Archive for the ‘Global Research’ Category
Monday, December 14th, 2009
With worldwide expenditure on online research predicted to almost treble over the next three years, market research specialist B2B International believes the future is rosy for most online techniques, especially focus groups.
The technological revolution of the past 15 years has led to the rapid development of online data collection methodologies. Of these, the online survey is the most established but, more recently, online focus groups have emerged, making it possible to obtain qualitative information online.
Following similar principles to Internet message boards, the online focus group differs from online surveys in that it allows every participant to see the responses of all of the other respondents and encourages them to respond to these views as well as to the initial question posed by the researcher. In addition, the researcher inserts questions as the discussion develops, in order to probe areas of particular interest, or to gain further information on new topics that participants introduce to the discussion. In this way, online focus groups enable a real-time, dynamic discussion to develop between the researcher and the respondents, just as would be the case with a face-to-face focus group.
Business-to-business market research specialist B2B International has been firmly established in the online research industry since the company’s inception in 1998 and remains one of the forerunners in e-enabled research. B2B International has recently published a comprehensive White Paper – Using Online Focus Groups As A Business-To-Business Research Technique – which gives a balanced assessment of the rationale behind using the online focus group as a research methodology.
The White Paper outlines 13 key reasons to conduct online focus groups:
- Volume of information
- Depth and quality of information
- Reflection time
- Accuracy and granularity
- Inclusiveness
- Honesty of respondents
- Better spread of respondents
- Incorporating different geographies and time zones
- Researching senior respondents
- Participation rates
- Introducing stimulae to the conversation
- Everyone has an equal say
- Client participation
In addition to highlighting the undisputed benefits, B2B International Director Matthew Harrison, author of the White Paper, shares some of the insights that B2B International has learned through the large number of online focus groups it has conducted over the last several years. According to Harrison: “Online focus groups can take place for a defined period of, say, 90 minutes, as with a face-to-face focus group but our experience shows us that online groups are more effective when spread over a period of 2 days, with respondents entering the discussion at different times to suit their convenience. This way, groups generate more considered opinion and a greater volume of information, adding real value to the research.”
However, internet focus groups are not suited to every research project and B2B International is quick to recognise the limitations. These include the fact that certain target audiences – particularly the less web-savvy – are less suited to online groups than others; respondent recruitment can be labour-intensive and expensive; and certain limitations exist with presenting physical stimulae for respondents to touch, feel or smell.
In spite of this, Harrison is optimistic about the future for online focus groups: “There are many reasons why we believe the prominence and effectiveness of online focus groups will increase, but key among them would be convenience and technology. Increasingly busy schedules coupled with the need to speak to respondents all across the world make online focus groups an ever more viable option. Secondly, there will continue to be huge advancements in the capabilities of and familiarity with technology, enabling greater numbers of respondents from all across the world to take part with increasing ease and improved effectiveness.”
To read the white paper in full, please click here.
Posted in
Focus Groups, Global Research, Matt Harrison, Online Focus Groups, Online Research, White Papers |
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Tuesday, December 1st, 2009
This month, Campaign magazine published its second Going Global supplement. A number of experts in the field of branding gave us their thoughts on the issues that face those tasked with international branding. One of those experts was B2B International’s very own Paul Hague, who provided some advice for business-to-business marketers taking their promotions to a global audience:
We have all heard of communication gaffes made by regionally focused consumer companies as they attack a wider market. If Rolls-Royce had gone ahead with the branding of their Silver Mist car in Germany, it would have found it was trying to sell Silver Sh*t. Such cultural and linguistic differences are a marketer’s nightmare and they indicate the importance of using research to understand the difference between customers throughout the world.
HSBC has made an effective campaign out of the way different people see the world. In a long-running and highly recognisable series of adverts (particularly noticeable in international airports), they humorously provide examples of how people’s interpretation of the same objects can be vastly different depending on their culture, heritage, education, etc. They demonstrate, if you like, how one man’s meat can be another man’s poison.
All the while, business-to-business marketers have been sitting on the sidelines. They do not have the huge marketing budgets that are required for global campaigns. In fact, $200,000 is likely to be a respectable budget for many an industrial company or division aiming at an international market. With such meagre funds to play with, their communication efforts have been much more targeted and therefore less visible for us to examine and critique.
With an emphasis on below-the-line advertising, business-to-business marketers have focused on anything that gets them close to shaking hands with a potential customer. High on the list are exhibitions, brochures and technical sheets translated into local languages, and, if you’re lucky, a website on which you may just have one or two language options. There is very little attempt made to understand the local culture and to design a promotional campaign that meets local needs.
If marketing budgets are really so small for business-to-business marketers, it may be hard to imagine how they could afford to spend $100,000 on a market research campaign aimed at testing different communications and finding out what works over a wide geographical area. Mind you, the investment in research to establish the principles of what works pays dividends – not only on the current campaign but on all future campaigns.
I encountered a good example a couple of years ago during the concept testing of an advert. Of the seven adverts being tested, the design agency had a clear favourite – a nicely designed ad showing two futuristic-looking heads. However, in what was a huge disappointment to the agency, this particular ad bombed dramatically when tested against the six others among an international group of target customers. Existing and potential customers actually found the ad confusing and felt it portrayed the company as two-faced. Adverts that tested much better were less stylish but they featured the product, or the product plus a person.
A good test for any b2b marketer is to lay out their promotions in front of customers and prospective customers, and ask the following questions:
- What are first reactions to the promotions?
- What are the key things that jump out of the promotions?
- What are the promotions saying to you?
- How would you rate the clarity of the message(s)?
- What are the benefits that are communicated by the promotions?
- How important are these benefits to you?
- How effective are the promotions in terms of being compelling (“stop-ability”), relevance, links to the positioning of the advertiser, and clarity?
- How successful are the promotions in “calling the customer to action”?
- Do respondents think anything is missing from the promotions?
- How clear is it what people should do next, having seen the advert (i.e. how effective are the response mechanisms and instructions)?
Market research isn’t the only measure that can be used to test the effectiveness of promotions. Additional indicators can be quite simple, such as:
- The correlation between the sales of a product and a promotional campaign. However, the long lead times in business-to-business markets seldom show strong links between the two.
- Response mechanisms built into adverts or literature that over time provide feedback on the effectiveness of campaigns.
- Orders taken on an exhibition stand (or, more simply, the number of business cards collected on the stand).
- Feedback to the sales team (and order takers) that a promotion has been seen.
In conclusion, here’s a checklist of questions that business-to-business marketers should consider when addressing global markets:
- Start with the views of locals – no one knows or understands the market better and their views are always worth listening to. However, be prepared to experiment and be bold, because the best promotions are those that break the mould.
- Promotions are most effective if they have a single, purposeful proposition. Many promotions are overloaded with too many propositions or they are too clever by half.
- Promotions that look authoritative, even editorial in style, will be eagerly read by a technical audience.
- Technicians love facts. Give them loads of them.
- The product may be boring to some people but it isn’t to the person who is buying or specifying it. Show them the product.
- Promotions that feature someone from the company are far more believable than those that use actors.
- People will give a fraction of a second to a promotion (a blink) as they make up their mind whether it is for them or not. Catch their attention with images and visuals at the top of the ad and use them boldly. Use them to draw people into the promotion.
- Make sure that the images are relevant otherwise the audience will quickly move on. The closer the relevance of the images to the industry and the text, the better.
- The headline of any promotion needs to be strong and powerful. Many headlines fail by being too long, too complicated or irrelevant. The headline should follow the visual or lead at the top of the ad.
- When developing a campaign, give it “legs”. Wherever possible, create a connection with parallel or previous campaigns so that there is a link that provides continuity for the audience.
Posted in
B2B Marketing, Branding, Global Research, International Market Research, Paul Hague, Promotion |
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Friday, October 9th, 2009
Dr Daniel Park of MASS Consulting Group, a good friend of B2B International, has contributed a Thursday Night Insight this week. It is an article that appeared in the Washington Post on 10 April 2007 and it raises a number of questions. Perhaps the most significant one is not obvious and takes a bit of thinking about. It relates to the concept of quality, which has been a bandwagon topic and a source of easy consultancy money for some time. Benefiting from quality management is two-sided: it requires not only suppliers that are able to deliver quality products, using quality inputs and quality technology but also – and here comes the interesting bit – buyers who have the capability of recognising quality when it is staring them in the face.
Washington, DC Metro Station on a cold January morning in 2007. A man with a violin played six Bach pieces for about an hour. During that time approximately two- thousand people went through the station, most of them on their way to work. After 3 minutes, a middle-aged man noticed there was a musician playing. He slowed his pace and stopped for a few seconds and then hurried on.
4 minutes later: the violinist received his first dollar: a woman threw the money in the hat and, without stopping, continued to walk.
6 minutes: a young man leaned against the wall to listen to him, then looked at his watch and started to walk again.
10 minutes: a 3-year old boy stopped but his mother tugged him along hurriedly. The kid stopped to look at the violinist again, but the mother pushed hard and the child continued to walk, turning his head all the time. This action was repeated by several other children. Every parent without exception forced the children to move on quickly.
45 minutes: the musician played continuously. Only 6 people stopped and listened for a short while. About 20 gave money but continued to walk at their normal pace. The man collected a total of $32.
1 hour: he finished playing and silence took over. No one noticed. No one applauded, nor was there any recognition.
No one knew this, but the violinist was Joshua Bell, one of the greatest musicians in the world. He played some of the most powerful and beautiful music ever written, with a violin worth $3.5 million dollars. Two days earlier Joshua Bell sold out a theatre in Boston where the seats averaged $100.
This is a true story. Joshua Bell playing incognito in the metro station was organized by the Washington Post as part of a social experiment about perception, taste and people’s priorities. The questions raised: in a common place environment at an inappropriate hour, do we perceive beauty? Do we understand quality? Do we stop to appreciate it? Do we recognize talent in an unexpected context?
One conclusion reached from this experiment could be this: If we do not have a moment to stop and listen to one of the best musicians in the world, playing some of the greatest music ever written, with one of the most beautiful instruments ever made…. how many other things are we missing; do we really understand quality; does quality really matter?
Why not click on the following links to read some of the white papers Dr Daniel Park has written for B2B International:
Click here to view our complete library of white papers.
Posted in
Branding, Customer Satisfaction, Global Research, Product Development, Quality, Service, Uncategorized |
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Monday, September 14th, 2009
ESOMAR, the world organization for enabling better research into markets, consumers and societies, confirmed this week a slowdown in market research revenues worldwide. Although global market research revenues grew by 4.5% in 2008 to reach US$32 billion, this only equates to a net 0.4% increase when inflation is taken into account. According to the latest ESOMAR Global Market Research Report, market research revenues in 10 of the top 25 market research markets showed a decline after inflation.
While the growth rate has undoubted been affected over the past year because of the economic downturn, according to ESOMAR President Gunilla Broadbent, “the sustained growth in some emerging markets, particularly Latin America, is encouraging.”
North America, which is responsible for almost one third of all global marketing research revenue, was affected by the downturn with both the USA and Canada posting small declines (of negative 2.1 and 2.2% respectively) after adjustment for inflation.
While Europe as a whole showed little growth (slowing to 4.7%, or 0.9% after inflation), both the UK and German market research industries bucked the trend by each posting 2.5% net growth.
The strongest performing region was Latin America where market research revenues grew by 5.6% after inflation (13.4% actual). Market research in Argentina, Peru and Panama was particularly strong.
Asia-Pacific, which has boasted strong growth in recent years, slowed a little. However, with 6.3% year-to-year growth (2.1% after inflation), Asia-Pacific still fared better than most other regions.
The annual ESOMAR Global Market Research Report also revealed some interesting statistics about the market research industry in general. In terms of research methodologies, quantitative research methods account for 80% of global research spend. Qualitative research methods account for a further 14%, with desk and secondary research taking the remaining 6%. Online research and online traffic/audience measurement now account for at least 10% of overall research spend in 22 countries (74 countries are covered by ESOMAR’s report), increasing from 18 countries in 2007.
Posted in
Asia, Europe, Global Research, Latin America, Market Research, Market Research USA, Online Research, Qualitative Research, Quantitative Research |
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Wednesday, June 24th, 2009
Not every industry can boast strong growth this year. And within each industry sector, not every geography will have experienced a great 12 months. Yet we are pleased to report that the UK market research industry has this year grown by an impressive 6.2%.
According to the Market Research Society’s (MRS) annual survey, the UK market research industry – the second largest in the world – is now worth an estimated £2.16 billion (2008 figures), up from £1.8 billion in 2007. Meanwhile revenue generated from international research grew by a remarkable 12.5%.
The 6.2% increase over the past year compares extremely favourably with revenue growth of 2.3%, 2.4% and 2.5% in 2007, 2006 and 2005 respectively.
Of course, there can be no guarantees about the sector’s growth for 2009. Yet market research – which is arguably even more vital to ensuring the survival and growth of companies, across all industries, when times are hard – has, unsurprisingly, proved itself to be “relatively resilient compared with other disciplines in the marketing services sector,” during previous downturns, according to The MRS Director General.
The news that international research is experiencing such an upsurge is pleasing for us at B2B International, yet presents no real surprises. Having conducted b-to-b research across the world for many years now, we have experienced first-hand the increasing desire of many clients to compete on a global scale. With a growing presence in Asia and the Americas over the past few years, B2B International is now even better placed to serve UK clients looking to research international markets.
To find out a bit more about our international market research services, click here.
Posted in
Global Research, International Market Research, Market Research UK, UK |
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