ROPER STARCH FINDS OUT WHAT'S ON CONSUMERS' MINDS
By Adnews Staff
Plan globally. Market locally. That's what it all boils down to, a gathering of marketers and advertisers was told yesterday when presented with a summary of a 41-country survey of almost 38,000 people aged 18 and older. This can be extrapolated to represent the opinions of about 2 billion people, according to New York-based Roper Starch Worldwide, the company that conducted the survey last year. Thomas Miller, Roper Starch's director of international operations, presented a summary of the study in Toronto at the annual meeting of the Canadian Advertising Foundation. According to his company's findings, if you're planning to sell something in Latin America you might want to take a more youthful approach in your marketing plan than you would in Western Europe. The median age of Latin American respondents was 31, compared with 41 in Europe. An advertiser might want to be less cerebral in Western Europe, where 21% of respondents had higher education, or Latin America, where 24% went beyond high school, than in North America where 46% had some post-secondary education. One big question for marketers is this: how important are brands to consumers? The Roper study found that, around the world, about 55% of people see one or several brands as better than others in their categories. In the mid-east and Africa the percentage was 73%, versus 65% in North America. In the Asia/Pacific region brand awareness was lowest: 45%. But that could be due to the fact that there are relatively few brands in many of the countries in this region, commented Miller. People are much more receptive to advertising in Latin America, where 49% felt marketers give accurate information, than in the former U.S.S.R. where only 9% believe this is so. In North America the figure is 43%.