Bryan Urbick, chairman and CEO of the UK-based Consumer Knowledge Centre (CKC), believes a more detailed segmentation can be adopted in the children's market, in order to maximise sales.

For example, the current Thai ready-to-drink milk market serves only two large youth groups: young children and teenagers. Urbick pointed out that in between the two groups lay the largely untapped four-to-seven-year-olds, eight-to-11-year-olds and 12-to-15- year-olds. Youngsters in these overlooked segments differ in behaviour, nutritional needs, taste palates and aspirations and therefore need different communication approaches.

Urbick said the size of the children's food and beverage market in Thailand was about 30 per cent of current per-capita spending.

Universally, the key drivers of children's behaviour - control, aspiration and excitement - are the same the world over, he said.

Yet to reach Thai children effectively, marketers must appeal to their visual senses. Based on the CKC's own research, Urbick concluded that Thai children had a strong sense of beauty and aesthetics. The food-industry veteran of 10 years believes stories told on packaging can be more detailed. Not only that, but the way Thai children experience food begs for more subtlety.

Mothers, as is usually the case, play an influential role in children's food and drink behaviour. But contrary to popular belief, mothers do not always select the most nutritious products. Other factors, depending on such social contexts as convenience, are equally important if not more so. Sometimes, mothers buy a certain product to reward their children or reduce the time spent getting them ready for school.

Urbick said a major hurdle in marketing children's food and beverage products was "neophobia" - in which children were often afraid of new and unfamiliar products. The solution is to include familiar elements in new products, because early acceptance is vital.

Ki Nan Tsui

 The Nation