Professional Documents
Culture Documents
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
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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
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Market size assessment
• The chain ratio method
– estimating market size based on fine-tuning broad
estimates
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Summary
• How to perform a market size assessment
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