What's next for the Singaporean brands?

Elsie Chan (not her real name) is a 34 year-old true-blue Singaporean. Being a marketing director in a pharmaceutical company, her high-life juggles between airport terminals.

As a frequent duty-free shopper, she has a soft corner for the local brands such as Azimuth, Charles & Keith, Raoul, and Risis. This can be attributed to the ethnocentric consumer in her who prefers local products, regardless of relative product performance of foreign products.

Singapore-bred brands are going global and consumers like Elsie are not only proudly purchasing them but are also playing an instrumental role in spreading the word about them.

From Bread Talk to Banyan Tree, some of the local brands have successfully made it to the global stage but a sizable number fail to do so.

The path to success for the next generation of local brands may lie in strategically investing in the deterritorialised communities of Singaporeans or by playing on nostalgia among the expat Singaporeans. Let’s dive deeper…

Deterritorialised communities – Tiger Beer is a great example of how a local brand can create a sense of belonging and shared consciousness in the Asian region.

Following the foot-steps of the Harley Davidson community and Macintosh enthusiasts, it forged a collective identity around the brand and created a combined consciousness by helping people think of themselves as living in the same time and sharing the same history.

Deterritorialisation, referred to as the detachment of social and cultural practices from physical places and unmooring of brands from specific places, can be a key process in helping a brand appear as both globalised and subtly Asian.

Tiger Beer claims no territorial attachment but emphasizes on the cultural coherence and homogeneity by invoking an assortment of cultural references.

Playing on nostalgia – One can also adopt a regional or global strategy in managing brand equity. With increasing globalisation, consumers today may not only identify with other people in their country (i.e., local), but may identify with people around the world (i.e., global).

A global product, which is positioned for consumers from around the world, may be more preferred by consumers with chronically more salient global identity. In contrast, a local product tailored for the local market may be more preferred by consumers with chronically salient local identity.

This is because an accessible global identity will make the consumers weigh the global positioning information more heavily and favorably than an accessible local identity. In contrast, an accessible local identity will make the consumers weigh the local positioning information more heavily and favorably than an accessible global identity.

These seemingly different poles meet in the bipolar nature of the consumers in us. We tend to enjoy our McDonald's burgers with our Milo Dinosaurs. Therefore, there is always some space for the local brands.

The key is to weave elements of nostalgia that appeals to the local identity of consumers. With the advent of globalisation, the decrease of trade barriers, and the digitisation of the world economy, consumers now have access to products from around the world.

When the assortment of products is compared and evaluated, the country where a product is originated from will influence consumers’ choice decisions with or without their conscious awareness. For example, a consumer who has invited an important guest for dinner at home may decide to pick up a bottle of wine from France and salmon from Norway.

Singaporean brands can look forward to play a competitive game by leveraging the nostalgia and investing in building deterritorialised communities among ethnocentric consumers.