maximum of three or four pieces) helps shoppers find and process relevant informa-tion, ideally using visual cues rather than words.

As shoppers start to navigate the store, HUMANISE mes-sages and connect emotionally. Curiosity, empathy, and novelty help engage customers, and human faces are important as long as they are relevant. We are intensely social animals, so faces with interesting or unusual ex-pressions catch our attention and are very easy for shop-pers to decode.

Also, ATTRACT shoppers by engaging their senses. In online environments this might be primarily visual, using attractive pictures and contextual cues, including usage occasions, cultural associations, or social messages. Re-

alistic images usually work better than ‘picture perfect’ ones, including imagery with sensory and contextual cues. In physical stores this can be extended to smell, taste, sound, and touch, which create even stronger en-gagement (e.g. the act of picking something up massive-ly increases the chance of purchase).

As the shopper gets closer to their target – for example, by standing in front of the shelf your brand sits on – you need to PERSUADE them to buy. Visual information is still more persuasive at this stage, such as brand logos for reassur-ance and visual cues for different product options (e.g. fla-vour varieties).

Only at the final stage does written information become important to EXPLAIN the reasons for the choice. Reas-sure the shopper about the costs and benefits of a specif-ic purchase, but only at the end of their journey, to close the deal. This is where pricing principles like framing are important, as the first price seen gives the context for others. It’s also important to go back to the first principle and keep to three or four options to maximise the chanc-es of purchase.

If you want shopper insights, think about how your brand can SHAPE the shopper experience:

1. Simplify choices

2. Humanise experiences

3. Attract by engaging

4. Persuade with brands

5. Explain costs and benefits •

In retail environments, brand assets (i.e. recognition) interact with the semiotics of the physical environment

through our senses and the psychology of choice.

SHAPE-ING SHOPPEREXPERIENCES

FEATURE

By Neil Gains, Managing Partner, Tapestry Works




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Online and offline shopping are becoming more integrat-ed. It used to be the case that some shoppers browsed in shops and bought online in order to get the best deal, but there is evidence that this practice is being reversed. More consumers are doing more of the browsing online, but they want to see the ‘real thing’ in retail stores and benefit from the instant gratification of buying and re-ceiving the product there and then.

Online retailers need to rely on home delivery, something that is becoming a greater inconvenience to consumers as they spend less time at home. According to BDRC, click and collect (i.e. buying online and collecting in a physical store) is now used by 10 percent of buyers of IT, electrical goods, and furniture in Singapore, and almost double that figure among consumers in their 20s.

Even Amazon, which built its business through online re-tail, now sees a need for physical stores. The company already dominates e-commerce, but 90 percent of world-wide retail spending is still in brick-and-mortar stores. Hence, since 2015, Amazon has been ‘dabbling’ in physi-cal stores that also serve to showcase its technology. The company devotes a lot of space to its Kindle e-readers, streaming TV devices, and other gadgets, so customers can try them out before buying.

Asia Research explored many areas of retail consumer in-sight at its Q3 Jakarta research seminar, held at the Gran Melia Hotel in July. The event, on the theme of ‘Getting to the Heart of the Shopper’, was attended by retailers and consumer goods brand owners, and included papers by PRS IN VIVO, BDRC, and Research Now SSI. These papers covered the latest in shopper insight, retail analytics, and a new approach to measuring retail brand equity.

Nichole Gu, Senior Research Director at PRS IN VIVO, showcased their approach to gaining insights into shop-

pers, both for traditional offline shopping and for e-com-merce. They use retail mock-ups to simulate the retail en-vironments that consumers are in when they make ‘real’ purchase decisions. Eye-tracking technology is integral to understanding the shopper purchase path.

Nichole’s paper focused on how behavioural economics impacts the shopper, particularly in the context of over-whelming choices. Nichole demonstrated that, faced with overwhelming choices, consumers generally use their System 1 thinking (i.e. fast and automatic) to make their purchase decisions.

Based on extensive shopper research, Nichole showed that only 25% of FMCG products in shops get ‘seen’. On average a consumer takes just 0.3 seconds to ‘deselect’ the products that do not interest them, and a maximum of three seconds to evaluate a new FMCG brand that attracts their attention. The so-called ‘three second chal-lenge’ is the time the consumer will give to considering your FMCG brand, and Nichole explained the three key attributes brand owners need to focus on to pass the evaluation stage: visibility, comprehension, and point of difference.

Aristo Labare, Research Director from BDRC Indonesia, presented a paper on ‘Brand Margin’. For a long time, consumer brands have tracked their brand equity using standard metrics of brand awareness, usage, preference, NPS, etc. Based on research conducted by BDRC across a range of categories, including automotive, FMCG, and airlines, they argued that brand equity measures can be improved by understanding the financial premium con-sumers think brands can attain.

While promotions and availability (as in the case of air-lines) often determine the final price people will pay for brands within the same product category, the basis of

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Brand Margin is to assess the underlying premium that a consumer gives to a brand over competitors on an equal footing.

In an example from a recent survey conducted by the BDRC Group into long-haul flights, Brand Margin could demonstrate higher brand equity for some airlines, and it was a bigger differentiator of brand equity compared to NPS scoring. With e-commerce, such as online travel agents, brands and prices for the same route and similar timings are usually listed so that it is easy for consum-ers to make side-by-side comparisons. Hence consumers need to make decisions on how much more they would be willing to pay to fly with particular airlines, or how much less an airline would need to discount in order to win over business for that flight.

Brand Margin emulates this approach, and then iden-tifies the drivers of the perceived financial premium for that brand, and which consumers are more likely to ac-cept this premium.

Aristo also presented examples applied to automotive goods and FMCG, highlighting an example in which par-ticular brands are actually underselling themselves in these categories.

Research Now SSI completed the seminar by discussing the role of analytics for retail. Through work they have conduct-ed in the retail sector, they explained how big data is capa-ble of predicting outcomes from shoppers. In one example, a supermarket in the US (Target) was able to draw cor-relations between women buying cotton balls, unscented

lotion, nutrition supplements, and washcloths, and women who would subsequently buy newborn products in six to nine months – i.e. they were able to predict the early stages of pregnancy from purchase behaviour. This allowed them to target promotions effectively at women for what is a very lucrative market.

In another example, the P&G haircare brand Pantene part-nered with a retailer called Walgreens to monitor weath-er patterns. When periods of high humidity were expect-ed they adjusted their merchandising arrangements on a store-by-store basis to promote anti-frizz products, which yielded a significant sales uplift.

The difference of this application, Research Now SSI ar-gued, is that researchers need to shift from analysing a few thousand cases to millions. Traditional data analysis pack-ages would not be able to cope with this, so new compu-tation packages like Hadoop and programming languages like Python need to be adopted. We also need more ‘data scientists’ than ‘market researchers’. Research Now SSI pointed out that a data scientist’s job involves much more trial and error than that of a researcher. Because of that, each data science project is generally more tightly defined and less exploratory than a typical research project. But just like researchers, there is real benefit to data scientists specialising in a specific industry or category to gain even more insight.

However, despite Indonesia being a ‘big market’, there is so far little adoption of big data analytics in this market, but this is clearly an opportunity going forward. •

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CLARIVATE ANALYTICS APPOINTS NEW MD FOR JAPAN

Insights and analytics provider Clarivate has recruited Timothy Neely as Managing Director for Japan. Neely will be located in the Clarivate Analytics office in Tokyo, Ja-pan, working closely with team members across Asia Pacific and globally. Neely joins with more than 25 years of experience, most recently at KPMG. He has a strong founda-tion in professional services and commercial solutions in the healthcare and life sciences industries, and he has a proven track record of fostering innovation and creativity within his teams. In addition to KPMG, he has held several leadership positions at companies including IBM and PricewaterhouseCoopers Co. Ltd. As Managing Director of Japan, Neely will focus on driving growth strategy forwards while establishing a strong winning culture in the country. He will also expand the company’s leadership position in Japan by penetrating key accounts in the academic, corporate, and pharmaceutical industries. •

NEW MD FOR METRIXLAB CHINA

Global research agency MetrixLab has re-hired Clare Chai as the new Managing Direc-tor for Greater China. Clare, who has worked for MetrixLab in the past, will lead the office and drive growth in the region. Clare has more than 15 years’ experience in the re-search industry. As well as holding the role of Senior Client Director at MetrixLab, she has worked in various other international and local agencies, including Synovate, Kan-tar Added Value, WisdomAsia, and Miaozhen Systems. This experience has given her a valuable combination of global perspective and local market insight. Clare will also use her extensive expertise in research method-ologies and data integration to bring fresh ideas to the team. •

NEW CTO AT EYEOTA

Global audience data specialist Eyeota, headquartered in Singapore, has appointed Pieter de Zwart as Chief Technology Officer to lead the company’s technology strategy and spearhead the development of Eyeota’s global audience platform.

Pieter joins the team with more than a de-cade of ad tech engineering and manage-

ment experience and a proven track record of developing scalable systems and process-es. A frequent speaker at events, Pieter is highly regarded as a thought leader and ex-pert in the industry. Prior to Eyeota, he spent nine years at the Rubicon Project, where he helped scale the business from a 100-person start-up to a publicly traded company.

Pieter held several roles during his tenure at the Rubicon Project, most recently as VP of Engineering, where he led the company’s header bidding and video initiatives. He was also the founder and President of Prebid.org, an independent organisation designed to en-sure and promote fair, transparent, and ef-ficient header bidding across the industry. •

GMO RESEARCH EXPANDING ITS US TEAM

Global research agency GMO Research has hired Christa Arite as Director of Operations and she will be part of the US team. She has recently moved back to her hometown of Cleveland, Ohio from Chicago, Illinois, where she has lived for the past 11 years.

She has 15 years of project and operations management experience in the technology, marketing, e-commerce, and healthcare in-dustries. Before joining GMO, Christa was VP/Director of Project Management for Digi-tas, a digital marketing agency which is part of the Publicis Groupe network. She led a team of project managers delivering various digital marketing and advertising projects for some of Digitas’s largest clients, Fortune 200 and Fortune 500 companies such as: Whirl-pool Corporation, Sprint, and BP. Prior to Dig-itas, Christa worked at Sears Holdings Corpo-ration and managed extensive e-commerce projects for Sears.com and Kmart.com.

Natalie Robuck, Senior Director, US Business Development comments: “GMO Research US is thrilled to welcome Christa to the team. As our business has grown in both volume and complexity the need for operational struc-ture specifically around project management has increased. Christa brings a significant amount of management experience from her time spent as a leader in the fast paced dig-ital advertising sector. We feel she will be a great fit!” •

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