Six strategies to grow brands in Indonesia

Although Indonesia’s economy performed fairly well in 2018, the FMCG market was stagnant as consumers have rationalized their FMCG consumption. Our new paper identifies the growth strategies brands can employ.

Venu Madhav, General Manager of Indonesia, Worldpanel Division, Kantar  explained that “2019 is an exciting year albeit a challenging one as consumers have become more discerning when selecting products and services. We have identified six strategies that can help brands to grow in today’s competitive market”:

1. Building excitement through experience and leveraging many touch points

Experience is becoming more important than simply owning or consuming the product. Experience can relate to in-store engagement or the way consumers interact with the product’s communications.

2. Catering for convenience: everything on-the-go

The emergence of an urban lifestyle means that Indonesians are spending more time out of the home for work, study and recreation. As a result on-the-go convenience is becoming part of the shifting trend, allowing ready-to-eat and ready-to-drink product categories to grow, especially for out-of-home consumption.

Source: Worldpanel FMCG, Indonesia Urban, out-of-home consumption contribution (vs. in-home consumption), full year 2018

3. Leveraging the rediscovered pride as an Indonesian

National pride has grown for several reasons, including the 2018 Asian Games and being home to more than half of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations unicorn start-ups. This is transferring through to more local references, values, flavours and ingredients in brand communications.

4. Breaking the clutter and being a stand out in the market

Depending solely on fame or saliency is no longer enough for brands. Consumers are seeking more meaning and difference. Brands need to align the right content to each audience and cut through the clutter.

5. Catering to different aspirations

The complexity of the Indonesian market today means that brands need to become much more targeted in their approach. Understanding different aspirations by segmenting on things like age group and income level will help drive brand growth.

6. Embracing digital

Indonesian consumers are living in a multi-screen world. Although TV still maintains the highest exposure, the internet has grown substantially with more brands using social media to connect with their consumers. E-commerce, although small, has also grown substantially, from 2% in 2017 to 6% in 2018.

Source: Worldpanel FMCG

Fanny Murhayati, Marketing Director of Kantar Indonesia mentioned: “There is no longer a one-size fits all approach for Indonesia consumers. Brands need to understand their consumers in much more detail to be successful.”

Learn more about the six strategies to grow brands in Indonesia by downloading the paper though the link in the right.

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Notes to editors: These findings are based on Worldpanel FMCG data. In Indonesia, Kantar monitors in-home and also out-of-home consumption, in the FMCG front. We track household purchases of over 90 different FMCG categories across food and non-food every single week. Our in-home data represents 53 million of Indonesia urban and rural household population. Our out-of-home data represents 29 million of Indonesia urban household population.