The Market Research Society of India (MRSI) last week announced the adoption and implementation of a new socio-economic classification system that prioritizes women's education as a fundamental determinant of social capital. The Indian Socio Economic Classification (ISEC) considers the education of the highest educated female adult, occupation of chief earner and education of the highest educated male adult in the households. In contrast, the existing NCCS classification relies on the occupation of the chief wage earner and consumer durables. 

e4m caught up with Shuvadip Banerjee, Chief Digital Marketing Officer of ITC, who is a member of both the Indian Society of Advertisers (ISA) and MRSI managing committee, to talk about the new system, the need to bring it, how it will help marketers, and more.

Excerpts: 

The ISEC is being touted as the superior form of audience classification system. Will it help advertisers gain better consumer insight and ROI?

Current classification has become extremely volatile and lacks discrimination. Hence as marketers we are not able to use it for understanding purchase behaviour or media behaviour. With most Indians now owning consumer durables, distinguishing between different economic classes of consumers has become increasingly challenging, rendering the current measurement system less relevant. Besides, the NCCS doesn't reflect well on women consumers who are now decision makers

Since the ISEC will help marketers understand the consumers better and also help in sharp targeting consumers/shoppers, brands will be more efficient in any money that they would invest. The ISEC will enable marketers to better understand their target audience's behaviour and demographics, facilitating more informed strategies for effective market segmentation and analysis.

Apart from the BARC and IRS, how many other bodies/ councils will need to adjust to the new system?

All systems and organizations need to make the same changes. For those using socio-economic classification to project data, it will be a little heavy lifting. They also need to have some past data recast for trends to be read.

The new classification system has been hailed by the Indian Society of Advertisers (ISA). The ISA has also written to the Broadcast Audience Research Council (BARC) about it

Are there any costs involved for advertisers to implement this?

Cost to change is not the key point. Lack of being able to grow business efficiently is the key aspect. Hence, we cannot look at the trees and miss the woods. There would be some initial cost and some hitches, but the current system is broken, we all need to move.

How much time did implementation of NCCS take? When do you think India will be able to replace NCCS with ISEC? Have you set any time frame? 

NCCS took almost two years to see the day’s light. This time we can do it faster although we haven’t set any timeline. With some baseline data in place with the help of the Research Partners of India, I think India should not take beyond 9 to 12 months to adopt ISEC across all areas. 

Some of the key syndicated measurement organizations should probably start sharing ISEC as a profiling variable, before the projection weights are finalized.

 

There may still be challenges in the ISEC system since it is at a nascent stage.

Don't see much of a challenge except for the large baseline done.