I visited Thailand frequently to assist my distributor in penetrating into the market.  One of my habit is to visit dealers, shopping centres and do some research work.  But in a day, at most I can only meet 2 dealers by car unless, I am willing to ride on the motorbike with my full suite.

In the car, I chatted with the sales manager.  He was happily blasting his radio and asked me to enjoy the music.  He told me that it is a way of life for most people to listen to the radio while caught in the TRAFFIC JAM.  At that time I was marketing a printer and one of the features was less PAPER JAM.

Since most people are caught in a traffic jam, they will be stuck in the car and the radio.  They are also familiar to "JAMs" so I went back to the distributor and started on a marketing campaign on "NO PAPER JAM" on the radio.

On another occasion, I discovered that competition is most intense in the capital, which is Bangkok.  There is not much marketing activities by our competitors in the Northern & Southern part of the country.  With that information, using "Art of War" techniques, we decided on the strategy to attack the north first, then move on to the south and then back to central.

In any business program, especially now, it may be easy to lift figures from the internet but it is always good to be on the ground to understand how business is transacted so as to formulated effective plans.