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New to the Table In Russia, knowing what motivates your buying audience—innovation—is key to the sales success of consumer goods. s every designer and product manager is well aware, getting a product into the hands of a consumer is no easy task. Alongside the creation of compelling brand image is a sizing up of the potential customer base. The latter’s buying power, purchasing motivations, and brand preference all factor into the ultimate buying decision. But when selling a product beyond national borders, designing a compelling package for your audience means that you must know what motivates and appeals most to that populace from a cultural perspective.
Of these seven styles, Belkina says, the group of consumers known as “innovators” warrants the most attention from product suppliers. Though the share of these consumers in Russia as a whole in 2001 was rather small at 8 percent, it comprised a much larger audience in Moscow, at 18 percent. Belkina says that the consumer potential of this group, nearly half of which is under 30 years of age, is significantly higher than the average, and that its members exhibit an explicitly innovative consumer behavior. Reliability = Marketability Also of interest to product marketers is the “self-realized” group (12 percent of consumers in Russia, and 8 percent in Moscow). Here, consumer behavior is viewed as traditional, but this segment’s consumer potential is high. Demographically, the group is made up primarily of mature-age people, just over half of whom are women. According to Belkina, this cluster has the largest share of people that do not respond favorably to advertising. Consumers here value reliability and quality of goods, she says, adding that they pay great attention to healthcare. Incidentally, the largest group of consumers in Russia belongs to the cluster known as “settled” (25 percent in Russia, and 21 percent in Moscow). The consumer potential among these people, most of whom are women, is average or above average. According to Belkina, their consumer behavior is rather traditional: novel products do not interest them too much, and their consumer preferences are already distributed among brands. As is the case in the U.S., Russian consumers have choices when making purchasing decisions. The traditional Russian consumer views price and perceived image as the two leading factors when buying a brand that is produced locally. Local brands can be far less expensive than their foreign counterparts, and they convey a sense of patriotism. Further, says Belkina, in the food realm, local products also are believed to be healthier because they usually are made from domestic ingredients and contain few or no preservatives. Belkina states that, in general, local brand loyalty is increasing in Russia as the quality of domestic goods continues to improve. Accordingly, local product manufacturers win the product pricing battle. But, she says, many lose ground in marketing, as it is common for Russian firms to restrict resources for creative, advertising, and market research services. Thus, consumers may reject a domestic brand name or a certain package design. Nonetheless, states Belkina, there are an increasing number of Russian companies developing and using successful marketing approaches, even as product and packaging quality are improving. Both imported and domestic Foreign companies looking to enter the Russian market thus have launched “Russian” or “national” brands, which, says Belkina, have gained popularity among Russian consumers almost as fast as local product. What these brands have that their “imported” counterparts don’t is vivid Russian imagery enabling them to be positioned as Russian national quality brands. Through this strategy, she says, foreign manufacturers can compete with local producers using the same set of tools. In terms of advertising impact, Belkina says that Russian consumers have become weary of strict product-oriented advertising, and dislike emphasis placed solely on product characteristics. They instead tend to favor eye-catching ads and packaging that is humorous, intriguing and spirited, and truly innovative. | |||||
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© 2004-2008 ST Media Group International. All rights reserved. Reproduction in whole or in part is prohibited without consent from publisher.
DECEMBER 4, 2008
1:00 PM EASTERN
This special 90-minute webinar will feature up-to-date insights into the market forces affecting package design and sustainability. Registration for this program is $89.99. Attendees will receive a copy of Packaging Sustainability: Tools, Systems and Strategies for Innovative Package Design (a $49.95 value) by Wendy Jedlicka.
Keynote Address by:
MINAL MISTRY
Project Manager, Sustainable
Packaging Coalition/GreenBlue
COMPASS is an online software tool for packaging designers and engineers to compare the environmental impacts of their package designs.
