Looking to promote your product in emerging markets? A recent study shows that mobile and social media are far more influential in these markets than in North America or the UK.
LONDON: The digital channels are more important for marketers than traditional media when it comes to connecting with consumers in emerging markets, new analysis shows.
The Discovery Brand Index of GlobalWebIndex, is based on the results of more than 150,000 Internet users in 31 countries, creating a single measure of the ease with which consumers can find brand messages.
It found, for example, that social media are six times more important for brands in markets such as Indonesia and Thailand than in Japan or the UK.
To highlight the difference in attitudes, consumers in the Netherlands are seven times more likely to learn about new brands and products that social media ads.
Another important digital channel is mobile, and campaigns in countries like Thailand and Vietnam are about four times more efficient than in developed markets such as the UK and the Netherlands.
Developed Internet markets, however, have different characteristics. In Japan and the United Kingdom, for example, the search is twice as important for brands in consumer buying trip digital.
Established brands also exert more power in these markets. In Japan, the brand loyal consumers outnumber those “adventurous brand” by two to one: a bit of stick from 58% to a brand once they find one they like, while 27% always like to try new products.
By contrast, consumers in emerging markets are much less fixed in selecting brand: 73% of Filipino Internet users like to try new products.
“With brands increasingly investing in digital and social media, it is critical to understand how all channels to work together, with individual metrics that cover all communications, whether they are online or not,” said Tom Smith, GlobalWebIndex founder.
Among other findings of the study are that consumers in Hong Kong are more likely to trust the price comparison and consumer review sites in the search for online information products.
And Sweden produced the lowest score online BDI, indicating that the Swedes are the least likely of any nationality to use the Internet to interact with brands or product search.
The data comes from GlobalWebIndex, additional content by WARC staff, March 6, 2013