Understanding Sri Lankan consumer insights critical

The past 10 years saw the entry of marketeers of a different breed in Sri-Lanka. It's great to see young boys and girls from top Colombo schools and international schools entering the field. Some with Degrees from global universities, which has a positive impact on the profession.

The foundation to marketing success, is the understanding of the target consumer and having a consistent focus on them to observe, analyse and understand the changing behaviour for continuous re-alignment of strategy for communication effectiveness. We all know that the behaviour patterns of the Sri-Lankan consumer are cyclical.

You must be a Sri Lankan to understand Sri Lankan demographics which are typical characteristics of your target market - the people who buy your products or services which anyone can easily comprehend but psychographics are not. Demographics help you understand who buys your product or service, while psychographics helps you understand why they buy.

Psychographics go beyond the visible external behaviour. It is to focus on your target customers psychology, lifestyles, beliefs and attitudes. These are inner feelings and characteristics of the consumer. Understanding psychographics takes a lot more effort.

This requirement is so fundamental to build a wining brand. Who can do this best; surely it is the people who are close to the consumer.

For most leading Fast Moving Consumer Goods companies in Sri Lanka, the target consumer base is over 10 million. Young marketers need to understand the psychographics of every consumer segment from South to North and East to West to develop effective communication messages, select the best media mix and to make the right communication channel choices.

The common complaints against the 'Mod Marketeer' are that the modern marketer speaks fluent English but poor Sinhala; some very poor or no Sinhala. Writes good English but horrible Sinhala, watches satellite TV and not local TV channels, uses independent rating done by external organisations covering a sample audience, doesn't use the channel partners and own sales force feedback.

The modern marketer doesn't do enough market visits to spend time with channel partners, customers and the frontline sales people, instead use the information available to him in office to strategise and determine brand positioning. The modern marketeer's ability to think like the consumer does is limited. This leads to misaligned decisions thus wasting marketing funds.

The 'mod consumer's' behaviour is complex. The pace of consumer lifestyle change is rapid but there can be a conflict between explicit and implicit traits of the consumer. In public the 'mod consumer' would eat a burger and at home he would prefer to have red rice with kiri kos curry and pol sambol.

The same consumer who swims in the pool of a five star hotel in Colombo prefers to bathe in a tank in the village over the weekend. Young marketeers should not lose sight of the diverse behaviour of the targeted customer.

Keeping the ear to the ground, exposure to the culture of the consumer, staying tuned to the attitudinal and lifestyle changes are key success factors for 'mod marketers'.

From a business perspective, mod markeeters need to understand that if marketing is to succeed at the heart of an organisation, they must truly represent the voice of the consumer.

Marketing is about shareholder value and that's the kind of marketer the organisation needs to develop. It's about people who can have an impact on the profit of an organisation. To do this effectively, understanding true Sri Lankan consumer insights is critical.