What is it we need to understand about Emerging Markets to succeed?
How are our consumers / users there different from those of the developed markets?
Getting the User Experience right for the consumers of Emerging Markets is the ultimate key in the success or failure of our products and companies. If we ignore these users then we lose the potential for our next 10 million customer growth spurt.
Dr. Lidia Oshylansky, User Experience Research Lead, Emerging Markets at Google reminds us of the importance of the emerging markets, which everybody in the audience is aware of. 62.6% of the worldwide population lives in those markets.
But who to address? Several factors she considers when answering this question, e.g., age of population, income, percentage of population online and using a phone, literacy rate and quality of electrical supply.
You need to be aware that those markets aren't W.E.I.R.D. (meaning western, educated, industrialized, rich and democratic)! Less years in school create a different mindset. There is lots of old technology around. The people crave innovation, but maybe aren't able to afford it.