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Archive for the ‘Global Research’ Category« Previous Entries Next Entries »Global market research grows… but only justMonday, 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. Strong Growth for UK and International Market ResearchWednesday, 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. Understanding Cultural Differences Across B2B MarketsFriday, June 19th, 2009
Nick Hague this week takes us on a world tour, explaining why you should never be surprised to get such varied responses to your global customer satisfaction questions. We tend to have a human instinct that ‘deep inside’ all people are the same – but they are not. Therefore, if we go into another country and make decisions based on how we operate in our own home country – the chances are we’ll make some very bad decisions – Geert Hofstede After spending what seems like the last few months living out of a suitcase delivering research findings to a myriad of companies in countries ranging from Germany, Belgium, Spain and Ireland to the USA and China, it has hit home to me even more so, how important it is to understand individual country differences. These differences might be cultural, behavioural or attitudinal, but a researcher needs to know what lies behind a given score before making informed recommendations for action. Carrying out international research is all in a day’s work at B2B International! Enquiries for customer satisfaction and loyalty research have risen in recent months as the global recession bites harder and companies are turning their attention towards retaining their existing customer base. We are often tasked with carrying out customer satisfaction studies that cover multiple geographies. Implementing and evaluating such research requires an understanding of the different cultures and infrastructures within a particular geography; for example will a Chinese respondent answer an unsolicited telephone call or will an e-survey alienate half your target market in Spain? Another complexity that comes up in multi-country studies is making sure a translated questionnaire has the same meaning across multiple geographies. However, one of the most important aspects of carrying out international research is having the insight to why individuals from different countries around the world convey such different ratings; especially customer satisfaction ratings, when receiving a similar if not identical service from the same global organisation. So my Thursday Night Insight rant this week is about response styles and I pose the question: Why do customer satisfaction response styles differ between countries? Typically, in any customer satisfaction survey the norm is to use a 10 point scale where 1 means totally unsatisfied and 10 means totally satisfied. When asking this question to customers across different countries I can definitely make the following general observations:
However, one point that should be made clear is that these observations are generalizations and what we do see is that respondents from North America typically give higher satisfaction scores than their UK or Western European counterparts. One reason, I personally believe, is down to cultural differences. For example, I have an American colleague who works within our European HQ and on his first day at B2B International he greeted me with the question ‘how are you today?’ to which I replied ‘OK’. He looked aghast and said ‘why, what’s the matter?’ There was no problem or issue but my typical English response led my colleague to think that something was wrong based on our different cultural backgrounds. Therefore, based on these differences, Americans would typically rate a product or service as a 9 or 10 (totally satisfied or excellent) while Europeans would rate a similar issue as a 7 or 8 (an okay, acceptable, satisfactory score). Another reason for higher satisfaction scores in the US could be that Americans are more likely to respond to a survey even when service levels are good and expectations are being met whilst Europeans only respond if the service is poor or they have a gripe to bear – however, this is a personal point of view and so like any good researcher I wanted to know if any external research has been carried out looking at geographical scoring differences. Supporting the internal B2B viewpoint is a piece of research I came across carried out with 116,000 employees of IBM Corporation operating in more than 40 countries. Using these findings, Geert Hofstede from Maastricht University developed a framework that identified four different typologies based on national culture that impacted on response styles. These typologies were: Power distance: The degree to which people in a country accept a hierarchical or unequal distribution of power in organizations. Therefore respondents would typically score mid-response ratings and countries showing this type of response style include Malaysia, Taiwan, Singapore, India, Philippines, China, Brazil, Chile and Mexico Uncertainty avoidance: The degree to which people prefer structured vs. unstructured situations. Cultures high in uncertainty avoidance prefer unambiguous situations and are therefore more likely to use the endpoints of the scale as opposed to the middle, thus exhibiting an extreme response style. Countries showing this type of response include Belgium, Poland, France, Spain, Portugal, Turkey, Korea and Japan Individualism: The degree to which people in a country focus on working as individuals vs. working together. Cultures high in individualism are less likely to exhibit a middle satisfaction score because they would emphasize their individual opinion as opposed to their perception of the group opinion. Among all the response styles, individualistic cultures may exhibit extreme response styles and include countries such as US, Canada, Australia, UK, Denmark, Sweden, Norway, Belgium, Italy, Hungary and France. Assertiveness: The degree to which people in a country emphasize traits such as assertiveness and insensitivity to feelings. One could hypothesize that individuals in these cultures would favour more extreme response styles and that “softer,” more “sensitive” cultures exhibit more modesty or middle response styles. Countries that have been categorized as assertive are the UK, Germany, Italy, Hungary and Japan. However, it should be pointed out that Geert’s research is inconclusive with regards to the impact of this dimension on response scores. In conclusion, the key takeaways are thus. Every business needs a feedback loop to assess their performance and provide an ongoing measurement and benchmark for future progress. Customer satisfaction surveys are excellent at delivering this feedback, but different country cultures do impact on responses and response rates and so, when analyzing international research findings, a researcher needs to use their knowledge and judgement to whether a response is based on different levels of performance, or simply because of a result of cultural difference. In the future, when comparing international customer satisfaction research findings, it might be useful to take the following three steps:
Finally, to wrap up this week’s ramblings I should point out that when it comes to customer service and customer satisfaction, one issue that transcends all geographies is that it is imperative that the customer is listened to, and feels valued and cared for. Relationships are key in any business to business market throughout the world, and so invest in your people as they are the face of your business and typically are the driving force behind excellent satisfaction scores whether you are based in Torquay, Tokyo or Timbuktu. Researching Markets In China – A Day In The LifeFriday, May 15th, 2009
In his latest Thursday Night Insight, Alaric Fairbanks gives us a glimpse into his life conducting market research in China. Our permanent Beijing office has been up and running for about two and a half years now, and over this period I have been asked by both colleagues and clients outside the country about how working in market research here in China is different from in the west, and how it is similar. On a high level, there are obvious similarities: we have to win and design projects, identify respondents and sources of information, collect data and analyse data…the same as my colleagues elsewhere. This is pretty much as you may expect anywhere. Things get slightly different, however, on the type of projects: For the first two years, the majority of projects were market analysis and market development, with less interest in more quantitative research projects like customer satisfaction. There is, though, more and more customer sat work happening, as clients become more established, and of course we become more established with existing companies. In our experience, market analysis demand tends to focus on both the factual (i.e. size, structure and trends) and the analytical (i.e. what this means for developing sales). These projects tend to feature more qualitative investigative techniques and, in some ways, are more akin to a jigsaw where you first have to find the pieces. Clients have, in the main, been larger foreign companies and multinationals who already have a presence in China, but the projects are often commissioned abroad. Often this is because the market research function or strategic decision making unit is located in corporate headquarters, although we are seeing a lot more work commissioned from within China itself. Another reason for foreign-based commissions is the need for third party verification (or otherwise) of information coming from their China-based operations. On a practical level, having a large proportion of clients based in Europe and North America means that face-to-face meetings for commissioning and presentations are not so common, and telephone conferences and web presentations form a larger part of communications. This also means that interesting hours are often worked at commissioning and presentation meetings! As I already mentioned, an increasing number of clients are from within China and other parts of Asia. Again, the overlying characteristics of working with them remain the same i.e. understanding their needs, proposing a suitable methodology, negotiating timescales and price, etc. Where differences occur, however, are in lead times (longer) and very often in the brief itself. We have seen an increase in the number of specific written briefs, but these are still very much in the minority. Another interesting characteristic is how these clients prefer to communicate. After initial contact, many prefer to rely on instant messaging over the internet, mainly qq or similar services, for day-to-day communication, rather than telephone or e-mail. This is also having an impact on research methodologies. Methodologies for data collection here include all the usual suspects and, language aside, would be largely familiar to clients and colleagues in other countries. There are, though, some differences in application, for example focus groups tend to work better in smaller numbers, 6 to 8 being optimum. It is often argued that, especially in business, face-to-face interviews are necessary here. Very often this isn’t the case. We recently had a project looking at the market in the ‘biosolids’ industry, meaning we had to talk to respondents in Chinese sewerage works. Initially this seemed quite daunting, until it became clear that these people were extremely receptive; no pushy sales people come and call (for perhaps obvious reasons), and they are seldom asked about the intricacies of their work. Recruitment was aided by the incredible take-up of social networking and bulletin boards among Chinese professionals. As a country undergoing rapid change, it is perhaps no surprise that methodologies and attitudes to them are changing too. From a ‘consensus’ of f2f being the only acceptable technique just a few years ago, telephone and indeed online have increased in importance incredibly quickly, with instant messaging even being used for in-depth qualitative work. Whilst respondents are often very keen to work with different approaches, the market outside China and occasionally inside sometimes sticks to believing outdated truisms. In this short space available, it is clear that although many principles and approaches are of course similar, there are nuances affecting all aspects of the process. Where this may be more complicated or even contentious is around how this is manifested in everyday work, for example the amount of time required on quality checks, and HR issues and administration. I’ll try to cover these in my next post. To learn more about our work and our team in China, visit www.b2binternational.com/China Global Opportunities AboundThursday, April 23rd, 2009
A recent article in BtoB Marketing – Thinking global may help U.S. marketers – argues that many emerging international markets still offer rich opportunities for domestic marketers, even in spite of the global economic downturn. China in particular, is suggested as a market still offering excellent opportunities for U.S. companies. It is useful to note that the country’s premier, Wen Jiabao, last month predicted an 8% growth in China’s GDP this year, which, while not as large as last year’s growth, is still better than that of many countries. One potential opening highlighted is for U.S. companies that put an emphasis on customer service. They may be able to take advantage of overseas opportunities, as it is suggested that companies in a number of other countries are much less tolerant of poor customer service. In China, for example, 55% of companies have switched vendors in the past year because of perceived unfulfilled customer service expectations. Sweden (46%), India (44%), Italy (44%), Finland (43%) and companies in Asian countries other than China (36%) all have a tendency to switch vendors more than their US counterparts (22%). With emerging markets such as China and India having increasing service expectations, there is the assumption that they may not be loyal to particular brands, suppliers, etc. Resultantly, they may be willing to make the potentially lucrative move from their existing domestic partners to foreign counterparts, as long as these new companies can offer them what they are looking for. To find out how we can help you to grasp the opportunities presented by China and other Asian markets, visit www.b2binternational.com/China « Previous Entries Next Entries » |
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