What are the three main difficulties of conducting research in international markets?

Most companies obsessively generate statistics about their products and those of their competitors. Sometimes, however, market intelligence derived from publicly available information is not enough. Those who desire a deeper understanding of their market potential and share - those out to predict purchase behavior and customer satisfaction - practice what the Japanese call genchi genbutsu: "going to the source."

If you want to know what consumers think, ask them.

It sounds simple enough. There are, however, at least three ways of going about this.

There's observational research, like the Fisher-Price Play Lab where designers watch children play with new toys. There's experimental research, wherein McDonald's introduces a new sandwich at one price in one city, and at another price in another city. And there's survey research, in which customers and potential customers are asked questions about their knowledge, attitudes, preferences, and buying behavior.

When marketing research goes international, the problems multiply quickly. Whereas domestic researchers deal with fairly homogenous markets within a single country, international researchers can be faced with summing up attitudes across different countries, in markets of wildly differing levels of economic development, cultures, customs, and buying patterns.

Language is the most obvious obstacle. For example, questionnaires must be prepared in one language and then translated into the languages of each country researched. Responses then must be translated back into the original language for analysis and interpretation. This adds to research costs and increases the risks of error.

Translating a questionnaire from one language to another is anything but easy. Many idioms, phrases, and statements mean different things in different cultures. Marketing professors Philip Kotler and Gary Armstrong cite the example of a Danish executive who advised, "Have a different translator put back into English, what you've translated from English.

"You'll get the shock of your life.

"I remember (an example in which) 'out of sight, out of mind' became 'invisible things are insane'" (Principles of Marketing, Philip Kotler & Gary Armstrong, Pearson Education, 2006).

Even people who are accustomed to market research and understand its benefits may be averse to freely providing information. This reticence is even more common in countries where market research is not common. Cultural attitudes can also play a role in this. Write Kotler and Armstrong, "In many Latin American countries, people may feel embarrassed to talk with researchers about their choices of shampoo, deodorant, or other personal-care products.

"Similarly, in most Muslim countries, mixed-gender focus groups are taboo, as is videotaping female-only focus groups."

Of course, the usual problems with accuracy, present in domestic marketing research, also apply internationally. People more interested in a subject are more inclined to respond (self-selection bias). In an attempt to appear more knowledgeable, educated, or wealthy than they are, they may falsify their answers, consciously or unconsciously, and even in an attempt to please the interviewer. Kotler and Armstrong recount a study of tea consumption in India in which, to seem well off, more than seventy percent of middle-income respondents claimed that they used one of several national brands. However, the researchers had good reason to doubt these results – more than sixty percent of the tea sold in India is unbranded generic tea.

The irony is that, in many foreign markets, primary data is absolutely vital because of the questionable validity and comparability of secondary data. In countries where corruption is more prevalent, for example, it may be difficult to get accurate secondary data about newspaper circulation figures, magazine subscriptions, and the popularity of television programs.

The differences between cultures and thus potential marketing pitfalls mean that global companies have little choice but to engage their consumers across the globe. Although the costs and problems associated with international research may be high, the costs of not doing it – in terms of missed opportunities and mistakes – might be even higher. Once recognized, many of the problems associated with international marketing research can be overcome or avoided.

23rd April 2021

Overcoming the challenges of international market research

Global research is important for the survival and growth of many businesses, whether it be to gain insight into new markets or to measure their customer experience internationally. However, one methodology may not be appropriate for every country in a global study, and it may not be appropriate to make direct comparisons between countries. Researching global markets requires businesses to make several considerations surrounding methodology, language, and culture, to avoid issues of bias and validity:

Method

It’s only got easier to achieve global insight with the development of online methodologies. Surveying far-flung places from the UK, such as Burundi, Congo, Ecuador or Nepal, used to be an expensive task.  Online methodologies have opened up realms of previously hard-to-reach populations, and reduced the cost and effort involved. Respondents can now complete surveys in their own time zone whenever is convenient to them, and there is no need for native speakers to conduct interviews. And for qualitative research, where you will still need native speakers to moderate, online technology will save on travel costs.

Whilst online research has made access to other cultures easier, it’s essential for researchers to consider the appropriateness of different methodologies. For example, online surveys are appropriate for most cultures, but in China email research is not so common. For Japan it is the inverse: people tend to not co-operate with telephone surveys as it is deemed impolite to call people you don’t know beforehand, so online research naturally works better.

With some methodologies, such as online focus groups or bulletin boards, attention also needs to be given to time differences, which can make combining people from different geographic locations more challenging.

Language

Translations can be costly and often businesses will try to avoid this, expecting respondents to speak English.  However, researchers must acknowledge that while approximately 20% of the population speak English, only 5% speak it as their first language, so we can’t expect everyone to express themselves fully in an English-speaking study.  We recommend conducting research in native languages in order to collect richer feedback for your global insight, particularly when conducting qualitative research.

An aspect often overlooked is back translations.  It can become very costly when verbatim or transcripts need to be translated back into English for analysis purposes.  One solution is to use machine translation like Google Translate, which is constantly advancing and works well when you only need to get the gist of what has been said. But for some languages it can be problematic – it doesn’t understand nuances or sensitivity, nor recognise typos. For example, issues can occur because European languages such as German have a very different grammatical structure to English, or because Asian languages such as Japanese are often more pictorial in nature. Generally, unless translating very short phrases, it is best to combine Google Translate with human translation.

Culture

When conducting international research, you need to keep in mind the inevitable differences in culture and levels of digital exposure when making comparisons between countries. For example, when looking at customer satisfaction data, you can see results in Asia tend to be more positive than in Europe.  This may be because they receive better service, but it can also be that their culture is more polite and less inclined to criticise.

Within Europe, you can also see differences. German people tend to be more outspoken for example, while Portuguese tend to be more positive in their feedback.  Residents of countries that have been under a communist regime, where citizens would have been monitored by secret police, are often more superficial and positive in their responses (e.g. Romania).

All in all, we would recommend being very careful when making comparisons between countries when gaining global insight.  Keep checking why differences occur and use previous data for each country as the main benchmark.

At Beehive, we have expertise and extensive experience of working with global brands (read one of our case studies of a global consumer research panel here!). Get in touch to find out how we can help provide you global insight to transform your business.

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