Take a birds-eye view of the decade and discover what has changed – and what behaviours have stayed consistent. In this section, the Asia markets covered are Chinese Mainland, Indonesia, Malaysia, Philippines, South Korea, Taiwan, Thailand, Vietnam, India, Bangladesh and Sri Lanka.
The Asia market has proven to hold huge potential for brands to grow. We have seen the number of households grow by 24% in Asia, at a faster rate when compared with global rates, with an increase of around 140 million households. This population growth is also seen across sub-regions, most prominent in South Asia.
This holds a mixed picture for brands. While there are more shoppers to go after, it also means that 1% penetration in Asia today is almost 1.4 million more households than it was ten years ago. And the bigger a brand is, the harder it needs to work to maintain the same level of penetration regionally. For example, if a brand had 30% penetration in 2012 it meant it had 175 million households buying it. In 2021, to achieve the same penetration, a brand would have had to attract over 217 million shoppers: an increase of 42 million.
The upside to this is that the population growth has had an almost one-to-one positive impact on the number of brand choices made. Consumer choices have risen from 159 billion brand choices to 201 billion in Asia – a 26% increase; and 10 percentage points stronger than the global average.
Generally, when looking at data, we like to analyse change. It’s interesting, and it shows us how brands must adapt to shopper behaviour and demand – information that is always useful.
However, with ten years of Brand Footprint we also wanted to identify the trends which haven’t changed. The data points that are consistent across the decade. This data offers brands confidence, as they can refer to long-term behavioural truths which will last for the next ten years.
The first behavioural truth is that the number of brands that shoppers buy remains the same today as it did ten years ago. The average household in Asia buys a portfolio of 44 FMCG brands in a year, which is around 10 brands fewer when compared to the global average, indicating a much fiercer competition landscape for brands to fight for shopper repertoires in Asia.
Importantly, this doesn’t mean that households are buying the same 44 brands each year. The challenge for brand owners still remains: how to be present in a shopper’s basket or portfolio – and then stay there.
The second behavioural truth is that the only way to grow is through finding more shoppers. Across the decade, 87% of growing brands in Asia did so by reaching out to more shoppers.
As a brand owner, increasing your number of shoppers should be your primary goal year after year. Once this is in place, frequency and loyalty will follow suit.
The third consistent behavioural truth is that growing brands gain 0.9% penetration points within a market in Asia.
This is a benchmark for success: if your brand gains 0.9% penetration points, then it will have had a good year. It’s certainly true that plenty of brands will have gained more than this, but far more will lie below this benchmark, including, of course, those brands that saw no growth.
For a more nuanced consideration for setting sensible penetration targets based on your current size of brand; for a smaller brand (<10% penetration) aim for just under 0.4% growth; whilst bigger brands can be more ambitious and aim for 1.5%.
Over the decade, an average of 6 brands have remained in the top 10 rankings since 2012 across Asia markets. Most of the markets are consistently led by big and trusted brands and therefore remained on the top. Whilst in some markets where competition landscapes are fiercer with more local players dominating and leading, we see less brands staying in the top 10 rankings.
Also, an important distinction in this is that we are not seeing the same brands growing year on year. In fact, only 3 brands (4%) have grown consistently in the past 9 to 10 years in their respective markets in Asia.
This highlights just how hard consistent growth is. But these brands should be held up as best-in-class examples – and celebrated. A big congratulations to So Klin in Indonesia, Maggi in Malaysia and TH True in Vietnam, for achieving this remarkable feat.
So, what can we learn from them? What have these brands done consistently? Well, they have consistently gained more shoppers. Year after year, they reached more households and in turn, they saw an increase in the number of times each household bought them.
Looking here at So Klin, a home care brand from Indonesia, we can see that as its buyer base increased, so did its frequency.
So, how can brands look to mirror this success by achieving consistent shopper gains? Start with setting appropriate penetration targets for each market where your brand is present, taking into account of your brand size. Then build a strategy around the various levers you can use to drive growth: More Targets, More Presence, More Categories, More Moments, and New Needs. You will find more on these levers in our chapter on Brand Success Stories.
