A global strategy consulting firm was advising on a Southeast Asia retail expansion strategy project. The engagement required a ground-level assessment of retail channel dynamics across four markets: Indonesia, Vietnam, Thailand, and the Philippines.
The scope was specific. The client needed to understand how modern trade and general trade coexisted in each market, how e-commerce was reshaping traditional distribution, and where the real friction points were for brands trying to grow shelf presence outside major urban centres. Each market had a distinct retail structure, and the client's existing secondary research provided macro-level context but lacked the operational granularity required for a credible market entry recommendation.
The firm had three weeks before the client presentation. Two weeks of that window were available for primary research before the synthesis phase began. Speed and breadth were both non-negotiable.
Konnect received the brief and immediately ran parallel searches across all four markets rather than sequencing them. The team prioritised practitioners with direct operational experience inside retail distribution, modern trade operations, and e-commerce channel management in each specific market, not regional analysts or consultants with a top-down view.
For Indonesia, the search focused on practitioners with general trade and modern trade experience, given the market's distinctive reliance on both channels and the significant variation in distribution dynamics between Java and non-Java markets.
For Vietnam, the focus was on practitioners who had managed retail operations during the market's rapid channel transition, where Southeast Asia e-commerce grew by nearly 15% in 2024, with social commerce and live-streaming reshaping how brands reach consumers across the region.
For Thailand, the team sought practitioners with experience in modern trade negotiation and category management, given the market's well-developed supermarket and hypermarket infrastructure and the increasing competition from digital channels.
For the Philippines, the focus was on practitioners with experience in the fragmented sari-sari store network that remains central to distribution reach outside Metro Manila, alongside those familiar with the rapid growth of e-commerce in the market.
Within 10 days of the initial brief, Konnect had engaged practitioners covering all four markets across the required scope.
Expert sessions across the four markets surfaced operational intelligence that materially shaped the firm's strategic recommendations.
General trade remains dominant outside major cities, but the economics of serving sub-distributors in non-Java markets are structurally different from the Java model. Practitioners with direct distribution experience surfaced how working capital requirements, route density economics, and informal channel incentive structures vary in ways that national-level data consistently obscures.
TikTok Shop's Southeast Asia GMV quadrupled in two years to reach USD 22.6 billion in 2024, with social-first commerce reshaping how brands engage consumers across the region. Practitioners who had managed brand relationships with social commerce platforms provided insight into how the economics of live-stream selling differ from traditional channel economics, and what this means for brand margin management.
Modern trade negotiation dynamics in Thailand are significantly more concentrated than in most regional peers, with a small number of operators holding disproportionate channel power. Practitioners with direct category management experience provided the client with a realistic picture of what shelf access actually costs versus what published data suggests.
The persistence of sari-sari stores as the primary distribution channel for FMCG in provincial markets means that brands targeting national reach face a last-mile challenge that modern trade expansion alone does not solve. Practitioners with direct experience in sari-sari distribution networks provided operational intelligence on how leading brands are navigating this challenge.
"Four markets, four different retail structures, four different sets of channel economics. Konnect found the right people in each one. The sessions gave us the operational layer that our secondary research simply could not provide."
Engagement Manager, Global Strategy Consulting Firm
The consulting firm completed its primary research phase within the two-week window. The expert sessions across Indonesia, Vietnam, Thailand, and the Philippines provided the market-specific operational intelligence that allowed the team to build a differentiated set of recommendations for each market rather than a generic regional strategy.
The client proceeded with a phased market entry approach informed directly by the channel dynamics and operational realities surfaced through the expert sessions. The consulting firm noted that the quality and speed of expert matching across all four markets in a single engagement cycle was the key factor in meeting the timeline.
For strategy teams running cross-market retail research across Southeast Asia, the ability to access practitioners across multiple geographies in parallel within a single engagement framework is what separates credible primary research from a series of disconnected information-gathering exercises. Konnect's coverage across Indonesia, Vietnam, Thailand, and the Philippines gave this team the intelligence it needed without compressing the timeline.
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