Originally published by Don Peppers on LinkedIn: The World’s Most Social Customers?
With more than a billion residents, India is the second most populous country in the world. It is also home to one of the most strongly connected and socially supportive cultures anywhere. Long before Indians overtook Americans last year as the most numerous Facebook users in the world, tightly knit Indian families and social groups have always dominated this society.
Whether it’s groups of parents discussing the kinds of products that would be right for their school-age children, or women exchanging grocery shopping tips, or a manager simply asking a co-worker for advice on a car, as a society Indians are extremely likely to rely on the opinions of friends and relatives in their buying decisions.
For the last few weeks I’ve been reading up on Indian traditions, culture, and business practices, as well as making more connections and having more conversations on LinkedIn, to prepare for my upcoming keynote and workshop at Mumbai’s 2018 CustomerFest, on February 1. And one of the things I’ve learned is that when it comes to the purchases they make, Indians tend to rely far more on their friends’ recommendations and the word-of-mouth reputation of products and services than people in other cultures do.
A 2014 survey of some 13,000 Indian consumers conducted by Boston Consulting Group, for instance, found that more than 90% of Indian consumers shared word-of-mouth recommendations with respect to mobile handsets, while nearly 60% said they sought out friends’ opinions with respect to which automobile to purchase, figures that are far higher than BCG has found in other, Western countries. Compared to the U.S., UK, France, Germany, or Spain, the study said, Indian consumers are more than three times as likely to ask for or receive advice from friends about which retail bank to use, and more than twice as likely to share advice about which mobile operator or grocery store to patronize.
Obviously, this should be of great interest to any marketer trying to do business within the country. And Indian marketers ought to find leveraging the society’s tightly knit social connections to be an even more attractive strategy in view of the relatively high cost of traditional advertising media in the country. Still, one senior Indian marketing executive told me that (in his opinion) word-of-mouth is as yet “a very under-exploited asset, because not enough is available on how to activate it, measure it or monetize it.”
I think the role of word-of-mouth recommendations in India could be significant enough to be transformative, however. You simply cannot be a successful marketer in India without taking word-of-mouth customer advocacy into account, which is one reason I’ve chosen to address the topic of customer advocacy in my keynote at the Loyalty Summit. But while I do hope to bring the audience some useful perspectives, I’m also looking forward to learning a great deal more about social sharing, from the world’s most practiced experts!