INTERNATIONAL
MARKETING
TOPIC
6
－International Marketing
Research
International
marketing research
- Overview
- Marketing research in international marketing
- Research problem formulation
- Secondary marketing research
- Primary marketing research
- Managing international marketing research
- New market information technologies
- Ethics in international marketing research
Overview
Information - key component in developing a successful marketing strategy.
Even more important when entering foreign markets where reliable, accurate
and valid information becomes crucial.
Typical constraints on gathering information are time, cost and availability.
In an international context - issues such as language barriers, difficulties
in communicating questions, problems in translating questionnaires, and
the training and quality of local fieldwork researchers. These add to the
complexity in obtaining information.
Marketing research
in International marketing
Marketing research can help the international marketing manager in
two ways:
 - It helps in making better decisions that recognise similarities and
differences across countries.
 - It gains support from the local subsidiaries for proposed marketing
decisions.
6 steps in conducting international marketing research:
1.Define the research problem(s).
2.Develop a research design.
3.Determine information needs.
4.Collect the data (secondary and primary).
5.Analyse the data and interpret the results.
6.Report and present the findings of the study.
How different to the regular kind of marketing research?
Marketing research
in International marketing
Major challenges faced by international marketing researchers are:
- Lack and accuracy of secondary data.
- Time and cost requirements to collect primary data.
- Coordination of multicountry research efforts.
- Difficulty in establishing comparability across multicountry studies.
- Different practical considerations (such as the legal aspects of
conducting research, and the culture’s norms about sharing
opinions with strangers).
Research problem
Formulation
 Any research starts by defining the research problem.
 A well-defined problem is a half-solved problem.
 Once the nature of the problem is clear, it needs to be translated into
specific questions.
 For example, BMW in a European positioning strategy study posed the
following questions:

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
What do motorists in the different countries demand from their cars?
What do motorists believe they are getting from various brands?
What does that imply with regard to positioning the BMW brand across
borders?
BMW’s
Existing Position
Sheer Driving Pleasure
How does research impact this decision?
M
Global Positioning
at Oxylane
What are the practical implications of trying to
position a brand in a global environment?
Research problem
formulation

International marketing researchers have to be aware of the self-reference
criterion (SRC) or the tendency to refer to their own cultural values when
formulating the research problem.

To avoid such mistakes researchers should:
1. Define the marketing research problem in terms of domestic
environmental and cultural factors.
2. Define the marketing research problem in terms of foreign environmental
and cultural factors.
3. Isolate the self-reference criterion (SRC) influence on the problem and
examine it carefully to see how it complicates the problem.
4. Redefine the problem without the SRC influence and address it for the
foreign market situation.
Research Design
What issues do you see?
Why should research design vary from
country to country?
Determine
Information Needs
Can needs vary from country to country
- How?
- Why?
Secondary
Marketing research
This involves using information which already exists.
Secondary data is data that have already been collected for some other
purpose.
Primary data is data collected specifically for the purpose of the research
specified by the organisation.
Secondary
Marketing research
 Secondary data is often used for:
 - Selecting potential new markets.
 - Estimating demand.
 - Assessing market interconnectedness.
 Problems with secondary data research:


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- Accuracy of data.
- Age of data.
- Reliability over time.
- Comparability of data.
Primary
Marketing research
Primary marketing research is conducted for the specific objectives in mind.
Secondary data is rarely entirely satisfactory for market research studies.
Primary data is collected specifically for the purpose at hand and can be of
two types:
- Qualitative data. These describe attitudes, opinions and
motivations in the words of each respondent.
- Quantitative data. These are data that represent an attitude or
opinion by assigning a number that can be statistically analysed.
Qualitative
Issues
Focus Groups
Depth Interviews
Quantitative
Issues
Survey
Questionnaire
Tools
Phone etc.
Primary
Marketing research

Particularly important in cross-cultural surveys are:
 -Reluctance to talk to strangers.
 -Fears about confidentiality.
 -Courtesy bias, the desire to be overly polite to the interviewer,
giving responses that are intended to please the interviewer
rather than express true feelings or emotions (especially if
negative). This is common in Asia and the Middle East.
 -Social desirability bias is a bias that occurs when subjects
attempt to reflect a certain social status in their responses,
giving responses that are socially acceptable.
Analyzing the Data

Data analysis turns data into useful information to help with decision-making.

Data analysis can be conducted at three levels:
1. ‘Individual’, at which the data from each respondent must be analysed
separately.
2. ‘Within-country or cultural unit’, at which the data are analysed separately
for each country or cultural unit.
3. ‘Across-countries or cultural units’, at which the data of all the countries or
cultural units are analysed simultaneously.
Interpreting and reporting the results of cross-cultural
research involves problems not encountered in domestic
research. For example, the researcher’s own biases or
ethnocentrism may naturally interfere with interpretation.
The case of
Cross Cultural Data Analysis
What are the practical implications of trying to do data
analysis if you are dealing with another culture and another
language?
Reporting
 The three key issues in managing international marketing research are:
1. Selecting a research agency.
2. Coordinating market research projects.
3. Building international marketing information systems.
 Issues in selecting a research agency include coordination, the
agency's level of expertise, their track record, level of confidentiality
required, communication skills and cost.
Coordination issues include who should coordinate and what
degree of coordination there should be.
Issues associated with building and maintaining an international
marketing information system include global environmental
scanning, international resource allocation, monitoring country and
product performance and transmitting ideas and experiences
throughout the organisation.
New market
Information technologies
 The Internet can facilitate quick, low-cost research. It can be used for
conducting both secondary and primary marketing research.
 The Internet has made use of the following measurement tools possible:
 -Online
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surveys
-Bulletin boards and chat groups
-Web visitor tracking
-Virtual panels
-Focus groups
-Cookies
?
 Any other suggestions for using new market information
technologies?
New market
Information technologies
 Innovations in marketing decision support systems has made possible a
number of advances in marketing management:

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-Shift from mass to micromarketing.
-Continuous monitoring of brand sales/market share movements.
-Scanning data being used by manufacturers to support marketing decisions.
-Scanning data being used to provide merchandising support to retailers.
Ethics in international
marketing research
Ethical issues can arise in marketing research any time the market researcher, the
client, the respondent or the public have conflicting interests or act without
consideration of the other stakeholders.
These can occur in any stage of the marketing research process (with examples):
-Research design (client misrepresents purpose)
-Determining information needs (unnecessary collection of
expensive data)
-Questionnaire design (privacy issues)
-Sampling (stating using one method but in reality using another)
-Data collection (disclosure of respondent information to outside
parties)