<Startup Global Marketing> Singapore — Microcosm of Global Gold Consumers (1)

4 min readJun 23, 2018

Part 1. Facts & Status

For most established multinationals, Singapore is an ideal country to locate their Asian headquarters. However, for startups, Singapore takes on a whole new meaning — it becomes a perfect country for their first comprehensive marketing efforts.

As companies go through multiple stages of growth, their marketing strategies and tactics need to be optimized and tailored to each stage

In the initial stage, social media platforms and e-commerce sites that connect startups with potential users worldwide prove to be the most useful channels.

In the subsequent growth stage, once startups have validated their global potential, generated revenue, and/or potentially secured funding for rapid scale-up, they need to widen their consumer touchpoints across various online and offline channels.

This stage’s startups can hardly launch in all major regions due to their still limited resources. It is strategic to select a country first to test its full marketing.

Ideally, the country to be selected should satisfy these requirements:

Consumers speak English (=no burden of language localization),
Have high consuming power, have a high interest in new products & trends, have open-mind toward foreign brands
are active on both on- & offline channels to create large synergies between on- and offline marketing campaigns.
Most importantly, it would be great if startups can be exposed to as many consumers as possible , even with a relatively small budget.
Last but not least, consumers are not idiosyncratic but have a cosmopolitan orientation so that the insights and lessons learned from them can be applied to the later expansion to other countries.

Incredibly, out of the 190 countries in the world, there is one country that meets every single criterion mentioned above. This country has managed to gather the cream of the crop of consumers within its city-state. That country is Singapore.

I. Singapore — Consumer Characteristics

1.The second most densely populated country in the world

Population 5.75M. 0.08% of the world population

2. Asian Melting Pot

Singapore hosts regional headquarters of global companies like Google and Facebook, and foreign expats make up 30% of the population, adding to the diversity of this multi-ethnic country. The population consists of 74% Chinese, 14% Malays, and 9% Indians.
Tourism plays a significant role in Singapore’s economy, with 17.4 million international tourists visiting in 2017, more than three times its total population.

3. Big Consumer Market

GDP per Capita US$51K (2017, Ranked 11th globally)
GDP per Capita Purchasing Power Parity US$90K (2017, Ranked 4th globally)
Singapore is one of the top three global finance hubs, alongside New York and London.

4. Western Asian Country

Modern Singapore traces its founding back to 1819 when the ‘British’ East India Company established its trading post there as a hub for South Sea Trade. It remained under British influence until 1963 when it joined Malaysia. Singapore is often described as ‘East meets West’ geographically, economically, and culturally.
Chinese communities in Southeast Asia are sometimes referred to as ‘Asian Jews’ due to their significant influence on the economies of various Southeast Asian countries. However, Singapore stands out with a high proportion of Chinese ethnicity. While Chinese people constitute less than 5% of the Southeast Asian population (28 million Chinese out of a total of 620 million in Southeast Asia), the ethnic proportion of Chinese in Singapore is over 70%.
The official languages of Singapore are English, Malay, Mandarin, and Tamil. However, English is the primary language spoken.

Singapore’s cost of living is generally 17% cheaper than in New York, with the exception of expenses related to clothing and transportation. This information is based on data from www.expatistan.com.

II. Singapore — IT & Media Consumption Status

1. Singapore is one of the most connected countries, with an 82% Internet penetration rate and an 86% mobile penetration rate. Mobile devices are more commonly used for web searching than computers.

2. Mobile OS share: Android 50%, iOS 30%

3. Search Engine Share: Google 97%

4. Most popular messaging app: WhatsApp

5. Most popular platform for video watching: YouTube