Asia will be a growing force in the world economy, YW Junardy, president of the Asia Marketing Federation, said yesterday at a seminar on "The Marketing Landscapes of the Emerging Markets".
The event was held by the Marketing Association of Thailand.
Junardy said the world's centre of gravity was already tipping decisively in favour of the emerging economies of Asia.
He said the emerging markets would together constitute the world's largest economy by 2050.
He said that China would overtake Germany this year, and Japan by between 2015 and 2020. It would also overtake the US by 2035.
Junardy said that household names of today such as Samsung, Haier, Lenovo, Hundai and HTC, were in danger of becoming has-beens as more innovative superstars in the emerging markets claim dominance.
"We have seen an astonishing rebound in emerging economies, especially in Asia. Free trade agreements will create a new playing field in Asia," Junardy said.
Masaaki Ishibashi, executive director of the Japan Marketing Association, said that the international trade structure in Japan had changed in favour of emerging markets such as China.
He said that the contribution of Asia and mainland China in Japan's international trade jumped respectively from 31 percent and 2 percent in 1990 to 49 percent and 16 percent in 2008. At the same time, the contribution of the US declined continuously from 32 percent in 1990 to 18 percent in 2008.
"We have seen Asean as an emerging market, particularly in high-growth countries such as Indonesia and Vietnam, which will play crucial roles for Japan in the future," said Ishibashi.
He said that political and social instability, pandemic disease such as Sars, and business ethics became the great concerns of Japanese business people for emerging markets.
Ishibashi said that for Japanese businesses, the attractive emerging markets needed to show strong investment attractions, both in terms of competitive labour costs and good working ethics. They should have greater consumption potential driven by huge population.
He added that the competitiveness of Japan business was its superior product quality and advanced environmental features, along with its consumer savings.
Japan's weakness was the relatively high price of its products. In addition, some products were more advanced than necessary for its customers in the rest of Asia.
"In the near future, greater markets like China and India will be more attractive. Asean itself also need to establish an identity as a single market," said Ishibashi.
Dr Leonardo Garcia, director for internal affairs of the Philippines Marketing Association, said that to understand emerging markets, one should go back and revisit its economic, social and technology (EST). However, to communicate with emerging markets, business players needed to maximise technology and realise that the convergence of technology with human factors would be the best solution.
Garcia said that the marketing landscape in the emerging markets has changed.
"We have seen changing platforms and shifting paradigms in emerging markets as they shift from product to service economies, and from hi-touch to hi-tech and hi-convergence," he said.
He added that the working environment had been changed from office-based to home or virtual. Customer benefits have also changed, from tangible to intangible.
Garcia said that the 4Ps of the marketing mix had been updated to 7Ps, which are product, price, place, and promotion, together with the new three Ps, which are physical attribute/appearance, processes, and people.
Hermawan Kartajaya, president of the World Marketing Association, said that "the world is still round and the market is flat. It means that the competition is getting tough because competitors are coming from everywhere. Customers will be more difficult to approach as they trust their friends, not marketers anymore,"
Kartajaya said that the landscape model would be changed from 4Cs to 5Cs, which consist of change, customer, competitor, company, and connector.
"If you're not connected, you will be left behind and lose to the competition," he said.
Kartajaya said that marketing principles would change from vertical-based legacy marketing such as targeting, positioning, differentiation, marketing mix, which are product, price, place, promotion, selling, branding, service, and process, to the new principle called 'new wave marketing', which is horizontal-basis. They are communisation, confirmation, clarification, codification, co-creation, and currency, and communal activation, which consists of conversation, commercialisation, character, caring and collaboration.
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