Neo-demographics: Opening Developing Markets via Big Data and Collaboration

Our aim is to stimulate creation of the innovative new models of consumer behaviour which are required to succeed in emerging markets. To do this we will identify (in collaboration with companies) novel behavioural groups in emerging economies, via construction of a decision support and market segmentation platform that combines mass personal and transactional data, collaborative aggregation and crowd-sourced community verification. To achieve this requires a unique network of research skills and expertise – insight from UK industry, expertise from market intelligence providers and, vitally, a network of companies trading in those regions willing to collaborate via their behavioural datasets. The team that makes up this proposal are in a unique position to achieve this.

This is possible due to integration of:

• Pre-existing RCUK Digital Economy infrastructure.
• Leading research institutions in Business Modelling, the Theory of Consumer Behaviour and Data Science.
• Expertise from world-leading commercial market intelligence providers.
• A pre-established network of business relationships with significant firms in developing regions, willing to share data.
• The required links with Government, Citizen organizations and Local communities in developing nations.

The objective of this project is to address some of the systematic failures that UK Industry has suffered in its attempt to enter and share in the vast potential of emerging markets. Especially in the retail sector, it is not been possible to simply transplant domestic business models into developing economies (based as they are on widely divergent cultural, infrastructural and behavioural norms) (Eyring 2011). To flourish in the vast middle-market within emerging economies, companies must generate new strategic models, that centre on identifying, understanding and acting on the differing behavioural groups of their new customer base.

However, actually doing this is not easy – the “geo-demographic classifications” firms traditionally use are very hard to come by in emerging markets, and the ability to perform situated studies in the field in order to understand the rich nature of local context is not always viable. We will move towards filling this gap through a combination of academic expertise; market intelligence expertise; and the combined experience of an extensive network of UK and international companies. In collaboration with partners in developing nations we will produce a platform that can provide information about these latent behavioural groups, based not on broad demographics, but on the untapped behavioural data streams that proliferate emerging economies.

Read the Neodemographics blog for more information.