Page 102 - DMGT547_INTERNATIONAL_MARKETING

Unit 5: International Market Research

identify additional problems that need to be investigated. Descriptive research, on the other Notes
hand, portrays a situation – for instance, how frequently shoppers in Cairo shop for food items;
whether they prefer to shop for meat products in state stores, which are cheaper but offer
inferior-quality products, or in private stores, which are more expensive but offer a higher
quality and assortment of meat products. Finally casual research examines cause-and-effect
relationships, such as the extent to which Sony’s offer of financial incentives to electronics
salespeople in Ahmedabad, India is likely to increase sales of the Sony brand.

5.5.2 Developing the Research Plan

The research plan is a blueprint for the study, indicating all the decisions to be made with regard
to information sources, research methods, data collection instruments, sampling procedures,
data collection methods, data analysis, and based on these decisions the projected costs of the
research.

5.5.3 Identifying Information Sources

The researcher wills tart by identifying information that may shed additional light on the
problem and that has been collected either by the company itself (internal) or by some other
firm or agency (external) secondary data. The secondary data may, if needed, help the researcher
to more clearly define the problem and set better objectives. It will also help the researcher
pinpoint the type of information that needs to be gathered for the goals articulated.

Secondary Data

Researchers first must determine if information is available, and if so, and how much; doing so
may aid in gaining insights into the problem at hand. Secondary data is defined as data collected
for a problem other than the problem at hand.
Secondary data can be categorized as internal (collected by the company to address a different
problem, or collected by the company to address the same problem, but in a different country),
or external (collected by an entity not affiliated with the company).

Primary Data

Primary research is used internationally far less than it should be. Cost-benefit analyses suggest
that spending on research in remote markets of questionable value in unwise; consequently, the
temptation is to use secondary data to serve all research functions.
Most international marketing research projects involve the collection of primary data, information
collected for a specific purpose, to address the problem at hand. It requires substantial expertise
in both instrument design and administration and, as a consequence, it is expensive and time
consuming.

5.5.4 Data Collection

When the available data are insufficient, fresh data have to be collected. Usually “survey”
techniques are used for gathering information. It needs not to be an elaborate survey for a
sample survey would be quite sufficient. This is the method of obtaining information from a
sample of respondents (groups). The sample is supposed to represent a larger group of people,
i.e. the universe, sometimes all the people.

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