Is Pakistan a difficult market to develop Brand Loyalty or Are we missing a Point?

I was commenting on one of a local telecom blog on the current advertising onslaught by our local telco’s & there, I saw a comment on the very common notion of “Pakistan an extremely difficult market to establish any brand loyalty”. As being part of the same industry, I asked myself that does this impression hold true or is this just a result of marketer’s myopic view towards their customers.

Every country & each culture has its own unique set of traits but a consumer is after all a consumer (Since every human in this world is looking for a better solution to make their life better or move one step further in the rat race called life).

Brand loyalty is not an isolated panacea; it comes through the right use of segmentation, innovation, pricing, product management, distribution & promotion but than again these strstegies have been adopted by marketers from ages but brand loyalty has been remained illusive so far.

Mobilink, Pakistan’s No. 1 cellular operator has always taken pride in having the most loyal subscriber base in Pakistan, but at present the same company is loosing more customers compare to any other operator along with the lowest growth rate registered by any other operator in the month of July, 2008.

In the year 2005, Mr. Chekitan Dev and Mr. Don Schultz proposed a model called SIVA (Solution, Information, Value & Access). This model was part of a broader marketing concept called Customer centric approach. This marketing model depicted demand side of marketing in contrast to the widely popular supply side marketing model 4 P’s (Product, Price, Place & Promotion).

What our telecom industry is suffering in particular & other sectors in general is too much emphasis on supply side of marketing with majority of planning weight placed upon promotional side. Think, what if you are bombarded with a solution you don’t required, you would get annoyed right… 

A Customer - In midst of Brand Jungle

To further highlight this particular point, I will give you my personal example. Some days back I came across a TV commercial of an orange Juice by Sun Sip, initially I started to like that TVC due to its catchy jingle & vibrant art direction, what happened next is that the brand gone so over bored with the TV commercial that (you can watch this ad being played thousand times covering almost all cable networks) I started to being irritated not just by the commercial but by the brand itself. So what’s the point on burning so much marketing $ if you are ended up with a very discontent customer.

In the new age marketing, your customer is literally a King & your brand is your baby. Being the brand custodian the marketer objective would be to create an environment where the king start to like the baby (or ideally start to love the baby).

As Love is an emotional feeling & you can’t love somone if you don’t have an emotional bonding to that person. Therefore to persuade the customer to love your brand you need to develop a relationship based upon emotional bonding between your brand & the customer (which must be in personally relevant way) & this is eaxctly where we are missing the point. Hence what I realized is that there is nothing wrong in the mindset of Pakistani customer’s for not being generally loyal to any particular brand rather it’s a case of short-sighted strategies of our marketers.

Windows Mobile – The Real deal in Pakistan’s Handset market!

The Days gone by when PDA’s (read Win Mo Mobile phones) were only meant for geeks & Techies, since than PDA’s have come to an age of unattractive looking communication devices to a fashion/ professional accessory .As the data consumption by local consumer is increasing (following the footsteps of their global counterparts) along with all kind of new data services being introduced by telecos. This scenario has now led to a sudden surge in demand for handheld devices to fulfill customer’s both (professional & style) requirement in a single mobile device.

Currently the local smart phone market entails 3 major players (OS/ platform plus devices). The Nokia smart phones (primarily its e-series with Symbian OS), RIM with its BlackBerry devices/ services & the Microsoft Windows Mobile enable devices (aka PDA’s) approx 80% of which manufactured by High Tech Corporation – HTC).

Why Windows Mobile?

The local smart phone segment is now evolving to the next level .i.e. innovative data services, business automation through handheld devices, business process enhancement (for corporate & SME’s) & advance level of connectivity.

With Win Mo enable devices, it provides one of the best data services capabilities with more open platform/OS in-comparison with current competition,

Win Mo devices like HTC are equipped with the most advance level of connectivity in Pakistan. As with the introduction of 3G in some where in 2nd Q of 2009, these devices would also enable even cellular operators to offer consumers a wider range of advance services i.e. Wide area voice telephony, Video calls & Broadband wireless data, all in a mobile environment.

At present with the current exciting crop of new Win MO devices lining up, never before Windows Mobile looked this sharp, nor has it been as feature-loaded. The Pakistan’s handset market is all set to be enthralled by the likes of HTC Touch Diamond, Touch Pro & Samsung Omnia in months to come.