Jason Zhang was a little surprised when the five shirts his friend had bought for him arrived in the mail; he had been expecting to receive long-sleeved shirts and yet found his new garments had short sleeves. Although he thought he had been clear in his request, Jason discovered to his detriment that effective communication is not always as easy as you think…

Last summer, during my visit to Tianjin, I bought a couple of long-sleeved shirts in a department store. These shirts fit me very well and I really love this particular brand. Unfortunately, they’re not available in Beijing, where I live.

A week ago, I rang my friend who lives in Tianjin and asked her to buy five shirts on my behalf. During our conversation, I briefed her in detail on the particular brand name, the size, my favored style and color, and certainly what was an affordable price for me. I thought that was all the information she needed to make the purchase. However, I was wrong as I didn’t communicate to her one of the key pieces of information – long sleeves! In the meantime, she didn’t check this information with me either as she took for granted that short sleeves would fine with me. This is understandable, as Beijing is pretty hot in summer – with daytime temperatures as high as 38 degrees centigrade. Most people on the street have short-sleeved shirts, but my preference is long sleeves.

This is a real example to illustrate the importance of effective communication in our life and our workplace. Basically, in the workplace, at any given time, we all have to communicate in some way with our internal or external clients. As an effective communicator, you can bring real concrete benefits to your work and your organization. At the very least, you avoid having to do things twice, as you get it right in the first instance.  

In our capacity as professional consultants, perfect communication – both internal and external – is a crucial factor in building our sustainable competitive strengths, like efficiency, productivity, and a comfortable working environment.

As a business-to-business market research agency, our typical clients are marketing and business development professionals from national and international organizations. They come to us for help in making difficult and expensive decisions. At every point in the process, these clients’ expectations for effective communications from their suppliers are very high.

You would agree with me that the foundation to effective communications is precise information via an appropriate medium at the right time. At each contact point with clients in our work, effective communications are vitally important, from taking enquires, RFQ/RFP (request for quote/proposal), briefing, commissioning meeting, project design, through to the final reporting. It is our company’s normal practice to deliver an interim presentation, to ensure all the parties involved in the project have the same level of understanding of the exact project deliverables. 

Within the marketing research and consulting business sector, to ensure client liaison in an effective and efficient way, your essentials skills are listening, plus market insight, to understand a client’s particular business and needs.

In any communication, trying to use easy-to-understand expressions rather than special terminology or abbreviations, is a good idea. Let me give you an example. Last year, we conducted a market assessment study for a leading American industrial valve maker, to help them penetrate Asia’s pharmaceutical markets. For this market entry study, we used PEST (Political, Economic, Social and Technological) analysis to review the attractiveness of the opportunity and the barriers to entry to each individual market in Asia. When our project team leader and myself co-delivered the final presentation to the Client, we kept talking about PEST and IPR (Intelligence Property Right) issues in China. When we approached the end of presentation in the Q&A session, one of the audience asked the question, "What do you mean by PEST and IPR?" I then realized we should have clarified the abbreviations we had used.

It is quite normal in all walks of life and in all ways of communication to expect the audience to have the same level knowledge as we do. However, on many occasions, this is not the case. This is the reason why our project team always has detailed briefings, commissioning meetings and interim presentations with our Client. With these efforts, we can ensure both sides have the same level of knowledge and expectation from the marketing research and consulting project.

The other day, I got an email enquiry forwarded by our New York office. There were merely two sentences in the email: "We’re from Brazil looking to acquire a Chinese company. What is the cost and time frame for you to research this target company?"

How do you find the communication of this email enquiry? If you were sending out an enquiry for this sort of buying and acquisition study, what information do you think you need to provide to your agency?

An article in the Financial Times shows that more than 90 per cent of Chinese respondents to the new survey conducted by the Economist Intelligence Unit and Norton Rose, the law firm, said they were looking to conduct a merger or acquisition over the next 12 months. The article is shown below. For more information on research in China visit the website for our subsidiary in Beijing.

CHINA AIMS TO BUY UP MORE OVERSEAS COMPANIES

Record numbers of Chinese companies are looking for overseas acquisitions, according to results of a survey published yesterday which foreshadows a global buying spree with potential political repercussions.

China Inc has to date been a reluctant player on the world stage, apart from in the state-controlled energy sector, with most companies either unprepared or fearful of managing assets overseas.

By contrast, Indian companies have recently embarked on a global acquisitions binge, highlighted by Tata Steel’s $11bn takeover this year of Corus, the Anglo-Dutch steelmaker.

However, more than 90 per cent of Chinese respondents to the new survey conducted by the Economist Intelligence Unit and Norton Rose, the law firm, said they were looking to conduct a merger or acquisition over the next 12 months.

The executives of Chinese companies said they were looking in Asia, Europe and North America.

Richard Crosby, a Hong Kong-based partner of Norton Rose, said: “The findings show an increasing willingness among Chinese companies to consider deals outside Asia.�

The findings suggest Chinese executives are seeking to build global scale, two years after US lawmakers famously prevented CNOOC, the state oil company, from acquiring Unocal for “strategic� reasons.

Bankers who advise mainland companies predict that China’s leading telecommunications and financial services companies will lead the acquisitions charge. Rodney Ward, UBS Asia chairman, said: “Corporate China will continue to seek overseas acquisitions to exploit economies of scale.â€?

The findings form part of a survey on cross-border corporate deals based on responses from 258 executives across Asia, excluding Japan and Australia.

The EIU found that intra-Asian M&A climbed over the past five years from 1,102 cross-border acquisitions valued at $30bn to 2,073 deals valued at $52bn. Buy-outs by Asian companies in Europe and North America rose from $2.6bn in 2002 to $15bn in 2006.

The survey found that while China is expected to lead the region’s M&A boom this year, respondents believe that the mainland remained the most challenging terrain in Asia to conduct business from a regulatory perspective.

Asian executives voted the US and France as the most difficult western countries in which to operate because of the higher likelihood of M&A deals being blocked on political grounds.

Western investors are seeking acquisitions in Asia to take advantage of fast growth rates. But respondents said western companies’ focus on compliance-related issues “makes it difficult to negotiate deals with themâ€?.

There are few places where so many factors can influence the smooth execution of market research studies as Latin America. Here are some basic rules critical to mission success, to be followed for a happy ending to any project.

These “LatAm Research Laws” can be summarised in three broad categories:

Language and Culture
Logistics and Climate
Legal and Economical

For many global research projects, researchers try to adopt identical methods, even in vastly different markets and cultures. For Latin America, this approach may function well in two diverse situations: where that method is so basic that it will suit even very low-tech environments, or if the target respondents are culturally similar worldwide, such as software developers, the project may be successful.

But this is not the case for research in Latin America with consumers, the trade, or most B2B publics. Without a local interface to smooth the way, there is little chance of the uniform worldwide method functioning throughout the region; and if it is applied without adjustments, there is only a low probability that the results will be as desired.

Heed language differences, including those among countries with the deceiving similarity of a common language; i.e. Spanish.

Heed cultural particularities. For example, the telephone may be the most appropriate method for a study in some LatAm countries, while elsewhere telephone will not function. It depends on diverse factors such as sample demographics, interview timing, the subject matter and the questionnaire structure.

Respect your Providers. Do not impose eminently pragmatic business treatment on professionals accustomed to a warmer, personal dialogue. Don’t expect them to give same-day turnaround for your anonymously-addressed “gang e-mail�.

Speak a global language. Avoid using buzz words and acronyms in communications and especially in questionnaires.

Use universal terminology. Don’t even think of asking all your local providers for a sample of classes “A, B and C1� unless you are willing to have a sample equivalent to the top 15%in one Latin American country, but only the top 40% in another part of the region. Use the universal language such as “per cent�.

Don’t ask what people will not answer. Beginning an interview with an income filter is a direct route to sampling error, because half the respondents might refuse, and those at both ends of the income spectrum might distort their responses.

Don’t shop in the dark. Seek help both “here� and “there�. First get suggestions and references from experience research buyers. A “gang e-mail� sent to a long list of potential suppliers is roulette, and is unlikely to help breed a long term relationship with a trusted partner.

Effective international research requires quick, clear two way communications and timely input from local project managers. To avoid delay, embarrassment, wasted budget and unhappy clients, it’s wide to consult trusted in-market researchers before defining appropriate methodology, sampling procedures, or logistic solutions.

Today we have a very interesting article taken from B2B Marketing, it discuses issues how B2B loyalty providers must hone their offerings. Here at B2B International a third of all market research commissioned with our company is customer satisfaction and customer loyalty research. To learn more about how we can help you win and maintain customers for life visit B2B International Customer Satisfaction.

B2B Loyalty providers must hone their offerings

Maintaining customer loyalty is an increasingly important part of most B2B marketer’s jobs, yet many practitioners are ignoring the opportunity presented by B2C-style dedicated loyalty programmes. This is according to new research by B2B Marketing in association with nectar for business, which found that whilst 80 per cent of practitioners describe customer loyalty as ‘critical’ or ‘very important’ only 20 per cent have actually utilised formal loyalty programmes (see figure 1).

The results suggest that cost or pricing of such dedicated programmes is not a major factor in many B2B marketers’ decision not to utilise them as it was cited by only 14 per cent of respondents. Indeed, the sums being invested in loyalty are significant: the majority (70 per cent) spend at least 10 per cent of their budget on loyalty initiatives.

By contrast, ‘rewards not appropriate to my customers’ was identified as the largest single reason for not using formal loyalty programmes, selected by 40 per cent of respondents. This suggests that programme providers have more work to do to tailor activity and rewards to specific audiences in particular. Nectar for Business, for example, which is the largest programme focused on the B2B space, is mostly targeted around the need of SME members, rather than those in large corporate, and its proposition is designed accordingly.

Broad Interest
Although uptake of loyalty programmes in B2B is not yet widespread, marketers remain broadly open-minded about them. When asked if they believe there is a place for loyalty/incentives programmes in B2B (figure 2). The largest group – just under half – replied with an unqualified ‘yes’, whilst the second largest segment suggested they were relevant ‘but not in my market’. Of the remainder, a further quarter said they were ‘not sure’ whilst only three per cent said ‘no’ outright.

Of those companies not currently using loyalty programmes, 14 per cent said they were ‘currently investigating opportunities’.

Again, the onus would seem to be on the loyalty providers to understand and cater for specific needs of these marketers, and this would seem to be borne out by further results, which demonstrate ‘ability to customise’ and ‘reward/redemption opportunities’, which are the two most significant factors in companies’ selection of a loyalty programme. Ease of operation was next in line, with 21 per cent, whilst ‘strength of brand’ only attracted 13 per cent.

This is reflected in the question regarding choice of loyalty programme, with ‘inhouse programme’ providing the most popular provider (45 per cent) and ‘gift vouchers’ coming second (27 per cent).