INTERNATIONAL MARKETING RESEARCH PROCESS

An International Marketing Research Process is the systematic gathering, recording, and analyzing data to provide information useful to marketing decision-making. The information must be communicated across cultural boundaries and these research tools are then often applied in foreign markets. General information about the country, area, and/or market is necessary to forecast future marketing. These requirements are done by anticipating social, economic, consumer, and industry trends within specific markets or countries. Specific market information is then used to make the product, promotion, distribution, and price decisions and develop marketing plans. In domestic operations, most emphasis is placed on gathering specific market information because the other data are often available from secondary sources.

Types of Information:

1. Economic and demographic: Data on growth in the economy, inflation, business cycle trends; profitability analysis for the division’s products, specific industry economic studies, analyses of overseas economies, key economic indicators for the US and overseas, and population trends (migration, aging, and immigration).
2. Cultural, sociological, and political climate: A non-economic review of conditions affecting the division’s business. Covers ecology, safety, leisure time, and their impact on the business.
3. Market conditions: Analysis of market conditions the division faces by market segment including international conditions.
4. Technological environment: Summary of the state of the art technology as it relates to the division’s business. Needs to be broken down by product segment.
5. Competitive situation: Review of competitor’s sales revenues, methods of market segmentation, products, and apparent strategies on an international scope.

Research Process:

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.
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.

*Variations and/or problems in implementation occur because of differences in cultural and economic development.*

Economic Dualism

A way of conceptualizing the existence of two (sometimes more) separate but symbiotic sets of economic processes or markets within the same political or national social framework. In third world societies, for example, a dual economy is formed by the coexistence of peasant subsistence agriculture and cash production of basic commodities or industrial goods for the international marketing research process. An analogous division exists in highly industrialized economies between the corporate core and peripheral firms and labor markets.

Multicultural Research
Involves countries that have different languages, economies, social structures, behavior, and attitude patterns. Keep this in mind when designing cultural research to ensure comparability and equivalency of results. Different methods have varying reliabilities in different countries (thus different research methods should be applied in different countries). Example: In Latin American countries it is difficult to attract consumers to participate in focus groups because of different views about commercial research and the value of their time. The Japanese don’t respond to mail surveys compared to Americans. Evidence suggests that inefficient attention is paid to non-sampling errors in improperly conducted multicultural studies and the appropriateness of research measure that has not been tested in the multi-cultural context.

Internet Research/Privacy Issues (a matter of personal and legal consideration)
The ability to conduct primary research is one of the most exciting aspects of the internet but the bias of a sample universe composed solely of internet respondents present severe limitations. The firms vary in their abilities to turn data collected into competitive advantages. Today, the real power of the internet for international market research is the ability to easily access volumes of secondary data. Online surveys and buyer panels-have better “branching abilities” (asking different questions based on previous answers). Below are some examples of research.
– Online focus groups: Use of bulletin boards.
– Web visitor tracking: Auto track time visitors travel through websites.
– Advertising measurement: Servers track links to other sites to assess their usefulness. Customer identification systems-track visits and purchases over time creating a “virtual panel”.
– E-mail marketing lists: Sign up for direct marketing efforts via the internet.
– Embedded research: The internet process people go through searching for info about products, comparison shopping, interacting w/service providers, etc is the research process itself (firms that give the option of custom designing products online are the ultimate in applying research for product development purposes).
– Observational research: Chat rooms, blogs, and personal websites monitored to assess customer’s opinions about products.

Two Methods for Forecasting Market Demand
1) Expert Opinion: For market estimation problems, growth rates, and market size particularly in foreign countries new to the marketer, expert opinion is advisable. The key to using expert opinion to forecast demand is triangulation and comparing estimates produced by different sources.
2) Analogy: Assumes that demand for a product develops in much the same way in all countries as comparable economic development occurs in each country. The relationship between a known situation and country in question. Advanced techniques include multiple regression analysis or input-output analysis.

In Review:
– The key component in developing successful international marketing research process strategies and avoiding major market blunders is information.
– If a researcher interested in a general non-economic review of conditions affecting the company’s business, the best area avenue would be a cultural, sociological, and political estimate.
– If a company wants to gather information on its own market environment you should define the research problem and establish research objectives.
– Consulting with customers regarding research design is not a standard step in the research process.
– The availability and accuracy of recorded secondary data increases as the level of economic development increases.
– Survey questionnaires are primary data.
– Yes/No questions research format is quantitative research.
– The open-ended questions research format is qualitative research.
– Lack of randomness in the population is not a problem of drawing a random sample in the international environment.
– The language barrier is the most universal survey research problem in foreign countries.
– Back translation is when a researcher translates a questionnaire into another language and then another translator translates it back into the original language.
– Parallel translation: Analogy 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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