Wrap-up of Nielsen - Consumer 360: An Uncommon India!

Unique in every respect and an uncommon emerging giant, India’s economy and its consumers demands special attention and strategic finesse. Today's confident Indians, aware of their place in a world and in an ascendant nation, are willing to offer their loyalty and attention to brands that are trusted yet elegant, accessible yet aspirational and that stay on the cutting edge.

Brands and businesses that build their world around this new Indian consumer by responding to their needs and understand what they truly value will claim success in this rapidly changing marketplace.

The day consisted of various sessions like: Uncommon Strategies for an Uncertain World, Demand Spotting in Uncommon India: India’s Emerging Demand Story Under the Scanner, The Engine of Innovation Powered by Brand s-t-r-e-t-c-h-i-n-g, Uncovering the Next Billion $ Shoppertunity, Connecting with the Connected Indian, Drivers of Marketing Effectiveness & Neuro Marketing: Secrets of the Shopper Subconscious, Uncommon Sense: The C-Suite’s view of Untapped Opportunity.

The recent deceleration of growth rates in India has cast a doubt on the buoyant India story. The session, Demand Spotting in an Uncommon India: India’s Emerging Demand Story Under the Scanner highlighted the India growth story under the scanner first by evaluating the relative prospects versus other emerging economies and then evaluated where demand is strongest within India and what are some of the trends that marketers cannot ignore as they look to maximize India’s demand potential.

The session: Connecting with the Connected Indian was focused towards India's digital consumer and discussed the fact that the consumer is at the helm of two massive changes, the explosion of Social Media and the expanding Mobile Internet. Today, the digital consumer either stays connected 24/7 through multiple devices, or uses the Smartphone as the only means to access digital content; by the end of 2012, there are likely to be close to 40 Million smartphone users in India.

Prashant Singh, MD-Nielsen Media, India said, “it is the fact that brands can no longer ignore today’s online consumer who wields an incredible amount of power through social media platforms, it’s not just about accessing an audience. The new marketing challenge is the need to have an effective digital strategy and win in the online and mobile sphere through a better understanding of this rapidly evolving and emerging consumer.”

Extensions of existing fast moving consumer goods (FMCG) brands are five times more successful than launching a new brand in India, according to a new study released today by Nielsen, a leading global provider of insights and information into what consumers watch and buy.

Nielsen’s study of top brands in 46 FMCG categories and 82 brand extensions in food and non-food categories shows that in addition to promoting brand equity, brand extensions can grow incremental sales up to 38 percent and contribute as much as 30 percent to parent brand sales.

“Innovations are driving FMCG growth in India,” said Arun Chogle, client business partner, Nielsen India. “Brand extensions, or stretching your existing brand, increase your chances of innovation success. Not only do brand extensions leverage the equity of the parent brand, but they also lead to faster adoption and deliver higher marketing efficiency.”

Nielsen identifies certain ways brand extensions are successful in India: Brand stretches gain share and build distribution faster than new launches; Brand stretches are two times more likely to succeed in a highly fragmented category; Nielsen’s findings show that developing categories with fragmented shares, or developing categories with lower penetrations, were more successful than established category sizes of greater than Rs. 3000 Crore; Sixty-five percent of successful brand stretches have a premium index lower than the parent brand.

According to the talks of the session, Successful stretches leverage four factors: Advantage—delivers new, or distinct, benefits to the category. Recognition—ensures strong parent-brand awareness levels in terms of functionality, imagery and personality. Relevance—makes certain parent attributes relevant in the new category and Credibility—delivers on brand promises.

“To successfully unleash the power of your brand stretch potential, determine your brand’s leverage power by reviewing its advantage, recognition, relevance and credibility,” said Chogle. “Understand the market structure of the new chosen category to determine both its fragmentation and penetration among consumers and most importantly, establish your company’s executional competence to create the right product offering, deliver distribution muscle to reach consumers and stay invested in ad spending and support levels.”

Two growing shopper segments, low-income value explorers (LIVE) and first-time modern trade shoppers (FTMTS), will add $3B USD in fast-moving consumer goods (FMCG) sales in India by 2015, according to a new analysis released today by Nielsen, a leading global provider of insights and information into what consumers watch and buy.

“The Indian economic landscape is flourishing and so are the shopping habits of low-income value explorers,” said Adrian Terron, executive director, Nielsen India. “This is a growing shopper base upgrading to become first-time modern trade shoppers. FMCG manufacturers and retailers need to understand the unique characteristics of these massively developing shopper segments.” “For shoppers seized by aspiration and insecure about their well-being, modern trade is an indulgence that imparts a sense of progress,” said Terron.

“This new breed of shopper, a first-time modern trade shopper, is impulsive and prone to ‘supersizing’ their shopping trips by buying more than they had planned,” said Terron. “This is not only the result of greater promotions, deals and events at modern trade, but also due to increased word-of-mouth marketing and the intense desire to explore and discover the new experiences that modern trade offers,” he says.

Nielsen suggests strategies to succeed with the first-time modern trade shopper: Simplify the navigation, Make product connections and Offer the right product range.

Lastly after all the sessions Adgully spoke to Mitchell Habib, COO, Nielsen to know the innovations at Nielsen. When asked about the 3 key innovations at Nielsen, he said, “There was a matrix created which speaks about the market share of the company. It is very important to understand the market and to know whether the market share is increasing or decreasing. Secondly a big innovation that happened was able to measure the audience of an advertisement whether that audience was on Radio or on Television. The third big innovation was the creation of the most effective model, OCR (Online Campaign Rating) which allows us to evaluate the performance of our online campaigns, example it helps us to measure how many people clicked on the advertisement.”

Speaking about the three key strategies that have always worked for Nielsen, Habib said, “Firstly focusing on our customers, to grasp more and more knowledge about the market and retaining our talented people.” Well three key business Mantras are: integrity, independence and neutrality.