INTERNATIONAL MARKETING RESEARCH

CONTENTS
INTRODUCTION TO INTERNATIONAL MARKETING RESEARCH ISSUES AND COMPLEXITY DATA RELIABILITY AND VALIDITY ASPECTS CROSS CULTURAL MARKETING RESEARCH ETIC & EMIC

INTERNATIONAL MARKETING RESEARCH

Definition : Research conducted to assist decision making in more than one country.
market research conducted either simultaneous or sequentially to facilitate marketing decision in more than one country

 Market research is the vital link between the organization and its customers. The objective of sound market research is to interpret consumer behavior Conducting international marketing research is much more complex than domestic marketing research. It includes cross cultural research.

ROLE OF RESEARCH IN INTERNATIONAL MARKETING STRATEGY FORMULATION

Finding solutions to problems
Proper selection of target customers and markets

The market researcher should become a source of

actionable marketing information. Should perform marketing consultancy function.

ISSUES & COMPLEXITY

Quality issues are far more complex for international research suppliers than for those working for national markets. research facilities and capabilities vary widely from one country to another and will continue as new countries join market research community.

ISSUES
Globalization:
When companies operate internationally, they find little choice regarding global marketing and advertising perspective. Niche marketing opportunities and new ways of segmenting

consumers are being studied.

ISSUES

cont

Major decisions Acquisition of a brand Purchase of shares Adaptation of an approach All these make the task of marketers more complex

ISSUES

cont

Complexity Gaining familiarity with the systems, structures and cultures radically different from ones own is a difficult task. Under the new style, companies have restructured.

ISSUES

cont

Fragmentation Specialists and centralized market research departments are becoming fewer and smaller. More demand for advice rather than ad hoc services. Mature industries set up there on research department which is not the case with many new industries like IT and so on ..

ISSUES

cont

Speed and actionability More time is needed to implement decisions on a larger scale or wider area. International market research is much more complicated since they have to consider each countries political, legal, cultural & business environments

COMPLEXITY
Heavy behavioral and relationship orientation
Both organization and elements in its environment try to exert control over each other. The process of management needs to be researched for better understanding of how firms operate internationally.

COMPLEXITY cont.
Reflection of complexity of the environment Degree of competitive product market, technological and regulatory variations and relationships with multiple groups reflect complexity Internal & external interdependencies increase and become constraints on firms decision makers. Cultural differences between nations increase complexity.

COMPLEXITY
Lack of structure

cont

Normal corporate guidelines may not be appropriate in all situations. Unstructured problems that involve multiple important relationship cannot be studied in a quick fashion. This is a challenge which research try to overcome through clinical field research.

PITFALLS IN INTERNATIONAL MARKETING RESEARCH

1. Selecting a domestic research company to do your international research. 2. Rigidly standardizing methodologies across countries. 3. Interviewing in English across the world. 4. Setting inappropriate sampling requirements.

Cont.
5. Lack of consideration given to language(translation) 6. Lack of systematic international communication procedures.(local research companies) 7. Misinterpreting multicountry data across countries.(survey comparisons) 8. Not understanding international differences in conducting qualitative research.

DATA RELIABILITY AND VALIDITY

DATA RELIABILITY
Reliability is the consistency of your measurement, or

the degree to which an instrument measures the same

way each time it is used under the same condition with the same subjects. There are two ways that reliability is usually estimated: test/retest internal consistency.

DATA RELIABILITY (contd.)

Test/Retest It is a more conservative method to estimate reliability. The idea behind this is that you should get the same score on test 1 as you do on test 2. The three main components to this method are as follows: 1. implement your measurement instrument at two separate times for each subject 2. compute the correlation between the two separate measurements; and 3. assume there is no change in the underlying condition (or trait you are trying to measure) between test 1 and test 2.

DATA RELIABILITY (contd.)

Internal Consistency This estimates reliability by grouping questions in a questionnaire that measure the same concept. For eg. you could write two sets of three questions that measure the same concept (say class participation) and after collecting the responses, run a correlation between those two groups of three questions to determine if your instrument is reliably measuring that concept.

DATA VALIDITY
Validity is the strength of our conclusions, inferences or propositions. More formally, Cook and Campbell (1979) define it as the "best available approximation to the truth or falsity of a given inference, proposition or conclusion." the extent to which the differences in observed scale scores reflect true differences among objects on the characteristic being measured.

TYPES OF VALIDITY Content Validity: Sometimes called face validity, is a subjective but systematic evaluation of how the content of a scale represents the measurement task at hand. The researcher examines whether the scale items cover the entire domain of the construct being measured.

Criterion Validity: It is that which examines whether the measurement scale performs as expected in relation to other variables selected as meaningful criterion. Construct Validity: It addresses the question of what construct or characteristic the scale is measuring.

CROSS CULTURAL MARKETING RESEARCH

The formulation of research objectives when developed through differing cultural contexts cannot be the same as the formulation for domestic market research. The complexity of the research design is greatly increased when working in an international, multicultural and multilinguistic environment. Even larger problems may arise when differences in sociocultural or psychographic variables imply different attitudes and behavior when using particular types of products.

CULTURAL INFERENCES OF MARKETING RESEARCH

Market Research makes use of either primary data or secondary data. Primary data can be either personal interviews, surveys, focus groups etc.

Each has distinct cultural influences and potential dangers when used in an international setting.

Interviews
Interviewers, when in person, could be the bearer
of a host of problems.
Problems with responsiveness of respondents.

Cooperative respondent
Non-response is critical(technical illiteracy)

Infrastructure limitations also dictate interviewing.

Phone survey
Telephone directories & books are not available for

many cities in the developing world.

In certain culture telemarketing is not an

appropriate means for marketing research.

There are countries which prefer face to face interviews over telephone or mail interviews.

Personal interview
Japanese market research tend to be
personal interview oriented.

Least successful in Saudi Arabia

Focus groups
Interviewing a group rather than individuals Major cultural differences exist in focus group research. Length of focus groups can vary from country to country. Focus moderator should have a clear idea about the culture. It engages respondents interactively.

CROSS CULTURAL ERRORS IN INTERNATIONAL MARKETING RESEARCH

Conceptual equivalence:
Determination of whether the concepts used have similar meaning across the social units studied. Problems of conceptual equivalence are more frequent when testing the influence of certain constructs on consumer behavior.

 Functional equivalence:
If similar activities perform different functions in different societies, their measures cannot be used for the purposes of comparison. Measurement equivalence: Includes calibration, translation & metric equivalence.

Both calibration and translation equivalence seek to ensure that measurement instruments mean the same thing after translation. Translation equivalence implies that the same questionnaire items measure the same latent constructs in different populations.

ETIC AND EMIC

Emic and etic are terms used by anthropologists and by others in the social and behavioral sciences to refer to two kinds of data concerning human behavior. An "emic" account is a description of behavior or a belief in terms meaningful (consciously or unconsciously) to the actor; that is, an emic account comes from a person within the culture. Almost anything from within a culture can provide an emic account.

 An "etic" account is a description of a behavior or belief by an observer, in terms that can be applied to other cultures; that is, an etic account attempts to be 'culturally neutral'.

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