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Chapter
8
Developing A Global
Vision Through
Marketing Research
McGraw-Hill/Irwin
International Marketing, 13/e
© 2007 The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc., All Rights Reserved.
Chapter Learning Objectives
• The importance of problem definition in international
research
• The problems of availability and use of secondary data
• Quantitative and qualitative research methods
• Multicultural sampling and its problems in less
developed countries
• Sources of secondary data
• How to analyze and use research information
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Breadth and Scope of International
Marketing Research
•
•
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
•
The research process should follow these steps:
1. Define the research problem and establish research objectives
2. Determine the sources of information to fulfill the research
objectives
3. Consider the costs and benefits of the research effort
4. Gather the relevant data from secondary or primary sources, or
both
5. Analyze, interpret, and summarize the results
6. Effectively communicate the results to decision makers
•
Although the steps in a research program are similar for all
countries, variations and problems in implementation occur
because of differences in cultural and economic
development.
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Defining the Problem and Establishing
Research Objectives
• The major difficulty is converting a series of often
ambiguous business problems into tightly drawn and
achievable research objectives.
• The first, most crucial step in research is more critical in
foreign markets because an unfamiliar environment
tends to could problems definition.
• Other difficulties in foreign research stem from failures
to establish problem limits broad enough to include all
relevant variables.
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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 Availability and
Use of Secondary Data (cont’d)
• Validating secondary data
- Questions should be asked to effectively judge the reliability of
secondary data sources:
• Who collected the data? Would there be any reason for purposely
misrepresenting the facts?
• For what purposes were the data collected?
• How were the data collected?
• Are the data internally consistent and logical in light of known data
sources or market factors?
• Checking the consistency of one set of secondary data with other
data of known validity is an effective and often-used way of
judging validity.
• The availability and accuracy of recorded secondary data
increase as the level of economic development increases.
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Gathering Primary Data:
Quantitative and Qualitative Research
• Primary data – Data collected specifically for the particular research
project at hand.
• Quantitative research – Usually a large number of respondents are
asked to reply either verbally or in writing to structured questions using a
specific response format (such as yes/no) or to select a response from a
set of choices.
• Qualitative research – If questions are asked, they are almost always
open-ended or in-depth, and unstructured responses that reflect the
person’s thoughts and feelings on the subject are sought.
• Qualitative research seeks to interpret what the people in the sample are
like.
• Qualitative research is helpful in revealing the impact of sociocultural
factors on behavior patterns and in developing research hypotheses.
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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.
• 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 (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: translate from one language to another
• Parallel Translation: two translators are used for the back transelation
• Decentering: hybrid of back transelation.
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Multicultural Research: A Special Problem
• As companies become global marketers and seek to
standardize various parts of the marketing mix across
several countries, multicultural studies become more
important.
• Multicultural research involves dealing with countries
that have different languages, economies, social
structures, behavior, and attitude patterns.
• In some cases the entire research design may have to be
different between countries to maximize the
comparability of the results.
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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:
-
Online surveys and buyer panels
Online focus groups
Web visitor tracking
Advertising measurement
Customer identification systems
E-mail marketing lists
Observational research
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Estimating Market Demand
• In assessing current product demand and forecasting future
demand, reliable historical data are required.
• When the desired statistics are not available, a close approximation
can be made using local production figures plus imports, with
adjustments for exports and current inventory levels.
• Two methods of forecasting demand:
- Expert opinion
• The key in using expert opinion to help in forecasting demand is
triangulation.
- Analogy
• This assumes that demand for a product develops in much the same
way in all countries as comparable economic development occurs in
each country.
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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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Communicating with Decision Makers
• Gathered information must be given to decision makers in a
timely manner.
• Decision makers should be directly involved not only in problem
definition and questions formulation, but also in the fieldwork.
• Even when both managers and customers speak the same language
and are from the same culture, communication can become
garbled in either direction.
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Managing the Cultural Barrier in International
Marketing Research
• Insert Exhibit 8.3
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Summary
• The basis objective of the market research function is
providing management with information for more
accurate decision making.
• Customer attitudes about providing information to a
researcher are culturally conditioned.
• Foreign market information surveys must be carefully
designed to elicit the desired data and at the same time
not offend the respondent sense of privacy.
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Summary (continued)
• Many foreign markets have inadequate or unreliable
bases of secondary information
• Three keys to successful international marketing
research:
- The inclusion of natives of the foreign culture on
research teams
- The use of multiple methods and triangulation
- The inclusion of decision makers, even top
executives, who must on occasion talk directly to or
directly observe customers in foreign markets
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