Lack of market research explains failure of banks’ products – Geri-Robert

In this interview, Ugo Geri-Robert, Managing Director of Millward Brown Nigeria, a global marketing research agency told Daniel Obi that the future of market research is mobile. Ugo who spoke on a number of issues, regrets that presently clients’ businesses have slowed down, a development which has also affected marketing research business. Excerpts

How would you describe the business of marketing research in Q 1 2016 and could you project what this year holds for the industry?

Honestly, the first quarter was a bit slow, slower than usual, but we still met the numbers. Slow or not slow, we still arrived at where we wanted to arrive at. Looking at Nigeria specifically, we know that Nigeria is challenged right now but when you talk about market research, you know you are talking about providing solutions to challenges. We are challenged right now but I believe that once we put all the policies in place, the market will open up. Don’t forget that with all these challenges, we are still number one economy in Africa and we have the population, the market is here.

What accounted for the slow business?

I will say that government actions together with its inactions contributed significantly to the slow take off. When this government came on board they tried to put in place some measures to stabilize the economy. I don’t want to go into the naira-dollar issue but clients’ businesses have slowed down and so ours have also slowed down. That is why I said their actions and inactions have contributed.

How would you describe the future of market research in Nigeria?

The future of research whether in the emerging markets or developed markets is mobile. It is mobile because mobile eliminates human errors. I give you an example, before now, data collection was all pen and paper from there we arrived at the computer assisted interview system where we use all kinds of devices just to capture the same information that we used to write. Now we are talking mobile, mobile is actually a wall breaker. I call it a wall breaker because one of the challenges facing marketing research in emerging markets like Nigeria is that sometimes the walls become barriers in getting to the target samples and of course the right kind of information. Mobile will scale through the wall.

How does the mobile work?

The way the mobile works is that we have a panel which we are building day by day. The panel is not a general panel, it is segmented-socio-economic class, gender, age group, education, location and so on. When we have a new job, instead of sending people out to go and be roaming the streets or to go and be knocking at the gates,  we select from our panel and we send them the questions to their mobile phones. Like I said it is a wall breaker, there are no barriers when it comes to mobile unlike the face to face interview, you are reaching the real targets.

What are the short comings of mobile method?

Everything made by man has its short-comings. I churn out these things, but the response rate is lower than when you are doing face to face. When we are doing face to face interview I set a target for myself. But for the mobile, you send these things, there is no way you can be sure that they will come back or that the people you sent to have received them, because they don’t owe you anything, they are not obliged to respond, so you are just left at their whims and caprices waiting for them to respond and for now response rate is still low.

What is the level of marketing research patronage in Nigeria?

The telecommunication companies are the ones doing so much use of our services. Some researchers in S/Africa turn back clients around September/October because of much research jobs. We usually wonder when we will get there. If we have the banking sector, the insurance sector doing just 20 per cent of what the telecom companies are doing, this industry will explode, talents will be built and more people will come into the research industry. Right now I don’t know if the financial services sector is doing even up to two per cent of what the telecom companies are doing. We know that in other markets, the financial services industry use heavy research, but here, we just move from the board room to the market. That explains why most of the products churned out by many of our banks fail. You see, let me tell you, that era of just throwing things at the people and expecting that they will take it is gone. Our people are getting more sophisticated, they know they have the power, they know what they want and they go for it.

What is the size of research market in Nigeria?

That is a difficult question to answer because it is not a public domain thing, we are all guessing. I am not too sure but we are grossing over $50 million annually.

How are you helping to build talents for the industry?

What we are doing now in Millward Brown is that we have positioned ourselves as the bridge. We are in relationship with some of our higher institutions. We have internship programme here and we also go to their schools. We are just trying to let them know that research is not just one of the requirements that they use to complete their degree, that research is actually a profession. We are trying to bridge the gap between what we know in school and the reality because research has become highly technical. We are also doing catch them young. Before now our young ones don’t see research as something they should go into because they think it is not fun. But with all these global brands coming into our country, research is where the action is now.

Daniel Obi