Smartal consultant Richard Webber said the MOSAIC software allowed marketers to develop campaigns which treated consumers as individuals.
"In countries that are at a greater stage of development, such as Hong Kong, consumers want to feel they are individuals. Most companies know what market share they have, but are not able to gather information about individual customers, said Webber, who was the former managing director of Micromarketing Division, Experian - the UK's main supplier of geomarketing systems and segmentation software.
For instance, profiling tools help build a picture of audience to be targeted in campaigns that combine direct marketing, telephony, the internet and door-to-door distribution. "This information allows retailers, such as Marks & Spencer, to choose the locations for stores and to even decide how much shelf space to assign to different categories of merchandise, said Webber.
Smartal managing partner, Lucy Kwan, added that the company began testing its solutions in Hong Kong in 1996. "It was used as a trial product and has now been officially launched based on the 2001 (population census) data. We also launched Supermap, which offers data through maps."
Webber said that census data was not readily available in most Asian markets, but added that retailers such as McDonald's and Marks & Spencer regularly used such solutions to plan marketing initiatives.
