Navigating Emerging Markets

To best capture the potential of emerging markets, businesses need to chart a different path.

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Through a different lens

‘Breakout marketing’ is the way companies can use what a given market offers (culture, values, systems, and needs) and introduce what it lacks (technologies, methods/processes, products, and brands), thereby transforming both themselves as well as the market. Notably, although brands usually begin their journey in emerging markets by converting light users into heavy users, the great market expansion that marketers aspire to really comes from large-scale conversion of non-users to users.

In an exclusive interview, Dr Jagdish Sheth tells Anitha Moosath how a departure from the traditional marketing paradigm can help businesses succeed in emerging economies—a thought he elaborates on in his book Breakout Strategies for Emerging Markets.

Emerging markets have offered the biggest growth opportunity in the history of capitalism. So how strong is a case for entering and competing in an emerging market?

I think it is as strong as the survival of a company. All advanced countries are ageing much more rapidly than we ever imagined—there is hardly any growth left in these countries for businesses. Also, at a time when growth is moving away from product to services, the only place where one can seek growth would be in an emerging market, primarily.

Converting non-users into users in emerging markets is the biggest game one can play instead of fighting for market share. Moreover, emerging markets are no longer agrarian economies with a predominant BoP consumer segment. They comprise a burgeoning middle class and a growing affluent class who are becoming increasingly brand conscious and driving growth in consumption. And technology is playing the role of an enabler in this context.