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Chapter 6

INTERNATIONAL
MARKETING RESEARCH

Prepared by Robin Roberts


Griffith University
Learning objectives
After studying this chapter you should be
able to:
•Understand how to formulate a high-
quality research problem definition
•Work with secondary international
marketing research
•Identify the need for primary international
marketing research
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Learning objectives
• Perform a market size assessment
• Use new market information technologies
• Understand the issues involved in
managing international marketing
research
Overview
• There is a six step approach to
international marketing
• Follows a similar pattern to domestic
market research
– but the international context gives rise to six
problems specific to international marketing
research

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International marketing research
process
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 results
6. Report and present the findings of the study

How different a process is this to domestic


market research?
International marketing research
process
Major challenges
1.Complexity of research design
2.Lack and inaccuracy of secondary data
3.Time and cost requirements to collect
primary data

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International marketing research
process
• Coordination of multi-country research
efforts and data collection efforts
• Difficulty in establishing comparability
across multi-country studies
• Different practical considerations
The international marketing
research process
Figure 6.1

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Research
problem formulation
• Start with a precise definition of the
research problem
• The foundation of a good market research
study
• Difficulties arise due to lack of familiarity
of the foreign environment
Secondary
marketing research
Definition
• Data that have already been collected for
some other purpose
• A range of sources includes:
– the internet
– government sources
• e.g. Austrade www.austrade.gov.au
– corporate
• directories both online and offline
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Nielsen’s China
omnibus survey
Figure 6.2
Secondary
marketing research
• Problems with secondary data sources
– accuracy of data
– age of data
– reliability of data over time
– comparability of data
– lumping data

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Primary
marketing research
• Quantitative data
– data that represents an attitude or opinion
by assigning a number that can be
statistically analysed

• Qualitative data
– data that describes attitudes, opinions and
motivations in the words of each respondent
Collecting primary data
Can be collected in 3 ways:
• Focus groups
• Survey methods
– marketing research
– questionnaire design
– construct equivalence
– measure equivalence
– sampling 14/31
Primary
marketing research
• Focus Groups
– exploratory
– loosely structured free flowing discussion
among a group of target customers facilitated
by a moderator
• helps with new product development
• testing new product concepts
• precursor to quantitative research
International issues
for focus groups
• Cultural sensitivity
• Nature of group dynamics
– individual versus collective
• Japanese and Chinese more collective while NZ
and Australia more individualistic
• How would this affect the outcome of a focus
group?
• Non-verbal cues even more important
than in domestic market research
Primary market research
• Survey methods for cross-cultural
marketing research
– questionnaire design
• most popular form of gathering data in
quantitative market research
• cross cultural research does present problems
• comparability of survey results across borders
could be an issue
Primary market research
• Survey methods for cross-cultural
marketing research
– construct equivalence
• the degree to which marketing constructs have
the same meaning and significance across
cultures
• e.g. bicycles mean different things in different
countries and this needs to be reflected in the
construction of the research device
» recreation in Australia
» transportation in China
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Primary market research
• Survey methods for cross-cultural
marketing research
– measure equivalence
• calibration equivalence
– US is imperial (pounds, inches)
– Thailand is metric (metres, litres)
• translation equivalence
– translation from one language to another
– embarrassing mistakes can occur
Primary market research
• Survey methods for cross-cultural
marketing research
– measure Equivalence (cont’d)
• parallel Translation
– a process in which a document is translated
independently by a number of translators and the
translations compared to reconcile differences
• scalar (metric) equivalence
– the degree to which scores from subjects of different
countries have the same meaning and interpretation

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Primary market research
• Survey methods for cross-cultural
marketing research
– sampling
• who should be surveyed?
• how many people should be surveyed?
• how should prospective respondents be chosen?
• not all countries are homogenous
– What is ‘Chinese’?
– China has more than a dozen ethnic minorities
Primary market research
• Survey methods for cross-cultural marketing
research
– contact method

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Table 6.1 Comparison of collection methods in five European countries
Primary market research
• Survey methods for cross-cultural
marketing research
– collecting the information
• there are a number of biases
– courtesy bias
» desire to be overly polite
– social desirability bias
» Subjects attempt to reflect a certain social status
in their response
Primary market research
• Survey Methods for cross-cultural
marketing research
– collecting the information (cont’d)
• redundancy
– repetition of survey questions in
different ways to allow for robustness
and cross-checking
• ethnographic research
– researchers embed themselves in the community they
are studying

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Market size assessment
• Determining the potential of a market is one of
the key drivers of international market research
• There are several methods:
– analogy method
– the trade audit
– the chain ratio method
– cross-sectional regression analysis
• All are useful when there is very little data
available or the quality of data is questionable
Market size assessment
• Analogy method
– comparison of a similar product in a similar
environment/country

• The trade audit


– estimate based on local production and
imports/exports

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Market size assessment
• The chain ratio method
– estimating market size based on fine-tuning broad
estimates

• Cross-sectional regression analysis


– relating the issue you are interested in to a set of
‘predictor variables’
New market
information technologies
• Point-of-sale store scanner data
– the Swiss supermarket chain Metro can
monitor shopper trends in their Hanoi store

• Consumer panel data


– collecting data from a range of consumers
on a continuous basis
• what to do when Japanese supermarket chains
are not very cooperative?
– ask consumers to collect it in their homes
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Managing international
marketing research
• There are a number of issues the
international marketer needs to consider:
– selecting a research agency
• global or home grown?
– coordination of multi-country research
• who is responsible?
• head office or each of the regional offices
– ethical research considerations
• accidentally misrepresenting the nature of
the study
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Summary
You should now have an understanding of:
• How to formulate a high-quality research
problem definition
• Working with secondary international
marketing research
• Identifying the need for primary
international marketing research

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Summary
• How to perform a market size assessment

• New market information technologies

• The issues involved in managing


international marketing research

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