Marketing in EM markets - McK Sept2012.pdfVIP

As the rapid growth of emerging markets gives millions of consumers new spending power, those consumers are encountering a marketing environment every bit as complex and swiftly evolving as its counterpart in developed countries. Product choices and communication channels are exploding; so is the potential of digital platforms; and, as everywhere, consumer empowerment is on the rise. The impact of these changes has been so profound in developed markets that three years ago, our colleague David Court and his coauthors proposed a new approach for understanding consumer behavior.1 On the basis of research involving 20,000 consumers across five industries and three continents, our colleagues suggested replacing the traditional metaphor of a “funnel” in which consumers start at the wide end, with a number of potential brands in mind, before narrowing their choices down to a final purchase. Envisioning Companies that harness word-of-mouth effects, emphasize in-store execution, and get their brands onto shoppers’ short lists for initial consideration are more likely to capture the loyalty of emerging-market consumers. Building brands in emerging markets Yuval Atsmon, Jean-Frederic Kuentz, and Jeongmin Seong 1 See David Court, Dave Elzinga, Susan Mulder, and Ole J?rgen Vetvik, “The consumer decision journey,” , June 2009. S E P T E M B E R 2 0 1 2 m a r k e t i n g s a l e s p r a c t i c e 2consumer behavior as less of a linear march and more of a winding voyage with multiple feedback loops, our colleagues put forward an iterative framework, which they called the consumer decision journey, and identified four critical battlegrounds where marketers can win or lose. These four battlegrounds are initial consideration, when a consumer first decides to buy a product or service and thinks of a few brands; active evaluation, when the consumer researches potential purchases; closure, when the consumer selects a brand at the moment of purchase; a