Developing A Global
Vision Through
Marketing Research
Breadth and Scope of International
Marketing Research
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•
Research can be divided into three types based on information needs:
- General information about the country, area, and/or market
- Information necessary to forecast future marketing requirements by
anticipating social, economic, consumer, and industry trends within
specific markets or countries.
- Specific market information used to make product, promotion,
distribution, and price decisions and to develop marketing plans.
Unisys Corporation’s planning steps for collecting and assessing the following
types of information:
1. Economic
2. Cultural, sociologist, and political climate
3. Overview of market conditions
4. Summary of the technological environment
5. Competitive situation
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Top 20 Countries for Marketing Research
Expenditures (millions of dollars)
• Insert Exhibit 8.1
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The Research Process
Careful Planning is
Required to Avoid
Colliding with
Mountains
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Problems of Availability and
Use of Secondary Data
• Availability of data
- Most countries simply do not have governmental agencies that collect on a
regular basis the kinds of secondary data readily available in the U.S.
- Researchers’ language skills
• Reliability of data
- Official statistics are sometimes too optimistic, reflecting national pride
rather than practical reality, while tax structures and fear of the tax collector
often adversely affect data.
• Comparability of data
- In other countries, especially those less developed, data can be many years
out of date as well as having been collected on an infrequent and
unpredictable schedule.
- Too frequently, data are reported in different categories or in categories
much too broad to be of specific value.
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Problems of Gathering Primary Data
• Ability to communicate opinions
- It is difficult for a person to formulate needs, attitudes, and opinions
about goods whose use may not be understood, that are not in
common use within the community.
• Gerber
• Willingness to respond
- Cultural differences
- The role of the male, the suitability of personal gender-based
inquiries, and other gender-related issues can affect willingness to
respond.
• Sampling in field surveys
- The greatest problem in sampling stems from the lack of adequate
demographic data and available lists from which to draw meaningful
samples.
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Problems of Gathering Primary Data
Language Complexities – Indian 20Rupee Note (13 languages + English)
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Problems of Gathering Primary Data
Japanese Students learning one of the
15,000 kanji characters
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Problems of Gathering Primary Data (cont’d)
• The kinds of problems encountered in drawing a random sample
include the following:
-
No officially recognized census of population
No other listings that can serve as sampling frames
Incomplete and out-of-date telephone directories
No accurate maps of population centers
• Language and comprehension
- The most universal survey research problem in foreign countries is the
language barrier.
- Literacy poses yet another problem
- Marketers use three different techniques to help ferret out translation errors
ahead of time.
• Back Translation
• Parallel Translation
• Decentering
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Research on the Internet:
A Growing Opportunity
• One billion users in more than 200 countries
• International Internet use is growing almost twice as fast as
American use.
• Eight different uses for the Internet in international research:
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Online surveys and buyer panels
Online focus groups
Web visitor tracking
Advertising measurement
Customer identification systems
E-mail marketing lists
Embedded research
Observational research
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Personal Computer Diffusion Rate
(per 1,000 people)
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Personal Mobile Phone Diffusion Rate
(per 1,000 people)
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Problems in Analyzing and Interpreting
Research Information
• Accepting information at face value in foreign markets is
imprudent.
• The foreign market researcher must posses three talents
to generate meaningful marketing information.
- First, the researcher must posses a high degree of cultural
understanding of the market in which research is being conducted.
- Second, a creative talent for adapting research methods is necessary.
- Third, a skeptical attitude in handling both primary and secondary
data is helpful.
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Responsibility for Conducting
Marketing Research
• A company in need of foreign market research can rely on an
outside foreign-based agency or on a domestic company with a
branch within the country in question.
• A trend toward decentralization of the research function is
apparent.
• A comprehensive review of the different approaches to
multicountry research suggests that the ideal approach is to have
local researchers in each country, with close coordination between
the client company and the local research companies.
• Two stages of analysis are necessary:
- Individual-country level
- Multi-country level
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Responsibility for Conducting
Marketing Research
Independent Foreign Firms, Branches of a
Domestic Company or Internal Resources
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Managing the Cultural Barrier in International
Marketing Research
• Insert Exhibit 8.3
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