How Coca-Cola Japan partnered with a tech start-up to co-create an offering appropriate for their market. By addressing issues around time and efficiencies they achieved win-win outcomes. According to the Japanese Market Research Association, in 2013 the Japanese market research industry grew by only 0.8%, down from a huge increase of 8.4% in the previous year, since then the industry has grown in Japan, but has yet to reach the levels of growth seen back in 2012. This arrest in growth in the local industry was accompanied by a severe tightening of budgets across the marketing and insights functions.
The Emerging Markets house the bulk of human populace, with China and India alone accounting for about 30% of the world's population. As these markets have developed and per capita income has risen in many of these countries, they have become growth engines for global consumer companies. For example China's per capita incomes tripled in nominal terms in the 1990s and India followed suit with its per capita income tripling between 2002 and 2011. The middle income group or the aspirational classes grew by about 67% in numbers, in India and China, in the first decade of this century. Large CPG multinationals reported 37% - 57% of their sales from emerging markets in 2012, and this percentage is growing.