Guess what? Emerging markets do not evolve in the same way as western markets. In February 2008, Harvard Business Review predicted online worlds as one of its ‘breakthrough ideas’ of the year. In Asia, they’ve known about this for some time. When it comes to development of the digital space, Western assumptions about Asia have been slow to form at best, and, at worst, plain wrong. In the online world, Asia has taken different trajectories to actually go beyond both Europe and North America. This has profound implications not only for Western understanding of Asia’s developing economies and cultures, but for how it does business with them.

What’s happened?
How do we know that the US and Eurocentric vision of the Internet is losing significance? Here’s a clue. 384 million Chinese internet users. There are now more internet users in China than in the US, and Asia is already accounting for over 40% of the world’s global online population. And it is not just about the number of people going online in Asia, it is also what they do when they are online.

In Asia, social networking participants have taken such websites to a different level. Instant messaging has never been such a hit in Europe and North America that it has been in Asia. Confined by their own languages and using their own cultural preferences for communicating, Japan, Korea and China have created their own versions of the social web. These three nations are evolving in different ways to gain and keep their own internal market advantages. Compared to the US and European social media, companies struggle to monetise their social media applications; in Korea and China, QQ and Cyworld are already profitable. This makes it difficult for the US and Eurocentric global players to see a way in.

Cultural constraints, online openness
What are the reasons for these differences? Technology is overcoming local constraints. Everybody was aware of the social and cultural codes that inhibit behaviour in Asia. Nobody predicted that the advent of online worlds would tap into a desire for expression that lies beneath.

In their personal lives, Asian online users have grasped the freedom and anonymity offered by the internet and taken it way beyond the experience of Western cultures. Today, 40-50% of online Asians are involved in user-generated content, compared to just 10% in the West. The whole development of web 2.0 is much faster in this part of the world. There is substantial evidence that Asian consumers are more comfortable expressing themselves online.

So how do we keep up with this fast-paced digital environment, both from a research and business perspective? It calls for a careful, three-pronged approach: observation; conversation; interaction.

Engaging the new consumer
First, Observation. This is about ‘listening’, getting close to what people are saying and doing online through research: creating a ‘virtual closeness’ through buzz-monitoring software that can analyse user-generated content semantically.

Second, Conversation. In Asia, due to cultural constraints, the traditional focus group is not effective online. Our research tools enable clients to have different types of conversations and engage consumers differently. Developed in Asia, it has immediate relevance to what consumers are doing here, online, today.

Third, Interaction. Participation cannot happen without the first two stages. This means going further than a classic agency relationship; clients and research agencies are now collaborating and co-creating with the new consumers. To engage consumers, clients need to ensure reciprocity. Consumers’ time and attention must be earned and rewarded. Activities such as contests and competitions help to change the type of interaction between brands and consumers.

The new reality
Truth is, Western marketers have no time to come to terms with the Internet as they think it is. The next version is already born in Asia where consumers are making the ‘metaverse’ a reality: multiple online spaces where people congregate as their avatars or online persona to chat, create and trade. It is a prediction of what we are only just beginning to see in Europe and the US. Gartner Consulting predicts that by 2011, 80% of active Internet users will have an avatar.

Just because the online world is following an evolutionary path that Western marketers did not predict, this is no time to be averse to the metaverse. Fear not. The right kind of approach to research will provide the entitlement to some of the answers.

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