|
Last week, I was told by a reader that people do not go
around making other people poor. Delivered with a smile, it was a
jocular jab at my recent urgings in this column. It did not fail to
make its mark. It made me think.
While she was, of course, right in the main, there are two major
distinctions we should make. First, there are indeed people who make
others poor, consciously. These are not just the corrupt politicians
and bureaucrats, but corrupt businesspeople as well.
By taking and giving bribes, by not paying taxes, they consciously rob
the poor of funds that should otherwise have gone to the development of
better and cheaper infrastructure, like healthcare, education and
transportation.
The building of those common resources with public funds is an integral
facet of the capitalist system, at the lowest price and not the highest
possible cost.
Second, there are employers who systematically try to cheat, every
chance they get. For example, they terminate staff just before it
becomes mandatory to employ them permanently.
This is, in fact, a violation of the law, both in letter and spirit. In
any country where laws can be enforced, such a scenario would be ripe
for class-action suits because it is just another way to keep labor
costs low and the poor poor. So I'd say that good people do not make
people poor, but with an emphasis on the word "good."
But what about professional dishonesty, or ignorance, or incompetence?
Or all of the above? Managers have obligations to their shareholders.
While the man on the street can understand core issues and separate
fact from fiction on election day, it amazes me all too often to see
big businesses unquestioningly ignoring the most obvious of realities
around them.
For instance, the majority of both current consumers and future
intenders for most consumer goods and services are people who reside
outside the cities of Indonesia. This is true for cellular networks,
motorcycles, shampoo, milk, instant noodles and even bank accounts.
Just because current conventional distribution ends within urban
boundaries all too often, many marketers remain clueless about the
redistribution that occurs beyond. While the lack of knowledge about
the small town and rural consumer may have been understandable in
yesteryear, today it is both unprofessional and unforgivable.
It gives a whole new meaning to that old saying, "where ignorance is
bliss". Testimony to that view is the reality that almost all
expenditure on consumer research is spent on understanding customers in
the cities, regardless of life in smaller towns, let alone the villages.
Not what you would call a conscious effort to improve the quality of
life where opportunities exist, both urban and rural.
After all, where are Indonesia's consumer-tracking studies conducted?
Or the brand health monitors? Do you know where the set-top boxes that
measure TV viewership are located? Does anybody care about the programs
rural consumers "love to watch"? You will have guessed right.
Yet, pronouncements are made in boardrooms about "the Indonesian
consumer", with scant respect for the fact that nobody has bothered to
venture beyond the cities to find out the real truth. They are the same
people who accuse the politicians of not being in touch with the
people, or appreciating their aspirations.
They are the same people who ignore the fact that more than half their
consumers today live outside the cities they devote all their energies
toward. More importantly, they fail to recognize that 50-70 percent of
their future growth will come from outside the cities.
This is true of Indonesia, like most of Asia, where wealth continues to
trickle down.
These observations are based on Roy Morgan Single Source, the country's
largest syndicated survey with over 27,000 Indonesian respondents
annually, projected to reflect 90 percent of the population over the
age of 14. That is a universe of 140 million people.
The results are updated every 90 days and used by more marketers, media
and creative agencies than any other syndicated survey.
The one hallmark of all the great marketing minds I have met is their
unending thirst to holistically understand their consumers as people.
Not just as "wallets" or "teeth" or "passengers" or "riders" or
"subscribers."
They are the professionals who have the ability to ask the relevant
questions, get the reliable answers. They understand simple concepts
like statistical reliability, not just broad definitions, like urban
and rural, rich and poor.
They know that the socioeconomic class of a household in Asia has
little meaning if two-and-a-half meager incomes in an extended
household of six hungry mouths add up to their being classified way
above their true spending power.
It is important therefore to ask the right questions, in the right
places. And ask them often enough to make timely course corrections, to
be truly accountable to shareholders. Doing things by rote or by paying
lip service to the right jargon can only fool the ignorant at the head
office for that long and no more.
|
