Chapter 8
Developing a Global
Vision through
Marketing Research
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Marketing Research
Marketing research is the systematic gathering,
recording, and analyzing of data to provide
information useful to marketing decision making.
As an enterprise broadens its scope of operations to
include international markets, the need for current,
accurate information is magnified.
A marketer must find the most accurate and reliable
data possible within the limits imposed by time, cost,
and the present state of the art.
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International Marketing Research
Researchers maintain that entry into a fast
developing, new-to-the-firm foreign market is one of
the most daunting and ambiguous strategic decisions
an executive can face.
Complications in international marketing research:
• Information must be communicated across cultural
boundaries.
• The environments within which the research tools are
applied are often different in foreign markets.
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Bill Gates interacts with customers
© Greg Baker/AP Images
It’s crucial for top executives to get away from their desks and spend time in the marketplace.
While detailed marketing research reports are important, decisions at the very top of the
largest corporations must still be informed by a sense of the market and customers, obtainable
only through direct contact by top executives.
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Breadth and Scope of International
Marketing Research
Research can be divided into three types on the basis
of information needs
1. General information about the country, area, and/or
market
2. Information necessary to forecast future marketing
requirements by anticipating social, economic, consumer,
and industry trends within specific markets or countries
3. Specific market information used to make product,
promotion, distribution, and price decisions and to
develop marketing plans
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The Research Process
Define the research problem and establish research
1.
objectives.
Determine the sources of information to fulfill the
2.
research objectives.
3. Consider the costs and benefits of the research effort.
Gather the relevant data from secondary or primary
4.
sources, or both.
5. Analyze, interpret, and summarize the results.
6. Effectively communicate the results to decision makers.
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Defining the Problem and
Establishing Research Objectives
The major difficulty here is converting a series of often
ambiguous business problems into tightly drawn and
achievable research objectives.
• Researchers often embark on the research process with only a
vague grasp of the tota problem.
Other difficulties stem from failures to establish problem
limits broad enough to include all relevant variables.
• Information on a far greater range of factors is necessary to
offset the unfamiliar cultural background of the foreign market.
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Problems of Availability and
Use of Secondary Data
The problem for American marketing researchers is
sorting through too much data.
Available data may not have the level of reliability
necessary for confident decision making for many
reasons.
Comparability of data can even be a problem when
the best commercial research firms collect data
across countries, and managers are well advised to
query their vendors about this problem.
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Shortcomings Faced by Foreign Markets
Availability Reliability
Authenticity Comparability
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Validating Secondary Data
The following questions should be asked to effectively
judge the reliability of secondary data sources:
1. Who collected the data? Would there be any reason for purposely
misrepresenting the facts?
2. For what purposes were the data collected?
3. How (by what methodology) were the data collected?
4. Are the data internally consistent and logical in light of known
data sources or market factors?
(a researcher might check the sale of baby products with the birthrates, or the number of
patient beds in hospitals with the sale of related hospital equipment)
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Gathering Primary Data:
Quantitative and Qualitative Research
Primary data – Data collected specifically for the
particular research project at hand
• Collected if even after seeking all reasonable secondary
data sources, research questions are still not adequately
answered
Sources
• Sales representatives
• Distributors
• Middlemen
• Customers
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Types of Marketing Research
Quantitative research
• 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
• Questions are asked––they are almost always open-ended
or in-depth––and unstructured responses, including
storytelling, that reflect the person’s thoughts and feelings
on the subject are sought.
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Problems of Gathering Primary Data
Ability to communicate opinions
Willingness to respond
Sampling in field surveys
Language and comprehension
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A call center in New Delhi, India
© Brian Lee/Corbis
Both customer service and telephone survey research are being outsourced to lower-wage
English-speaking countries.
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Translation Techniques
A researcher cannot assume that a translation into
one language will suffice in all areas where that
language is spoken.
Marketers use three different techniques:
• Back translation
• Parallel translation
• Decentering
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Multicultural Research: A Special Problem
Involves countries that have different languages,
economies, social structures, behavior, and attitude
patterns
• Ensure comparability and equivalency of results
• Consider varying reliabilities in different countries
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Research on the Internet:
A Growing Opportunity
Online surveys and buyer panels
Online focus groups
Web visitor tracking
Advertising measurement
Customer identification systems
E-mail marketing lists
Embedded research
Observational research (netnography)
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Problems in Analyzing and Interpreting
Research Information
Both secondary and primary data collected by the
market researcher are subject to many limitations.
Accepting information at face value in foreign
markets is imprudent.
• The meanings of words, the consumer’s attitude toward a
product, the interviewer’s attitude, or the interview
situation can distort research findings.
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Coping with Disparities
The researcher must possess a high degree of
cultural understanding of the market in which
research is being conducted.
• The social customs, semantics, current attitudes, and
business customs of a society or a subsegment of a society
A creative talent for adapting research methods is
necessary.
A skeptical attitude in handling both primary and
secondary data is helpful.
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Communicating with Decision Makers
Decision makers must be provided with analyses and
interpretation of information gathered in a timely
manner.
Decision makers must be involved in the fieldwork of
seeing the market and hearing the voice of the
customers in the most direct ways when the occasion
warrants.
• Marketing decision makers have questions about how best
to serve customers, and those questions are posed and
answered often through the media of questionnaires and
research agencies.
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Exhibit 8.2
Managing the Cultural Barrier in International Marketing Research
There are four kinds of company–agency–customer relationships. Options B and C
are better suited for managing the cultural barrier across the chain of communication.
That is, in both cases, the cultural barrier is bridged within a company where people
have a common corporate culture and work together on an everyday basis.
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