By 2030, ASEAN will be the fourth-largest economy in the world with a consumer market of roughly US$4 trillion. The entire region is projected to rapidly develop and take a significant step forward in its socio-economic progress, offering plenty of growth opportunities, even in spite of the pandemic.
Key insights into consumption patterns and consumer sentiments are vital in developing better strategic decisions for organisations and their products. Companies make use of data-driven marketing from interacting with customers and third-party research to better understand consumers’ needs and behaviours.
The COVID-19 crisis has accelerated the prevalence of several key consumption trends while creating a whole new generation of consumers, with newfound habits, concerns and needs that have to be addressed.
In many Southeast Asian countries, the onset of the pandemic has brought about disruption to daily life. Particularly, in Malaysia, a joint study by the National Population and Family Development Board and Vase.ai found that a significant number of Malaysians found that the pandemic outbreak changed their lives in little (48 per cent) and major (39 per cent) ways.
As such, many industries had to rethink their strategies and business models to ensure they remain relevant and competitive in an ever-changing environment. That doesn’t negate the need for understanding how the customers of today are presently interacting with products and brands.
In fact, it’s even more vital to gain updated, accurate and relevant information in order to make informed decisions about future marketing campaigns and product development. And that’s where technology can make the process a lot easier and quicker.
But before we get to that, what are some of the existing trends that have already begun to emerge?
The drastic shifts in consumer habits during the pandemic
The crisis fundamentally changed our daily lives as we knew it. It brought about unprecedented changes in almost every aspect of our lives including work, leisure activities, shopping, socialising and more.
Also Read: What influences customers’ attitudes and behaviour?
We lived differently, we shopped differently, our perspectives and priorities shifted dramatically. And many say that these changes are expected to be for the long haul, to remain even post-pandemic.
Pre-2020 studies about consumer sentiment conducted in-house or even those by external organisations are becoming less relevant in view of the changes to the lifestyle of consumers with some data even rendered to be useless, with the impacts of changing consumption patterns being more prevalent in Southeast Asia than in other markets like Europe and the US.
Similar to how it was the SARS epidemic that sparked the boom of e-commerce in China and MERS spurred the same in South Korea, the COVID-19 pandemic is doing the same for SEA.
A study by Bain & Company, in collaboration with Facebook, found that 30 per cent of the 8,600 digital consumers had an increase in their online purchases while 47 per cent decreased their offline purchases.
The same study highlighted an increase in digital channels, such as apps, amongst Asian consumers as they make use of social media, video streaming and instant messaging apps, amongst others, to keep themselves occupied while at home. This was followed by e-commerce, food delivery and digital payment platforms.
Fifty-seven per cent of digital consumers across Southeast Asia placed value-for-money to be one of the top three considerations during their consumer journey as compared to the considerably lesser figure of 22 per cent just the year prior.
Many of the projected trends of past studies and reports of past behaviours pre-pandemic have seen a rapid acceleration as the world covered a ” decade in days” through going digital. For example, within just five months, Disney Plus attained what took Netflix seven years as more people sought out online entertainment during lockdowns.
Similarly, there are numerous instances where past numbers and findings are proving to be increasingly less relevant or even becoming obsolete.
The unavoidable issue of consumer research
Marketers are able to adapt and tailor campaigns, messages and consumer experiences resulting in the highest possible return on investment (ROI) with businesses that use data-driven strategies driving as much as five to eight times more ROI than businesses that don’t.
Despite all this, however, consumer research and studies into consumption habits cannot be simply classified as “pre-pandemic” and “post-pandemic”.
Through working with various companies across industries to discover consumer trends, Vase.ai has found that consumption patterns will always be in a state of flux and preferences will continue to shift in the future.
The only way to truly understand consumer behaviour at any given period is to conduct regular surveys on them. However, conducting regular surveys can prove costly and time-consuming.
Additionally, many consumer goods companies do not have the budget or resources on hand to dedicate to such research when times are tough. As such, many marketers resort to using existing datasets from previous periods which may not accurately reflect current conditions.
Also Read: Consumer Behavior: How to create tomorrow’s consumers
Additionally, companies looking to conduct their own research, be it for a specific product or campaign, may not have the necessary research capabilities to do so and thus rely on external studies that don’t address their specific research objectives.
Even with the findings from research conducted by other third parties, which 88 per cent of marketers use to enhance their understandings of consumer attitudes, studies are still merely a reflection of the sentiments at the time or may not be tailored to specific questions or audiences that the organisation is looking for.
Traditional market research can take well over a month or two and as data has proven that plenty of things can change in a month so who’s to say that the results gathered would be even relevant when the campaigns or product launch?
Using technology to understand the ever-changing consumer
Technological advancements in recent years are transforming the way we conduct consumer research, helping in the collection, processing and even reporting of the data.
From making it easier to conduct surveys with online forms and questionnaires to the use of artificial intelligence (AI) and monitoring software to analyse consumer sentiments and opinions, startups like Vase.ai are simplifying the entire process for companies and market researchers.
What Vase.ai has done is to make use of AI-powered research capabilities to facilitate field engagement and develop surveys and questionnaires to better aid in understanding consumer patterns and behaviour. The information can then be incorporated in real-time for improved campaign performance.
With access to over 2.6 million Southeast Asian consumers, product owners and businesses have easy and direct access to knowledge-driven insights in as short as 24 hours.
As mentioned earlier, Southeast Asia is a rapidly growing potential market for brands and businesses. By 2030, ASEAN’s middle-class is expected to more than double in size with 70 per cent of the population being middle-class, doubling consumption in the region.
There are abundant opportunities for brands to position themselves within Asian markets and develop customised and personalised marketing strategies to ensure maximum ROI.
Consumer habits have been fundamentally changed as a result of the pandemic and will remain even in a post-covid world. In order to stay relevant, companies should be able to adapt their strategies and campaigns to the ever-changing needs and cater to the idiosyncrasies of the consumers.
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