Expat Insight, Croatian consumers are conservative
Expat Insight: Once you have being living in Croatia for a while, you of course stumble on some funny issues, which show how the mentality can be different from country to country. One think which really surprised me is how Conservative many Croatians are, here a few examples.
When we first launched our Calling card down here, we had a slogan save up to 95% (which was actually possible at that time), although we tried all kinds of different marketing nobody really wanted to buy our product, so we decided to go for a new strategy, we went on the streets and started talking to people and handing them out, a flyer with detailed explanations and a 10 kuna test card, although the general feedback was, “what’s the catch” we managed to get quite a few people trying out our product, after they saw that what we promised in our commercial was actually correct, they started using our product!
Another experience I have had quite often, is related to the vacation house rental, house owners we stay with often would tell me about the old days, where they had guest coming back to them over and over again, today they are only waiting for these days to come back again.
When I tell them they should not put to much hope in to that, as the younger generation have another holiday pattern, they don’t believe me. If I then start to use arguments like more then 50% of the holiday booking are done online, so that’s where they need to be, some would tell me, we already by 10 agents but they are not working good, it doesn’t bring anything!
If I then explain them it is not about quantity of agents but about quality of the agent and about how they present their offer, like I would tell them, you need to check if the agent you used can actually be found in Google in the countries where the customer sits, majority of them have no clue what I am talking about.
When I comes to presentation, I tell them you need to have some great photos of your place, because the first impression counts, they would tell me something like we already invest 200 kuna in photos 3 years ago, If I then tell, but that’s not enough you have to invest in new photos (like the nice Air photos here) of their vacation house, which would make them stand out of the crowd, they look at me very strange!
Till now I still did not manage to find a way to explain them, how important marketing it is for their future business, I guess, their conservative way of thinking will not changed before, they see a neighbouring house that successfully increases their booking by investing in marketing.
Photos in this article are property of IHS d.o.o, Croatia’s Air photo specialist.
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