The key findings of the report include the five emerging consumer trends across Asia that influenced buyer behaviour. Based on these new consumer needs, Kantar uncovered five key levers for brand growth.
Throughout the region, the brands that utilised one or more of these levers emerged as the winners from 2019 across various categories.
This annual ranking includes a special analysis of how brands have navigated during the COVID-19 pandemic and how brands are showing signs of growth during such uncertainty.
Key findings include:
The five emerging consumer trends that drove buyer behaviour across Asia are: Health and wellness, convenience, digitalization, value for money, and diversification.
There are also five key levers for brand growth, based on the emerging consumer trends:
- New needs: The ultimate lever for brand growth is recognising new consumer needs and proceeding to establish a new category.
- More moments: Brands can create more moments or shopping occasions by making their products available and relevant for consumers.
- More categories: Brands can stretch across different categories to attract buyers whose needs are not currently met by the existing functions of the brand.
- More targets: Brands can create new variants that they know will appeal to a wider range of individual needs in order to attract new targets.
- More presence: Brands can increase the number of geographical locations in which a shopper can see and choose their brand.
Some of the brands that demonstrated success in 2019 for each market include:
- Mainland China: Yili remained China’s most chosen brand for the fifth year running. Together with Mengniu, these two dairy brands were chosen over 1 billion times by Chinese consumers in 2019.
- Indonesia: Indomie continues to be the number one most chosen FMCG brand by consumers in 2019, with a key strategy of playing in several categories. The brand had a 7.0% CRP (Consumer Reach Points) growth for the year.
- Korea: Chungjungone ranked number two, having successfully pioneered snacks for the drink HMR market and widening its portfolio.
- Malaysia: Due to its strong performance in both instant noodles and culinary aids categories, Maggi sustained its number one position in 2019, with a penetration of 85.4%.
- Philippines: Local noodle brand Lucky Me remains the most chosen consumer brand in the Philippines, having reached nearly all Filipino homes. The brand continues to improve its existing products by adding new formats.
- Taiwan: Local brands continue to occupy the top five ranking, with I Mei as the number one chosen brand (over 7.7 million households in Taiwan purchased the brand in 2019).
- Thailand: Hygiene ranked in the top chosen brands list with a CRP growth of 11%. The brand was chosen more than 116 million times during 2019.
- Vietnam: Dairy manufacturer Vinamilk was chosen the most in Vietnam (urban 4 cities and rural) in part due to its massive coverage in terms of consumer base.
After conducting a special analysis of how brands are faring during the pandemic, we discovered the following:
- There are four clusters across Asia regarding how consumers shopped before the lockdown versus after: “overly cautious”, “challenged”, “undeterred”, “road to recovery”.
- Based on these four clusters, some markets experienced a drastic shift in shopping patterns, while other reactions were muted.
- Categories like hygiene, cooking aids and essentials, convenience foods, and nutrition and immune-boosting products are thriving.
- Across these categories, the biggest brands across Asia are winning by riding on one or more of the five key levers for brand growth.
