Financial Times

Testing times for post-tsunami sales
Mobile marketing as emergency measure
By Duruthu Edirimuni
Private companies are facing a major challenge in trying to adjust to new customer profiles in tsunami-affected areas where the typical marketing mix has got distorted and forced many firms to rethink strategies.

However marketing experts say within this challenge lies a tremendous opportunity for companies to grow their customer base and regain lost markets and in the process create new marketing trends.

Dr. Uditha Liyanage, Senior Faculty, Postgraduate Institute of Management (PIM) and a specialist on marketing, believes this is a great opportunity for companies to create good communication channels with customers in the affected areas. "Companies find it difficult to market since their outlets in the regional areas have been destroyed and their channels of distribution have to be reinstated," he said.

He said fast moving consumer goods (FMCGs) and business-to-business operations would have to think of mobile units to market their products. "There are three stages to any disaster and they are relief, recovery and reconstruction phases, but I find very few companies looking at the recovery phase; they only concentrate on relief," he said.

Dr Liyanage said companies normally categorise customers according to the Socio Economic Classifications (SEC) - purchasing power, buying patterns, etc. "The entire SEC has been shaken and companies will now have to look at the markets in a totally different way," he added.

He said companies might wait for the affected areas to return to normalcy and concentrate and consolidate the other markets they have. "But that is 'in the box' thinking," he said. He added that about 20 percent of the total population is affected, which is a huge chunk in a marketing context. "The firms have to act fast," he said.

Suren Rajanathan, Chairman, Chartered Instate of Marketing (CIM), Sri Lanka, said FMCG firms who have been dealt a big blow and lost their reach in the affected areas should have made their contingency plans by now.

"We see a lot of foreign aid coming and this will change customer buying-behaviour," he said. Some people will migrate from the affected areas and this will also alter their purchasing patterns. Rajanathan expects many companies to adopt a wait-and-see approach because they would want to analyse overall customer behaviour before bringing in any changes.

Nalin Attygalle, President, Sri Lanka Institute of Marketing said it is very difficult for companies to set up outlets to compensate for those which were destroyed, because the government has not yet announced its master plan pertaining to buildings. "In this instance, the FMCGs can have mobile outfits and introduce a mobile market," he said.

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