Market research thro’ listening to a consumer
View(s):By Quintus Perera
Collecting information for market research has normally been through a process of asking a series of questions based on a structured questionnaire.
However Nielsen Sri Lanka, part of Nielson worldwide, adopts a different system – that of listening to the consumers as to what they have to say, rather than asking questions.
Piyush Mathur, President, Neilsen, South Asia Region (India, Sri Lanka, Bangladesh and Nepal) was in Colombo last week to meet their clients and to focus on them more. Speaking to Business Times (BT) he said, “We in Nielsen are listening to the consumers and it is the way to look at the future.” He said “You just (need to) feel the reaction of the brain.”
He said the future of the research includes the use of Neuro-Science and social media to enable the companies to manufacture and market their brands more in line with consumer expectations and desires.
Mr Mathur said that the conventional paper, pen and questionnaires have given way to computers or smart phones in doing interviews. The benefits of using technology are the location of the interview could be identified specially in the case of smart phones. The length and how much time it took are also known.
He said that huge amounts are invested on market surveys. The returns on that investment, he said could be quantifiable and it is something that could be done in Sri Lanka; the amounts spent on TV and how much spent on retailer promotion. He said that all these would make a big impact in terms of sales. Mr Mathur said that research is done before advertising, noting that through this process ‘we’ are aware of what needs to be told to the consumer in the advertisement, so that they get (the best) information to buy the product. He said that the local companies are aggressively marketing their products and many of them work with Nielsen.
Some of these local companies, he said, spend as much money as their counterpart multinational companies. He said that Nielsen is the biggest market research company in the world with a turnover of more than US $ 5.5 billion and the massive experience they have is shared in Sri Lanka too with their large clientele.
Nielsen’s Colombo office has 175 permanent staff and is probably the biggest market research company in the country.
When BT pointed out that there are also successful large scale entrepreneurs and as to how they could be afforded the market research service to further expand their business, he said the reputation of the company with its high quality work and worldwide superiority would spread the information about their company across the country.
He said that for the small entrepreneurs, they have compiled data on different areas and these sets of data would not cost much, which could be used by small scale entrepreneurs. He said that their services are technology-enabled citing one example as soial media. The information is already there and “consumers are already speaking about it.”
He said that statistics indicate that in Sri Lanka there are more than two million regular Internet users. He said that they are already telling a lot and sharing this information would not cost so much and it is already there in the social media.
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