« Using Curiosity In Your Branding A quiet revolution in China’s capital markets »Conducting Business-to-Business Research In China – Part 7 of 7
Recommendations For Research Buyers This paper has sought to introduce the reader to the main characteristics of the Chinese market for market research, and above all highlight the great potential for any research buyer to consider commissioning market research in this fast growing market. With the right agency, research in China is good quality, detailed, insightful, cost effective, and above all an excellent aid to decision-making. We finish this article by putting forward 5 tips on commissioning research in China: 1. Scoping - The best quality business research will be research that quickly identifies the key regions of China that relate to the study, and then focuses most research effort on these areas. Differences between regions, as well as the sheer size of target audiences, are so vast that industries that are critical to one region are more or less non-existent in another. Research that does not recognise this risks spreading itself too thinly and wasting effort in irrelevant areas. 2. Go national - Choose an agency that is national (or indeed international) rather than local in scope; these are the agencies that have most resources, are most used to dealing with Western clients, and – for end clients – most accustomed to providing insightful analysis rather than simply interview scripts. 3. You get what you pay for – The good quality Chinese agencies are slightly cheaper than Western agencies, but don’t expect to pay a quarter or a third of what you pay your European or American agency. Incentives to respondents, rigorous quality checking and high level of involvement by very senior (often expatriate) staff are all reasons why the better agencies are not ‘cheap and cheerful’. Our advice would be to think of the research cost in terms of the potential benefits to your organisation and its decision-making, which could potentially be huge. 4. What type of researchers are they? – It is important to check not only the client list of a potential supplier, but also the type of work that the company does. In particular, it is essential to differentiate between experience at collecting data, and experience at analysing data and drawing conclusions. Most ‘indigenous’ clients provide almost entirely ‘data only’ work to Western clients. 5. Keep frequent contact – Frequent contact should be kept with the agency you appoint, not only to keep track of the progress of the project, but more importantly to establish a relationship and be seen by the agency as a partner. Chinese business is extremely relationship oriented, and the closer you work alongside your agency, the more proactive you will find them. There is no such thing as pestering! This entry was posted on Wednesday, August 8th, 2007 at 9:42 am and is filed under Market Research, Market Research China. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site. Leave a Reply |
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