Transcript Exhibit 8.1

Developing a Global Vision
Through Marketing Research
Cateora and Graham
Chapter 8
1
Global Perspective
• Enterprises with international scope of
operations
– Need for current, accurate information magnified
• Marketing research
– The systematic gathering, recording, and analyzing of
data to provide information useful in marketing
decision making
• International marketing research involves two
complications
– 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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Top 20 Countries for Marketing Research
Expenditures (millions of dollars)
Exhibit 8.1
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Breadth and Scope
of International Marketing Research
• Types of information needed by research
– General information about the country, area, and/or
market
– Information to forecast future marketing
requirements
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By anticipating social, economic, consumer, and industry
trends within specific markets or countries
– Specific market information used to make and
develop marketing plans
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Product
Promotion
Distribution
Price decisions
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Breadth and Scope
of International Marketing Research
• Unisys Corporation’s planning steps for
collecting and assessing the following types
of information
1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
Economic
Cultural, sociological; and political climate
Overview of market conditions
Summary of the technological environment
Competitive situation
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Defining the Problem
and Establishing Research Objectives
• The major difficulty is converting a series of
often ambiguous business problems into
achievable research objectives
• Most critical in foreign markets is an
unfamiliar environment in problems definition
• Other difficulties in foreign research stem
from failures to establish problem limits broad
enough to include all relevant variables
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Language and Comprehension
• The language barrier and literacy pose a major
problem when doing a survey abroad.
– It may be that exact translations do not exist for
some survey questions.
– The population may not have a high enough
literacy rate to understand the survey.
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Problems with Secondary Data
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Availability of the Data
Reliability of the Data
Comparability of the Data
Validating Secondary Data
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Availability and Reliability of Data
• Most countries simply do not have governmental agencies
that collect on a regular basis secondary data .
• Researchers’ language skills impede access to information
– Requires native speaker of language
• Official statistics are sometimes too optimistic, reflecting
national pride rather than practical reality,
• while tax structures and fear of the tax collector often
adversely affect data
– Less-developed countries prone to optimism
– Willful errors
– “Adjusted reporting”
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Problems of Availability
and Use of Secondary Data
• U.S. government provides comprehensive
statistics for United States
• Marketing data not matched in other countries
– Quality
– Quantity
– Exceptions are Japan and several European countries
• Continuing efforts to improve data collection
– United Nations
– Organization for Economic Cooperation and
Development (OECD)
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Comparability of Data
• Issues with data (especially in less developed,
countries)
– Data can be many years out of date
– Data collected on an infrequent and unpredictable
schedule
• Too frequently, data are reported in different
categories or in categories much too broad to
be of specific value
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Validating Secondary Data
• Questions to judge the reliability of secondary data sources
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Who collected the data?
Would there be any reason for purposely misrepresenting the facts?
For what purposes was the data collected?
How was the data collected?
Are the data internally consistent and logical in light of known data sources or
market factors?
• Checking the consistency of one set of secondary data with
other data of known validity
– An effective and often-used way of judging validity
• The availability and accuracy of recorded secondary data
increase with level of economic development
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Problems
of Gathering Primary Data
• Hinges on the ability of the researcher to get
correct and truthful information that
addresses research objectives
• Problems in international marketing research
– Stem from differences among countries
– Range from inability or unwillingness of
respondents to communicate their opinions
– Inadequacies in questionnaire translation
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Problems in Analyzing
and Interpreting Research Information
• Accepting information at face value in foreign
markets is imprudent
• The foreign market researcher must posses
three talents to generate meaningful
marketing information
1. The researcher must posses a high degree of cultural understanding of the
market in which research is being conducted
2. A creative talent for adapting research methods is necessary
3. A skeptical attitude in handling both primary and secondary data is helpful
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Using the Internet for Research
• The internet can be a useful tool for
conducting marketing research.
• It can reach a multitude a people in a short
amount of time.
• While it can be an effective tool, it also has a
few large drawbacks.
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Research on the Internet – a Growing Opportunity
• One billion users in more than 200 countries
– One-sixth in U.S.
• International Internet use is growing almost twice as fast
as American use
• Uses for Internet in international research
– Online surveys and buyer panels
– Observational research
– Online focus groups
– Web visitor tracking
– Advertising measurement
– Customer identification systems
– E-mail marketing lists
– Embedded research
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Drawbacks to Internet Research
• There can be a large bias as to who fills out
the survey, i.e., it may not be representative of
the typical consumer.
• Currently, there is not a large population of
foreigners on the internet. ? !
• It may generate too much costly data to
analyze.
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Summary
• The objective of market research is providing
management with information for more accurate
decision making
• Foreign market information surveys must be carefully
designed to elicit the desired data, and not offending the
respondent’s sense of privacy.
• Many foreign markets have inadequate or unreliable
bases of secondary information
• Three keys to successful international marketing research
– inclusion of natives of the foreign culture on research
teams
– use of multiple methods and triangulation
– Including decision makers and top executives to talk to
or directly observe customers in foreign markets
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