An illuminating morning at Franchise Asia Philippines 2025

With a theme of Building Success Together, Franchise Asia Philippines' International Franchise Conference 2025 offered wonderful insights and learnings for the audience that was gathered on the conference's first morning.

- PHILIP CU UNJIENG

One talk, Consumer Outlook: Understanding Your Future Consumer, was the one I got to attend in full. It was a revealing discussion, combining both theory and research data on one hand, and relying on practical experience/application and predictive behavior on the other hand... and covering all points in between!

This broad scope was achieved because the two speakers for that morning forum were Joaquin San Agustin, EVP for Marketing of SM Supermalls; and Dae Lee, Ph.D. founder of The Fourth Wall, a research and analysis firm that highlights sociocultural behavior and insights.

When JonJon San Agustin speaks, it's with the work experience of marketing 87 SM malls nationwide, malls that carry more than 200,000 stores, and with over 5.2 million foot traffic of mall-goers. That's an awesome set of credentials, and he's saddled with the monumental task of having to constantly stay ahead of the game, and being able to anticipate the next trend, the next behavior quirk, of their "public." And this is with the constant realization that your "public" is not some homogeneous one-dimensional entity; but is in fact, composed of diverse demographics - across genders, across generations, and across a broad range of interests.