1. Chapter 4 – International Marketing Research and Opportunity Analysis
Doole, Lowe and Kenyon
International Marketing Strategy

2. Learning Objectives
Appreciate the key roles of marketing research in international marketing
Understand the concepts and techniques to identify and evaluate opportunities internationally
Build a market profile analysis of a foreign country market
Discuss the difficulties and issues that arise in developing multi-country primary research studies

3. The role of marketing research and opportunity analysis
Define the problem
Develop an approach
Design the research
Undertake fieldwork
Analyze the data
Report and present findings

4. The role of marketing research and opportunity analysis (cont.)
Scanning international markets to identify and analyze opportunities
Building marketing information systems to monitor environmental trends
Carrying out primary marketing research for input into the development of marketing strategies
UK Statistics:

5. Opportunity identification and analysis
Identification of opportunities
accessibility
profitability
market size
Do you think you need to conduct a market research to test if the drink or food that you selected will be accepted by your target customers? – i.e. Market Testing – Normally, companies use focus group to test.

6. International marketing segmentation
Scanning: identify and analyze opportunities and evaluate which markets to prioritize for further R & D
Develop framework:
Market segmentation – partition market into submarkets or segments
Pareto Law – 20% of countries generate 80% of results therefore, these countries must receive greater managerial attention and resource allocation
The most importance of SWOT analysis is to identify New Market Opportunities ?

7. Researching which geographic segments are competitive
Some countries are more competitive and pose less
risk than others

8. International marketing segmentation (cont.)
Transnational segmentation
Demographic:
sex, age, income level, social class and educational achievement
Psychographic:
lifestyle factors – activities, interests and opinions
Behavioural:
patterns of consumption, loyalty to product category and brand
needs benefits occasion usage

9. International marketing segmentation (cont.)
Hierarchical country – consumer segmentation
Identify countries
with infrastructure and accessibility
Select countries that meet qualifying criteria
Develop mini-segments
e.g. information search behaviour / product characteristics required
Look for similarities across segments
identify characteristics of demand for each segment. Rate in terms of potential response
Use Cluster Analysis to identify meaningful cross-national segments

10. The market profile analysis (cont.)

11. Further sources of information institutions
Business libraries
University libraries
International chambers of commerce
International Market Intelligence Centre (Trade Partners UK)
Business Links
Embassies
Banks
Trade associations
Export councils
Overseas distributors
Overseas sales subsidiaries
Foreign brokerage houses
Foreign trade organizations

12. The market profile analysis (cont.)
Problems in using secondary data
Availability
Accessibility
Accuracy
Scarcity
Timeliness of collection
Way data is reported / interpreted

13. Primary research in international markets (cont.)

14. Primary research in international markets (cont.)
Organizing the research study
Should the research be carried out by foreign local subsidiaries or should all marketing research be centralized at headquarters?
Should the fieldwork be carried out in house or by an agency?

15. Primary research in international markets (cont.)
In-house or agency
Local agency in the market under investigation
Domestic agency with offices overseas
Domestic agency with overseas associate companies
Domestic agency which subcontracts fieldwork to an agency in the market under investigation
Domestic agency with competent foreign staff
Global agency with offices around the world

16. Primary research in international markets (cont.)
Multi-country studies
Project discussed at length with the client
Fieldwork agencies in each country selected
Questionnaire designed centrally
Translated locally, translation checked centrally
Piloted locally
Finalised centrally
Interviewers briefed locally by executive of central company
Fieldwork carried out locally
Coding and editing plan provided for the local agencies
Edited and coded questionnaires returned to head office
Coding and editing check carried out centrally
Computing and analysis carried out centrally