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Can research help companies spot emerging trends for companies to grow profitable businesses, rather than look into the past and study what occurred in the market or influenced it?
Building on the subject of predicting demand, speakers discussed the role of marketing research in creating leads for marketing, and the need for research to reveal latent demand, on day two of CII's marketing summit on Friday.
Mr Chitranjan Dar, Chief Executive, ITC Foods, said, “Market research, we believe, is a way of connecting with consumers. And you cannot ignore a million voices on the net and focus on 100 through traditional research methods alone.”
“Increasingly relevant and powerful consumer insights are being obtained only through observational techniques. And observing non-users of our brand can be more rewarding, helping us understand why they are not consuming and filling that gap. Insights are not the end — you need to innovate on those insights and go to the market,” noted Mr Dar.
Premium-isation
He cited the trend of ‘premium-isation,' where consumers are seeking out relatively premium offerings even in rural markets and at the bottom of the pyramid, thanks to higher disposable incomes. “We need solutions to monetise this premium-isation, and insights to drive products in the space,” added Mr Dar.
Larger social insights, on consumer groups (like families), can be more powerful than insights mined from individual consumers, contended Chandramouli Venkatesan, Category Director - Chocolates and Strategy, Cadbury India.
“The means to social insights is not research. You need to observe the social process and collective trends in society - that can lead to powerful insights. Research can then validate this hypothesis.”
Brands in mature stages of lifecycle had no choice but to keep looking at social insights to grow, according to Mr Venkatesan.
Social insights could help redefine categories like it has for Cadbury India, moving from looking at chocolates as a category to sweets (mithai) with Celebrations, he outlined.
“Marketing research has lived for too long in the past, telling us what happened. When the role of marketing research appends the future for marketing and management, we will have a new position of CRO (chief research officer),” observed Mr Rick Kash, CEO, The Cambridge Group.
Outlook to social media
On the outlook to social media, he said, “Social media is not just about media — social media is social. It is a large, social movement. If we see it only as a medium, then we're missing the larger picture.”
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