Those days are gone when you could create any product and expect it to sell with your Marketing Gimmicks.
Consumer was, is and will be the king and your product must appeal his senses if you expect him to buy it off the shelf.
A consumer today, is highly informed and searches for information, compares, read reviews and also get marketed by your competitors about the products before purchasing it. Therefore, it is imperative that you understand the consumer behavior first if you wish to be successful.
Lets see some of the biggest examples of people who have added value to the Brand by thinking not just about their internal value statements or visions or missions but in a true sense added value to the brand.
Indra Nooyi, Pepsico
Don’t be surprised to see her name appear here. She is one of the most successful entrepreneurs in the world. She is successful owing to her ability to understand her consumers well. Also, she considers the demography before marketing her products.
She personally ensures that the products appeal the consumers in every way, be it the shape of the bottle, the bite size or even the colour. Indra Nooyi completely understands the importance of the need to impress her consumers. Her detailed observation and thorough understanding of her target audience has helped her become successful.
Thought being at such a high position, she still makes sure that she visits the retail stores to check the placement of the product, where it is kept, are customers able to find it easily etc. This is what makes the difference.
Coke
If you observe carefully Coke, has released its product Diet Coke only in a few places such as metro cities in India and few countries abroad. Through their research and thorough consumer behavior understanding they realized that in a place like India, where people are malnourished, diet coke will have no importance.
This is where a true demographic understanding of the Product comes in place.
The malnourished people in India, especially the people in the villages would prefer a sugary coke to a diet coke. They understood this situation and made sure to release their product only on places where obesity and sugar levels in people were high.
Adidas & Nike
They figured that India was not a country but a continent with 30 countries!
It is a well-known fact that India is a big nation having a diverse culture and people have different tastes in almost everything. Both the companies were smart enough to understand that one part of India loved cricket while the other football.
And so, they made tailor-made products (cricket shoes, cricket bats, football shoes, football jerseys, etc ) for all kinds of sports lovers.
These were some examples of understanding consumer behaviour based on demography. There are more examples based on ‘psychographics’.
In India health drinks like Horlicks, Complan,etc for kids go off the shelf in large numbers. But, health drinks for pregnant women and lactating women have few takers. All this is due to the mentality of the people. In India, a mother is the epitome of sacrifice and goodness. She is expected to sacrifice everything for her children and family and by large, it does happen.
It is difficult for companies to convince people with such mentality to change their view and think of feeding the mother first. In the western countries however, the scenario is different and products for to-be moms do much better than in India.
Starbucks Failure in Australia
Starbucks is one of the biggest names in the World of Coffee though the most crucial thing they ignored were the people sipping their coffees.
Starbucks miserably failed in Australia though its people are known to love Coffee.
Starbucks entered the market with the Coffee they were selling worldwide. Australians prefer a coffee that is dark and rich in taste while Starbucks offered Coffee which was way sweeter than what Australians prefer.
This resulted in huge number of Starbucks stores closing down.
If you want to see your business scale and make your brand a big success in the market, the only thing that matters the most is Understanding your Customers!