Charles Foster, CEO, Kantar Insight for Africa and Middle East was in Nigeria recently to discuss growth strategy with key clients and other stakeholders. BusinessDay engaged him on various issues including drivers for growth, state of Kantar business and future of marketing research in Africa and the Middle East. During the discussion, Foster said any business which does not have insight and data that support business decisions is less able to grow than a business which has real understanding of the consumer and what they need to do to grow their products. He said insight and research are integral part of business for growth. Excerpts
Considering population, investment opportunities and insecurity, what is Nigeria to Kantar?
Nigeria as far as Kantar is concerned is one of the three key hubs we have across Sub Saharan Africa. It remains a country we regard as having greatest potential for growth. Growth is very important to us as a business because we see a huge scale size of what the market is going to turn into. In fact security issues are not a consideration for us as we have similar issues everywhere we operate across Africa and Middle East. In my view, Nigeria is not worse than anywhere else that we deal with on regular basis but the potential here by share of virtue of the size and scale of the business that we operate across Africa particularly if the country starts to industrialise and moves away from more traditional trading activities. I see more evidence of Dangote putting in more infrastructure that will support the development of the country in terms of not only on roads but refineries as opposed to our current import culture.
I think that the underpinning of the country will be revolutionalised by that kind of behavior. I think that a trading country in Africa is not what we need, but we need manufacturing sector that is active, we need people on the ground, not buying and selling but producing, distributing and selling. I see more evidence of that happening and if that is the indeed the direction the country is going, then the future is sure. What I fear is the opposite as many countries in Africa don’t have that kind of manufacturing base such as Agriculture that is a big sector.
How does your role apply to small businesses in any economy that do not have funds for research purposes?
The big companies are being attacked daily by little companies in subtle ways. You find that some big players are actually anxious about protecting their market share. Small companies are producing similar products already produced by big companies and some of the managers perhaps come from those big companies and started their own. As this happens, they are giving active competition to the big companies. The big players have relied on the power of their brands and distribution. Sometimes, actually the power of the brands is less strong as it used to be because sometimes some of the small players deemed to be, as effective, delivering products benefits the consumers want. For instance, in the hotel business, some small players are giving the big brands competition. The power of little brands, particularly tech brands to really have an impact on the big players cannot be under-estimated.
What do you see as trend of research across Africa and Middle East Regions?
I oversee countries from Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, Morocco, Senegal, South Africa and there is enormous transaction across those countries. In Nigeria, about 65 % population own smart phone, this means that there are about 40 % you can’t reach via technology. Most countries across the world, we reach people online or via a computer link. Clearly, Africa has to pursue this route very actively. The overriding trend across the world on how we collect data is not our raison d’etre. What we increasingly do is to deliver insights into the data, we actually don’t just report it. But we are far more focused on what the data means to business. One of the implications of that information is in terms of driving any future business decision they may make.
Traditional marketing research versus Analytics … the way forward.
I don’t think that traditional market research is growing across Africa. Actually what is growing is the broader industry research, insights and analytics. The global research report on the size of the industry and how it is growing the number is not impressive. In Kenya, the actual traditional research industry shrunk about 2-3 years ago but the analytics business grew. By analytics we mean the ability of market research companies and other consultancy companies to bring to the table, analysis of their big data, consumer trends and get to the real behavior of data analysis which leads to understanding of a whole business life, which in many cases involves the predictive aspects. Actually there is a shift in the research industry towards more analytics hence the marginal growth we are witnessing is from this arm of the business
What is your prediction for research business for 2020?
All predictions say that in 2020 research will grow, not huge but it will grow. Globally there will be growth. In Nigeria I want to see growth but Nigeria’s economy has not actually leveraged the big potentials. If I look at regions, the biggest growth will come from Middle East and less from Sub Saharan Africa.
Could you summarise your presentation at the recent lecture?
I was reflecting on a study we did world-wide among CMOs and CEOs on what makes companies grow faster. That is against the backdrop of the fact that less than one of 10 companies around the world shows growth. In that research, we did interviews among 600 CEOs and CMOs around the world and 15,000 interviews among the marketers. We broke out the result among companies which have shown growth against those not growing. We identified those growth factors in the growing companies. For instance don’t fish where you have always fished, look outside the traditional areas of expertise, and build expertise from people not born of the same background. Again businesses need to increasingly become integral part of community they operate in. Again companies need to be careful of adaptation of global models into local markets but more importantly companies need to be creative.
