Chapter 3: IM Research

Content

Breadth and Scope of International Market

Research
The Research Process
Defining the Problem and Establishing Research
Objectives
Multicultural Research: A special problem
Research on Internet
Problems in Analysing and interpreting research
information
Market Research
Definition
 Systematic gathering, recording, and analysing of data
to provide information useful to marketing decision
making
 Processes and methods are basically the same applied
in all countries
 IMR involves two additional complications:
- Information must be communicated across cultural
boundaries (translation)
- Environment for conducting research tools are different
across countries
Breadth and Scope of IMR

 Broader scope needed for IMR

 3 types of information needed
- General information about the country, area, market
- Information necessary to forecast future marketing
requirements (social, economic, consumer, industry
trends)
- Specific market information used to make product,
promotion, distribution, and price decisions
Corporate’s Planning steps
Example
Economic and Demographic
Cultural, Sociological, and Political Climate
Overview of Market Conditions
Summary of the technological environment
Competitive situation
Research Process

 Define the research problem and establishing research

objectives
 Determine the sources of information to fulfil the
research objectives
 Consider the costs and benefits of the research effort
 Gather the relevant data from secondary or primary
sources, or both
 Analyze, interpret, and summarise the results
 Effectively communicate the results to decision makers
Defining the Problem and Establishing
Research Objectives
 Converting ambiguous business problems into clear, achievable
research objectives
 Unfamiliar environment tends to cloud problem definition:
- fail to anticipate the influence of the local culture on problem
- fail to identify the SRC
- Treat the problem definition as if it were in the researcher’s home
environment
- IMR failures: questions asked were more appropriate for the US
market than for the foreign one
Problems of availability and use of
secondary data
Too much data
Availability of Data
Reliability of Data
Comparability of Data
Validating Secondary Data
Primary Data
Quantitative/Qualitative Research
 Quantitative research
- Large number of respondents
- Types of questions: Closed ended
- Information about: behaviour, intentions, attitudes, motives, and
demographic characteristics
 Experiments
 Qualitative research
- Open ended questions, in-depth, unstructured responses reflect the
person’s thoughts and feelings
- Observation
- In-depth interview / focus group interview
Continued

 Formulate and define a problem and determine

relevant questions to examine in subsequent research
 Interpret people at a particular cultural background on
their feelings, ideas, attitude, opinions, and resulting
actions
 Reveal the impact of socio cultural factors in
behavioural pattern
 Developing research hypothesis for subsequent research
 Combination of both Quantitative and Qualitative
research in IM
Problems in gathering primary data

Ability to communicate opinion

Willingness to respond
Sampling
 Language
Research on Internet: Growing
opportunity
Online surveys
Online focus groups
Web visitor tracking
Advertising measurement
E-mail marketing lists
Analyzing and interpreting research
findings
Cultural understanding in interpreting
research findings
Native involve in the interpretation